Understanding the Apocalypse

Concocting Viral Apocalypse:

Catastrophic Risk and the Production of Bio(in)security Lisa Kera¨ nen The post-9=11 era featured an unprecedented expansion of global biodefense initiatives.

This essay chronicles the rise of biodefense by tracking biological risk construction across political, scientific, and cultural rhetoric from the late 1990s to the present. It maintains that the production of bio(in)security entails two interlocking rhetorical operations— framing biological threats as catastrophic risk and enlisting the specter of viral apocalypse—that license technological solutions to imagined vulnerabilities. The essay concludes by considering the implications of such rhetoric for public health and national security.

Keywords: Biodefense; Bioterrorism; Catastrophic Risk; National Security; Public Health; Viral Apocalypse In 1989, David Huxsoll, Commander of the United States Army Medical Research Institute on Infectious Disease (USAMRIID), proclaimed that ‘‘it would be absurd for us to create disease-causing organisms just to test therapies we develop’’ (Huxsoll as cited in Enemark, 2005, p. 37; see also Wright & Ketcham, 1990). More than Lisa Kera¨ nen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Denver. She wishes to thank editor Brian L. Ott and her anonymous reviewers, the Front Range Rhetoric Reading Group (especially Sonja Foss, Stephen John Hartnett, Hamilton Bean, and Greg Dickinson), Michael Zimmerman, and members of the Rhetoric Workshop at the University of Colorado at Boulder for feedback on various iterations of this essay. A version of this work was presented at a Department of Communication colloquium at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign on April 21, 2011—thanks to Cara Finnegan, Kent Ono, and colleagues for their intellectual energy. The author also appreciates Kirstin Runa’s and Jennifer Malkowski’s research assistance. Correspondence to: Lisa Kera¨ nen, Department of Communication, Campus Box 176, PO Box 173364, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, CO 80217, USA. E-mail: lisa.keranen@ ucdenver.edu Western Journal of Communication Vol. 75, No. 5, October–December 2011, pp. 451–472 ISSN 1057-0314 (print)/ISSN 1745-1027 (online)#2011 Western States Communication Association DOI: 10.1080/10570314.2011.614507 20 years later, Huxsoll’s absurdity had become reality. Under the aegis of national security, U.S. scientists genetically engineered smallpox to cross the species barrier, concocted anthrax resistant to vaccine, and routinely ‘‘amplified’’ germs like the hemorrhagic Ebola and Lassa viruses, adopting this bland euphemism to describe intentional changes to the agents’ virulence (Cooper, 2008; Guillemin, 2005; Miller, Engleberg, & Broad, 2002; Preston, 2002; Warrick, 2006). These known experiments joined an array of clandestine research predicated on a unifying vision that terrorists or rogue nations may use biological weapons against the United States or its interests (Warrick, 2006). Such transportation of the biological sciences into the realm of security, and hence, the intensification of technological processes that turn medical science into weapons, are made tangible through intersecting sets of political, techni- cal, and cultural discourses. In this essay, I reread these discourses and their attendant material manifestations not merely as an extension of the War on Terror into labyr- inthine laboratory realms, as many critics have charged (Enserink & Kaiser, 2005; Goldstein, 2003; Leitenberg, 2005), but as a site where rhetorical scholars may grapple with the consequences of large-scale organizational rhetorics of science and medicine.

While askingwhatthe biodefense buildup represents, I also want to probehowit achieves its authority and power. More specifically, this line of thinking leads me to ask: How do a collection of actors and organizations assembled around the mantle of biodefense lead us down the path of producing vaccine-resistant anthrax, amped-up smallpox, omnipresent bio-simulation exercises, and routine lab accidents involving pathogens likebrucellosis, tularemia, Hantavirus, Ebola, and the plague, the latter of which are among the deadliest germs known to humankind? What forces underwrite this deliberate extension of malevolent microbes?

While the pat response to these questions may be summarized as ‘‘the military-industrial complex,’’ the specific mechanisms promoting this intersection of biology and security remain unelaborated. To detangle some of the threads from the snarl of forces that drive this process, I reconstruct fragments (McGee, 1990) from political, technical, and cultural texts and practices that legitimize a constel- lation that I call the ‘‘biodefense industry.’’ Tacking back and forth across such fragments, I show how the logic of bio(in)security authorizes the development, proliferation, and potential use of biological weapons agents. I do so by tracking the specific rhetorical mechanisms that promote bio(in)security, which emphasizes humanity’s fundamental vulnerability to biological threats. The fragments that I investigate derive largely from governmental, technical, and private sector initiatives.

They involve the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s sprawling collection of laboratories, open air testing sites, and knowledge centers such as the Plum Island Animal Disease Control Center, the Biodefense Knowledge Center, the U.S. National Laboratories, the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, and the university-based Department of Homeland Security Centers of Excellence. While these sites serve as key nodes in the biodefense initiative, the industry transcends governmental initia- tives to include a collection of self-styled biosecurity experts, military planners, phar- maceutical firms, political actors, medical professionals, venture capitalists, and citizen advocacy and watchdog groups (Rothkopf, 2002). Beyond this arena, scores 452 L. Kera¨ nen of viral thriller novels, films, and popular cultural artifacts support biodefense when they repackage the anxieties and uncertainties of biological threats for mass audi- ences, thereby solidifying perceptions of the biological threat (Mayer, 2007). Operat- ing largely beneath a cloak of secrecy yet animated in the mass media, the biodefense industry thus comprises a burgeoning and multifaceted business with vast life and death implications; the germ applications it investigates hold the power to spread sickness or healing, to incite or quash disease, and to reconfigure the relations between biology, medicine, and the national security state.

In seeking to uncover the power and operations of this extensive but semi-veiled system, this essay continues a line of theory and criticism initiated in a 2006 special issue ofCultural Studies, where James Hay and Mark Andrejevic addressed ‘‘Homeland Insecurities,’’ which ‘‘foregroundsafetyandsecurityas a problematic that ‘cultural studies’ have not considered energetically’’ (p. 332). Regarding homeland security as a means of ‘‘managing risk,’’ Hay and Andrejevic caution against explana- tions that point to ‘‘single determinations—single institutions (the State or media) or a particular set of practices (e.g. economic, political, representational)’’ (p. 332).

Instead, they argue, homeland security should be viewed as a tangle of practices, logics, and articulations that span and complicate the boundaries between State and non-State, domestic and international, and civilian and military. Extending the themes originally expressed by Hay and Andrejevic’s special issue, Barbara Bie- secker’s 2007Communication and Critical=Cultural Studies‘‘Forum on Homeland Security’’ examined, in large part, the identities and subjectivities cultivated by ‘‘the most massive reorganization and consolidation of the state apparatus since 1947,’’ wherein homeland security ‘‘has become not only a household word but also an extraordinary signifier, a Master signifier, some would say, that shapes our percep- tions and organizes our practices by lending (a certain kind of) coherence to our everyday lives’’ (p. 204). Considering this Master signifier in a context of inter- national interdependence, Jodi Dean (2007) argues that homeland security ‘‘is a stand-in for a series of inchoate anxieties associated with the rapid intensification and integration of information and communication technologies and the globalized economy’’ (p. 209). Given the complexity of this constellation of discourses, agents, and material, Hay and Andrejevic concluded their special issue introduction by not- ing that ‘‘a comprehensive analysis and critique of the Homeland Security regime is a task for collective and ongoing scholarship—a task we believe to be of the utmost importance to both critical theory and political practice’’ (p. 342). This essay contri- butes to this ongoing project by confronting the homeland security apparatus from another vector, namely, the burgeoning biodefense industry and the way it enables the concerns of homeland security to migrate across technoscientific, political, and entertainment contexts. Consistent with the vision of Hay, Andrejevic, Biesecker, and others (Scott, 2006), my essay will address a range of institutional, political, and cultural alliances that together promote a logic of bio(in)security and that under- write the expansion of biodefense as a supposed safeguard against germs and terror- ists run amok, while engendering a significant set of ethical concerns and possible security dilemmas. Western Journal of Communication 453 Because of the complexity of biodefense and its appearance across a wide swath of contemporary life, this essay tracks rhetoric about biodefense across several domains to demonstrate how the logic of bio(in)security licenses the proliferation of biological weapons agents and their use. Indeed, a bevy of interlocking political, technical, and popular cultural discourses converge to keep the germ threat in the eyes of decision-making elites and viewing publics. The political realm includes a set of policy discourses, developed since the mid-1990s, which outline the planks of U.S.

biosecurity. Presidential Homeland Security Directive 10, ‘‘Biodefense for the 21st Century,’’ the unclassified version of which was signed on April 28, 2004, comprises a central example. In this policy, President Bush charted his plans for strengthened defense infrastructure against the germ nightmare that included enhanced biological weapons intelligence, monitoring, testing, preparedness, and response (Bush, 2004).

More recently, President Obama issued a memo that ‘‘emphasized the administra- tion’s focus on preventing bioterrorism; created the capacity to mitigate the conse- quences of bioterror attacks, accelerated new medicines, vaccines, and production capabilities; and advanced an international effort to contain the impact of major infectious disease epidemics,’’ thus fortifying a system already well in place (Erickson, 2009). Such initiatives are joined by an array of presidential directives, official speeches, and policy statements compelling accelerated biodefense initiatives (see Bush, 2002; Klotz & Sylvester, 2009; U.S. White House, 2004). In the technical realm, scientific journals, academic conferences, and think tank communique´ s signify the sedimentation of expert assessments about biological weapons threats. While dissen- ters and critics exist (see Leitenberg, 2005), the number of publications configuring biological weapons agents as a significant security threat is remarkable. One study of global scientific literature in the post–Cold War period, for instance, found a 250% increase in biodefense publications following the demise of the Soviet Union, with scientists from 94 countries adding to the literature (Markusova, Wilson, & Davis, 2002). Finally, popular culture animates biological weapons and emerging epidemics in biothriller films, books, television programs, and graphic novels (Mayer, 2007; Pappas, Seitaridis, Akritidis, & Tsianos, 2003). Examples range from novels sporting names likeSlatewiper, Pandemic, Patient Zero, andPlague Makerto films such as28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, I am Legend, Virus, Outbreak, Fatal Error, andPandora’s Clock, each of which inscribes the germ threat in vivid and horrifying terms (see Schell, 1997).

These three domains, the political rhetoric exemplified by the ‘‘Biodefense Plan for the 21st Century’’ and other presidential=administrative bioterrorism documents, the technoscientific discourse of experimental reports and modeling predictions, and popular culture’s dramatizations of biological devastation present overlapping and mutually reinforcing discourses that bolster biodefense. In one realm, we find a dizzy- ing array of initiatives, much of them classified, which are designed to fortify the nation’s germ defensive complex through the application of science and technology.

In another, we witness an evermore elaborate series of simulations and experiments designed to prepare the United States for a germ attack. And in still another, we encounter mediated confabulations announcing the presence and anticipating the 454 L. Kera¨ nen outcomes of what Preston has termed ‘‘dark biology,’’ the science of biological weapons work (Preston, 2009). As the United States funneled billions into biodefense, launched Projects Bioshield and Biowatch, and planned 11 new biosafety level 3 and 4 labora- tories, germs ‘‘achieved heightened potency as both symbolic and material objects of power, fear, and control’’ (Kera¨ nen, 2011b, p. 114). To explain how we arrived at this state of affairs, I track how bioterrorism and emerging infectious disease came to be framed as catastrophic risk and demonstrate how the rhetoric of viral apocalypse kept this threat firmly in decision-makers’ minds, thereby demonstrating a perceived need for technological solutions to our perceived bio(in)security. I begin my analysis by tracking the construction of bioterrorism across political rhetoric, technical rhetoric, and popular entertainment sources from the late 1990s to the present and conclude with a consideration of the ethical and social implications of the biodefense buildup.

Along the way, I maintain that the production of bio(in)security is achieved at a system level through two interlocking rhetorical operations: the construction of bioterrorism and pandemic as catastrophic risk and the persistent invocation of the specter of viral apocalypse. Together, these mechanisms promote technological solutions to perceived biological vulnerabilities. The result is nothing less than an overhaul of our germ prio- rities and their hitching to a militarized security state, all while producing hybridized potential weapons and novel life-forms.

Crafting Bio(in)security: Risk, Catastrophe, and Apocalypse In charting the rhetorics of biodefense across a wide swath of political, technical, and entertainment texts, it readily becomes apparent that biodefense rests on a funda- mental premise of biological vulnerability. Such bio(in)security forms a linguistic and cognitive bridge uniting public health to national security through a particular vision of bioterrorism as catastrophic risk. As the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Laurie Garrett wrote in 2001, global populations were ‘‘horribly vulnerable’’ (p. 77) to a biological attack. This vision of deep vulnerability to biological threats is rhetori- cally powerful for the biodefense industry because it is supple enough to be hitched to other social agendas. For instance, industry observers note that the biodefense system has co-opted recurring concerns about ‘‘naturally-occurring’’ pandemic so that pan- demic preparedness becomes the ‘‘tail wagging the dog’’ of biodefense (Palmquist, 2008). Immunologist William Clark explains, ‘‘We’re better prepared for a pandemic because what they’re doing for bioterror would also prepare us somewhat for a pandemic attack’’ (Clark as cited in Palmquist, 2008). To give another example:

Smallpox, a formerly naturally occurring pathogen that has been eradicated from nat- ure, has become apotentialweapon (because terroristsmightacquire it from existing laboratory stocks), requiring urgent preparation and planning. In order to under- stand how this change occurred, we must revisit the 1990s, when an emergent frame of bioterrorism as catastrophic risk arose out of post–Cold War security concerns.

Here, we will witness how the incorporation of biological threats into war-gaming provided inventional fodder for policy makers to reenvision the security implica- tions of widespread infectious disease. The resultant rhetoric of risk (Ayotte, Western Journal of Communication 455 Bernard, & O’Hair, 2009; Beck, 1992; Sauer, 2003) framed bioterrorism as a serious, catastrophic threat to both national security and international order.

Framing Bioterrorism as Catastrophic Risk: An Emergent Rhetoric of the 1990s Hints of the coming transfer of concerns about emerging infectious disease to a secur- ity paradigm were evident in 1989, when tropical disease specialists gathered at a con- ference in Honolulu participated in a tabletop simulation of an ‘‘airborne Ebola’’ outbreak among African civil-war refugees (Lakoff, 2008, p. 45). As many scholars have documented (Ayotte, 2011; Dougherty, 2001; Weldon, 2001), Ebola, a contagious virus known for its hemorrhagic effects and high death rates, ranks among the most feared of human diseases. Thus, a simulation featuring a mutant, lethal, and airborne form of Ebola provided a particularly colorful story line for later popular accounts of the exercise. For example, Laurie Garrett, who dramatized the exercise in the final chapter of her 1994 bestsellerThe Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, called it ‘‘an extraordinary war games scenario’’ of a ‘‘horrendous epi- demic’’ that was ‘‘eerily prescient’’ of a later disease outbreak in Rwanda (1994=1995, p. 593). ‘‘The incident showed,’’ she wrote, ‘‘that in a week’s time hundreds of people on four continents could be exposed to an apparently new microbe, well before autho- rities were aware of its existence’’ (p. 598). Garrett thus used this imaginative disease security exercise as evidence of her claims for global viral vulnerability.

Despite the dawning awareness that germs might pose a threat to the welfare of nations, the paradigm of disease as national security threat would not crystallize until the mid-1990s, when several exigencies thrust germ vulnerabilities into the inter- national spotlight. A year after Garrett’sThe Coming Plague(1994=1995) became a bestseller, the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo (literally, ‘‘Supreme Truth’’) unleashed sarin, a chemical weapon, in Tokyo’s subway, killing 12 and injuring hundreds. Sub- sequent investigations revealed Aum’s biological weapon ambitions and at least 10 attempts to infect Tokyo residents with the biological and toxin weapons agents anthrax and botulinum (Kaplan, 2001). Meanwhile, Washington DC buzzed with Soviet defectors’ tales of a biological weapons program far more advanced than the United States’, replete with a gruesome sounding Soviet ‘‘superplague,’’ a ‘‘chimera’’ that ‘‘combined several types of microbes’’ (Miller et al., 2002, p. 202). Against the backdrop of HIV and Ebola outbreaks, Richard Preston’s bestsellers,The Hot Zone (1994) andThe Cobra Event(1997), captivated public and official imaginations alongside dozens of other biothriller films and novels (Dougherty, 2001; Mayer, 2007). In fact, Preston’s fictionalCobra Event, about bioterrorism in a New York sub- way, purportedly persuaded President Clinton to conduct a review of germ threats (Preston, 1997, 2009); Clinton soon launched federal biopreparedness initiatives, including a mandate that the federal government conduct regular Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) preparedness exercises, the earliest of which involved biological weapons staged in complicated WMD storylines involving multiple sites and weapons of attack (see Erickson & Barratt, 2004; Kera¨ nen, 2008, 2011b; and Schoch-Spana, 2004, for a brief history of these initiatives). The first three of such 456 L. Kera¨ nen exercises, called TOPOFF for ‘‘top officials,’’ prominently featured pathogen attack.

By the mid-1990s, the White House’s Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP, 1996) was preparing white papers with titles such as ‘‘Addressing the Threat of Emerging Infectious Disease,’’ thus revealing the interpenetration of concerns about bioterrorism with naturally occurring emerging infectious disease. As Schell (2002) has noted, in the 1990s, ‘‘everyone was feverishly fascinated with the process of infection’’ (p. 807).

The blending of military and civilian biopreparedness initiatives thus helped a col- lection of public health and security experts to frame infectious disease in general and bioterrorism in particular as a national security threat of cataclysmic proportion. To be sure, the threat of epidemics and deliberate infection has always haunted military (and peacetime) endeavors, as evidenced by the Cold War Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Pendergrast, 2010). But in the late 1990s, a deliberate effort to prepare for biological inci- dents—increasingly characterized in terms of bioterrorism—emerged from public health pioneers who translated the horrors of their battle against naturally occurring smallpox into a clarion call about possible terrorist use of biological weapons. 1In 1998, Donald Ainslie (known as D.A.) Henderson, one of the public health icons who had helped the World Health Organization (WHO) eradicate smallpox, founded the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense. As key producers of knowledge about the threat of biological weapons, the Hopkins Center’s directors established a peer-reviewed academic journal,Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science, and began planning a tabletop simulation dramatizing the smallpox threat, ominously namedDark Winter. Coordinated by the Center’s Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby, along with staff from the Washington DC–based Center for Strategic and International Studies,Dark Winterunfolded at Andrews Air Force Base from June 22 to 23, 2001. Sam Nunn played the U.S. President; other participants included presidential advisor David Gergen and Judith Miller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning formerNew York Timesjournalist who was later discredited for her inflated allegations about Iraqi biological weapons capabilities (Foer, 2005).

The exercise vivified a worst-case smallpox scenario in which international leaders were grossly underprepared to handle a large-scale germ crisis.Dark Winterpacked wide persuasive power: More than 80 members of Congress and 20 ambassadors were briefed on its anticipated outcomes (Simons, 2002).

While the Hopkins group planned their exercise, in 1998 the ‘‘Catastrophic Terrorism Study Group’’ of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, a collaboration of national security, law enforcement, terrorism, legal, and government insiders, released a report warning of the threat of weapons of mass destruction, particularly bioterrorism (Carter, Deutch, & Zelikow, 1998a, p. 3).

Framing terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction as a key challenge for the coming century, the report declared: Long part of Hollywood’s and Tom Clancy’s repertory of nightmarish scenarios, catastrophic terrorism is a real possibility. In theory, the enemies of the United States have motive, means, and opportunity.... The combination of available Western Journal of Communication 457 technology and lethality has made biological weapons at least as deadly a danger as the better known chemical and nuclear threats.... A successful attack with weap- ons of mass destruction could certainly kill thousands, or tens of thousands. If the device that exploded in 1993 under the World Trade Center had been nuclear, or the distribution of a deadly pathogen, the chaos and devastation would have gone far beyond our meager ability to describe it. (p. 5) Catastrophic Terrorismintersperses confident-sounding assertions with purely speculative claims. Terms such as ‘‘real,’’ ‘‘successful,’’ and ‘‘certainly kill’’ clash with the qualifiers ‘‘in theory,’’ ‘‘could,’’ and ‘‘if,’’ while ‘‘chaos and devastation’’ cement pictures of cataclysm. Taken together, the report reveals the transformation of bio- logical contingency into a concrete vision for an actionable future featuring all the elements of catastrophe. ‘‘Experts combining experience in every quadrant of the national security and law enforcement community all consider this catastrophic threat perfectly plausibletoday,’’ the report maintained. ‘‘An act of catastrophic ter- rorism that killed thousands or tens of thousands of people and=or disrupted the necessities of life for hundreds of thousands, or even millions, would be a watershed event in America’s history,’’ the report continued (p. 5). Like other technical discourse of the post–Cold War era (see Laqueur, 1996),Catastrophic Terrorismcon- figures America as having entered a new era of complex threats entailing large-scale loss of life and societal disarray: the era of catastrophic risk.

The theoretical death counts used in the report mirror other discourse of the late 1990s and 2000s, wherein experts attempted to quantify the risk of bioterrorism into projected life lost in order to render it in terms audiences could understand. In this way, the unlikely is rendered as likely and the plausible becomes probable (see Hartnett & Stengrim, 2006). Consider, for instance, how characterizations of biologi- cal threats’ catastrophic ‘‘potential,’’ ‘‘possibility,’’ and ‘‘plausibility’’ transform the imagined into the likely. As early as 1989, one well-respected germ expert noted of the Honolulu exercise, ‘‘You may say [the exercise scenario of mutant, highly con- tagious Ebola is] ‘ridiculous,’ but I don’t think we can disregard thatpossibility....

It was, and still is, apotential’’ (Karl Johnson as cited in Garrett, 1994=1995, p. 594, emphasis added). Here, a simulation involving a hypothetical mutation of air- borne Ebola becomes a possible future for which to prepare.

To coincide with theCatastrophic Terrorismreport, the study’s leaders also pro- duced a coauthoredForeign Affairsarticle that amplified security concerns about ter- rorist use of weapons of mass destruction. Titled, ‘‘Catastrophic Terrorism: Tackling the New Danger,’’ the essay argued that ‘‘catastrophic terrorism has moved from far-fetched horror to a contingency that could happennext month’’ (Carter, Deutch, & Zelikow, 1998b, p. 80, emphasis added). ‘‘Terrorists may gain access to weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear devices, germ dispensers, poison gas weapons, and even computer viruses’’ (p. 80). Here, bioterrorism is one of several potential terrorist uses of WMD; nonetheless, this report enlisted imagined future worst-case scenarios grounded in the construction of bioterrorism as a catastrophic risk to help policy makers envision the consequences of not preparing for biological (and other WMD) attack. Furthermore,Catastrophic Terrorismindexed an imperative 458 L. Kera¨ nen frame: beyond mere plausibility, the report invoked urgency, the need for immediate action to counter threats.

Bioterrorism as Catastrophic Risk Redux: A Dominant Post-9/11 Theme While security insiders were cued to the catastrophic potential of biological weapons well before 9=11, the anthrax mailings that followed the destruction of the Twin Towers brought the issue to living rooms across America, strengthening a growing sense among policy makers that the nation was at peril from germs (Powell, 2003).

Suddenly, bioterrorism was a word on everyone’s lips. Coincidentally, on 9=11,Germs:

Biological Weapons and America’s Secret Warhit bookstores (Miller et al., 2002), pre- senting a chilling depiction of post–Cold War Russian, Iraqi, and terrorist biological weapons threats. Meanwhile, federal agencies began categorizing biological agents in terms of threat level, and Colin Powell delivered his infamous but now disgraced speech alleging the presence of a robust Iraqi biological weapons program (Powell, 2003). Beyond the technical and political realms, the nation’s airwaves filled with sen- sationalistic programs titledBioterrorandSmallpox 2002: Silent Weapon, each of which told similar tales of widespread devastation following a biological weapons attack (Schoch-Spana, 2004). What had before 9=11 been an emerging theme among policy makers and technocratic elites had now become a dominant public frame.

Indeed, the characterization of bioterrorism as a catastrophic risk proved parti- cularly potent as it reverberated deeply through technical and official discourses.

By 2003, bioterrorism had been solidly recast in catastrophic terms as heralded in the title of Richard Danzig’s (2003) influential report,Catastrophic Bioterrorism— What Is To Be Done?, which serves as a prevailing example of the power of official narratives to vivify bioterrorism as ‘‘catastrophic,’’ while reducing complex uncer- tainty into simple pronouncements of reality. Produced for the Center for Technology and National Security Policy of the National Defense University (a unit established in 2001), the report reflects interactions between scientists and defense analysts. That the scientists quoted are often former members of the Defense Science Board (DSB; see Hartnett & Goodale, 2009, for an analysis of the DSB) indicates the close-knit discourse community that forms the background of the report. Following a bold-faced heading ‘‘Why Bioterrorism Warrants Exceptional Preparation,’’ Catastrophic Bioterrorismargues simply that ‘‘a single biological attack can kill a great many people, while the technologies to develop and deliver these weapons are rela- tively inexpensive, accessible, and difficult to detect, much less interdict’’ (p. 1).

‘‘Since inhalation of 8,000 to 10,000 spores [of anthrax] is generally regarded as likely to be lethal for the average person,’’ Danzig explains, ‘‘a gram perfectly and efficiently disseminated outdoors under optimum weather conditions and inhaled by an unpro- tected population theoretically could kill 100,000 people’’ (pp. 1–2). Just as Colin Powell (2003) dramatized the power of anthrax in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, Danzig marshaled the trappings of scientific authority to help other policy makers envision how a small amount of invisible spores might pose a ‘‘catastrophic’’ health risk. Western Journal of Communication 459 This construction interpenetrated technical and political realms. Kwik, Fitzgerald, Inglesby, and O’Toole (2003) described an ‘‘age of catastrophic terrorism’’ (p. 1) in the pages ofBiosecurity and Bioterrorism, while Richard Falkenrath (2006) similarly cast biological threats in catastrophic terms in his congressional testimony: ‘‘When viewed in comparison to all other conceivable threats to U.S. national security, the catastrophic disease threat is and for the foreseeable future will remain the greatest danger we face.’’ Technical and political rhetoric from this era pivots between the assessments that ‘‘bio- terrorism is inevitable’’ and that it is ‘‘low-probability, high-consequence.’’ In both cases, the manifold complexities of biological weapons are radically simplified and pre- sented in catastrophic terms. On the one hand, many officials assert the inescapability of bioterrorism (Parris, 2001). For example, Interpol head Ron Noble told inter- national participants of a South African biopreparedness conference in 2005, ‘‘The world must face the inevitability of a bio-terror attack by al-Qaeda’’ (‘Bio-Terror Strike,’ 2005). Similarly, a Washington DC mantra proclaimed bioterrorism a matter of ‘‘ ‘when’ not ‘if’’’ (see Parris, 2001, p. 235). On the other hand, bioterrorism is repeatedly cast as ‘‘low-probability.’’ Henretig (2001) noted that the ‘‘risk of [biologi- cal] attack is hard to quantify and probably very low’’ (p. 718), yet ultimately concluded that bioterrorism must be considered a ‘‘low-probability, high-consequence event’’ (p. 719). Morse (2003), for instance, notes that ‘‘bioterrorism is one threat facing every- one these days’’; he dubs it ‘‘low-probability’’ but ‘‘high-consequence’’ (p. 561). The phrase ‘‘high-consequence’’ reinforces the catastrophic vision of bioterrorism, cement- ing a picture of devastation and despair. And although countervailing voices tried to present less dramatic framings of the threat (Leitenberg, 2005), the dominant read among decision-makers was that the potential dangers of bioterrorism warranted massive preparation.

At the same time, the growing awareness that biological weapons were initially indistinguishable from naturally occurring outbreaks led to a reinvigorated focus on a wider set of biosecurity initiatives encompassing pandemic preparedness, food safety, and genetics research. 2As Cooper (2006) has noted, after 9=11, ‘‘official docu- ments declared that infectious disease outbreak and bioterrorism should be treated as identical threats, in the absence of any sure means of distinguishing between the two’’ (p. 113). ‘‘To be effective at all,’’ Cooper explains, ‘‘the war on terror would need to arm itself against the generic microbiological threat, from wherever it might arise’’ (pp. 113–114). By 2004, experts were calling for an ‘‘all-hazards’’ public health preparedness approach (Hearne, 2004). One rhetorical vision in particular helped to sustain this move: the repeatedly raised specter of viral apocalypse.

Invoking Viral Apocalypse: Spectacles of Global Contamination ‘‘Readers should imagine the possibilities [of attack] for themselves, because the most serious constraint on current policy is lack of imagination,’’ declared theCatastrophic Terrorismreport in 1998 (Carter et al., 1998a, p. 5). This statement indexes the grow- ing role of anticipatory imagining (Vogel, 2008) in biopreparedness efforts. As I have written elsewhere (Kera¨ nen, 2008, 2011b), simulation and spectacle (Baudrillard, 460 L. Kera¨ nen 1983, 1994=2004) comprise key mechanisms that make concrete the otherwise invis- ible threat of biological weapons across a wide swath of political, technical, and cul- tural texts. Since the major bioterrorism event of the last century killed but five people and since few among us will ever see a manufactured biological weapon, the potential for wide-scale epidemic must be rendered in terms accessible to decision-makers through a commonly imagined vision of the future that I call viral apocalypse (Kera¨ nen, 2008, 2011b). Rhetorically, viral apocalypse makes the invisible visible and the unlikely likely. It traffics in widespread contagion anxieties, putting a postmodern spin on longstanding human concerns about epidemic.

As a recurrent form, viral apocalypse comprises two features. First, it appeals to deep-seated cultural memories about ‘‘the plague’’ (Alcabes, 2009) by employing a grotesque rhetoric of viral abjection (see Van Loon, 2002, p. 147, on the virulent abject). Second, it emphasizes widespread casualties, international market collapse, and the near-demise of the civilized world. 3As a postmodern apocalyptic rhetoric (see Brummett, 1991, and O’Leary, 1994, for canonical rhetorical treatments of apocalyptic rhetoric), one that is at once secular (Schoch-Spana, 2004) and sublime (Gunn & Beard, 2000), this cultural form invigorates anxieties about globalization and its increasing contact with the Other into a vivid but distressing postpandemic future (Lopez-Lavigne et al. & Fresnadillo, 2007; MacDonald & Boyle, 2002). It thus signifies concerns that a combination of explosive population growth, ecological pressure, and biological-research-gone-awry will extinguish life as we know it. The viral apocalyptic form further heralds the failure of the Cold War logic of contain- ment (Wald, 2008), as germs quickly overwhelm response capabilities and infect the global citizenry. Within this vision, noninfected human survivors struggle against the now unhuman-like infected; depictions of widespread violence and global break- down conclude in desolated daytime streets and despairing citizens. Films such as the 2003 biothriller28 Days Later(MacDonald & Boyle, 2002) and its equally haunting sequel28 Weeks Later(Lopez-Lavigne et al. & Fresnadillo, 2007), animate this vision as the Rage virus transforms humans into rabid, flesh-hungry mutants. In both films, governments collapsed, civilization ceased, the streets of the world’s major cities stood eerily still; humans were reduced to bare life. The scene recurs inI Am Legend (Goldsman et al. & Lawrence, 2007), a remake of the Cold War–eraOmega Man, where a beleaguered Will Smith valiantly struggles to find a cure for a deadly virus that sends flesh-hungry hoards nightly to his doorstep. It further grounds the popular zombie horror television series,The Walking Dead. In most of these depictions—and scores more like them—economic and cultural life terminates, cuing audiences to the interlinking of pathogenic risk and international stability.

Visions of viral apocalypse also figure widely in popular accounts of biopreparedness simulations and the scripts for the simulations themselves. In her widely citedForeign Affairsessay, ‘‘The Nightmare of Bioterrorism,’’ Garrett (2001) drew from a Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Defense bioterrorism role-playing scenario, in which more than 15,000 people die of smallpox worldwide within two months, and epi- demics rage out of control in 14 nations...the global economy teeters on the brink of collapse as nations close their borders and sink into isolation...utter chaos Western Journal of Communication 461 reigns, and the National Guard enforces martial law over the city’s two million resi- dents. Similarly, government authority either breaks down or reverts to military-style control in cities all over the world as smallpox claims lives and pits terrified citizens against one another. (p. 81) Similarly, in 2004, in what was then the largest-ever international ministerial smallpox simulation exercise (Smith et al., 2005), theAtlantic Stormtabletop exercise employed epidemiological modeling to project 666,000 infections, global economic demise, and strife between countries that had and did not have smallpox vaccines (Drogin, 2005). According to an article in theInternational Herald Tribune, the exer- cise ‘‘destructive and disruptive as it was—could have been much worse’’ (Hamilton & O’Toole, 2005). That the outcomes of their fictional scenariocouldhave been much worse is somewhat beside the point, for most situations could usually be worse; such rhetoric reflects the penchant for catastrophizing that characterizes so many of these exercises. However, this amplified rhetoric resonates with that of many other biopreparedness exercises, such as TOPOFFs 2, 3, and 4, the exercises initially man- dated by the Clinton Administration (see Erickson & Barratt, 2004). Each TOPOFF exercise entailed at least 2 years of planning and more than 10,000 volunteers repre- senting hundreds of international, national, state, tribal, and local agencies at a cost of up to $15 million apiece, and each predicting, according to unclassified estimates, similar portraits of widespread death and unrest (Erickson & Barratt, 2004; Kera¨ nen, 2008, 2011b; Schoch-Spana, 2004). Thus, highly unlikely, ‘‘low-probability’’ simulated scenarios are granted epistemic privilege via vivid viral apocalyptic imaginations.

Both pre- and post-anthrax mailings, portrayals of the large-scale bioterrorism simulation exercises conducted in the United States and elsewhere echo the familiar form of viral apocalypse: mounting death tolls, global economic meltdown, and international conflict. Reports ofDark Winterpresented a ‘‘doomsday scenario’’ that ‘‘was, in fact, a game’’ although ‘‘no one involved was having any fun’’ (Simons, 2002). One explanation ofDark Winterin aNational Geographicpiece about weapons of mass destruction noted that a week after the simulated smallpox outbreak began, ‘‘there were 16,000 cases in half the states in the country, and a thousand people had died—200 from reactions to vaccine. Cities were paralyzed as millions tried to flee the epidemic. Vaccine supplies were now exhausted, and violence was rampant in the streets’’ (Simons, 2002). Technical sphere accounts of the tabletop exerciseAtlantic Stormlikewise reported, ‘‘There are conflicting reports regarding the number of sick persons and dead persons. Some reports show an estimated 3700 cases of pneumonic plague with 950 deaths. Others are reporting>4,000 cases and more than 2000 deaths’’ (Inglesby, Grossman, & O’Toole, 2001, p. 438; see also Inglesby, 2001).

The threat of serious civil unrest and widespread casualty, endlessly replayed in nearly every viral thriller film fromOutbreakonwards and routinely rehashed in televised dramas like24and government preparedness exercises, confronts citizens and decision-makers with the bloodied spectacle of germs unleashed. That the images from these cinematic representations so closely resemble those of the scripted simula- tions fuels questions about the relationship between film and scripts for private and 462 L. Kera¨ nen political life. Indeed, in films ranging from28 Days LatertoI am Legend, a small band of survivors tries to repel the infected and start anew, characterizing the rebirth that is the hallmark of apocalyptic discourse. Following great civil chaos and economic col- lapse, social systems cease, hope nearly—but not completely—dies. Viral apocalyptic forms thus render the potential hazards of biological weapons and emerging infectious disease in sublime terms that transfix decision-makers and everyday citizens alike.

Beyond their resemblance to Hollywood thrillers, biopreparedness simulations deeply influence the realm of policy and decision-making. Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and scores of other government officials received briefings on the vulnerabilities exposed byDark Winter. Scott R. Lillibridge, Special Assistant to the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) for National Security and Emergency Manage- ment, deployedDark Winterlessons as the basis for his testimony before Congress in 2001 (Lillibridge, 2001), while Richard Falkenrath used TOPOFF scenarios as evidence in his testimony before Congress about the urgent threat of bioterrorism (Falkenrath, 2006). Upon viewing a portrayal ofDark Winter, Representative Christopher Shays noted that ‘‘I felt like I’ve been in the middle of a movie, and maybe that’s why I was anxious’’ (Shays as cited in Lakoff, 2008, p. 51). Spectacles of biodisaster resembling Hollywood thrillers thus convert imagined apocalyptic futures into present action in a move anticipated by Baudrillard (1983). Here, simu- lations powerfully inform our nation’s biodefense policy. As Baudrillard explained, ‘‘Simulation threatens the difference between the ‘true’ and the ‘false,’ the ‘real,’ and the ‘imaginary’’’ (1994=2004, p. 3). In the absence of actual large-scale biological weapons attacks, the imaginary compels future action, a rhetorical sleight of hand that, as we shall soon discover, entails profound technological consequences.

Charting the ‘‘Biodefense Bonanza’’: Technological Solutions to Perceived Biological Insecurity Persuaded that the United States is vulnerable to biological threats through a cata- strophic rhetoric built on a unifying vision of viral apocalypse, policy makers have repeatedly stressed technological—as opposed to political and cultural—solutions to the challenges posed by biological weapons and emerging infectious disease (see Vogel, 2008). For example, many commentators emphasize the need to apply analytic modeling to the problems posed by bioterrorism. As the NIH researcher F. Ellis McKenzie testified in a 2004 issue ofEmerging Infectious Disease, ‘‘The events of September 11, 2001, emphasized that the United States should use every tool avail- able to help prepare for, and respond to, bioterrorism,’’ including statistical modeling and real-time modeling during outbreaks (p. 2044). McKenzie’s HHS working group recommended the rigorous application of mathematical analysis to predicted yet unpredictable biodefense scenarios, thus revealing a tightening interface between epi- demiology, biology, and national security. Similarly, in his 2007 testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight Investigations, Dr. Hugh Auchincloss, Principal Deputy Director of the National Institutes for Allergens and Infectious Disease (NIAID), spoke of the ‘‘clear Western Journal of Communication 463 consensus’’ that U.S. biodefense research agendas ‘‘would require additional research infrastructure, especially laboratories built to modern Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) and Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) standards’’ (2007, p. 3). Vogel (2008) observes that DHS’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (see also Warrick, 2006) ‘‘will use simulations, computational modeling, laboratory experimentation, and forward-looking technical analyses to anticipate future bioterrorist threats’’ (p. 561).

Significant here is the role of anticipation in planning initiatives. In mathematically modeling the outcomes ofanticipatedbioterrorism, political solutions to the prob- lems posed by potential bioterrorism are slighted. Such a move raises the question:

In imagining future biological events, do nations in fact make them more likely?

The technological fix for envisioned catastrophic biological events entails at least four ethical concerns and possible security dilemmas. First, in the effort to apply technological solutions to the challenges of biological threats, policy makers have dra- matically altered the nation’s biodefense infrastructure through massive infusions of funding. The label ‘‘bioterror bonanza’’ captures this profound explosion in cultural production (Enserink, 2002, p. 1954). Indeed, the federal government designated more than $14.5 billion to civilian biodefense between 2001 and 2004, with 2005 expenditures totaling $7.6 billion, with increases for all agencies involved with civilian biodefense, and a stabilized but significant set of expenditures since that time (Schuler, 2004; see also Franco, 2008; Franco & Deitch, 2007). According to the Century Foundation (2004, p. 2), ‘‘The nearly $1 billion slated for state and local gov- ernments in 2002 was fourteen times greater than the previous year’s biodefense spending’’ and ‘‘represented the single largest investment in public health infrastruc- ture since World War II.’’ The allocation of more than $6 billion for Project BioShield—the initiative responsible for air sniffing devices in major metropolitan areas, stockpiles of vaccines, and critical infrastructure changes—more than doubled the amount spent on the Human Genome Project. NIAID experienced a whopping 1,500%increase in biodefense-related funding in the initial years following 2001 with 97%of funding awards going to recipients who had never previously worked on bio- logical weapons agents (Schuler, 2004). In sum, since 9=11, the government has spent more than $50 billion on civilian biodefense, a number that does not include what we can imagine are substantial monies allocated for military biodefense and related applications. This figure represents $2 billion for each recognized victim of bioterror- ism (Franco, 2008; Reynolds, 2005). Moreover, President Obama appears just as vig- orous a supporter of biodefense as his predecessor; he has been praised by biodefense industry insiders for his enthusiasm and funding for their initiatives (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Biosecurity, 2009). And thus, public health and national security become increasingly interlaced.

Second, beyond altering funding priorities, the push for global biodefense may be hampering research in other areas. By 2005, biodefense funding at NIAID exceeded HIV=AIDS outlays, leading observers to condemn a bioterrorism ‘‘brain drain’’ wherein health researchers abandoned areas of inquiry with high global mortality rates (say, tuberculosis, malaria, and dengue fever) to study rarely occurring biologi- cal weapons agents. Indeed, a commonly expressed concern is that the funding for 464 L. Kera¨ nen biodefense is draining resources from other public health areas (Reppert, 2005). For instance, Barrett (2006) reports that ‘‘in a survey of 539 local public health agencies, 53 percent reported that bioterrorism preparedness diverted significant resources away from such public health activities as prenatal care, STD prevention, and school immunization campaigns’’ (National Association of County and City Health Offi- cials, 2003, as cited in Barrett, 2006, p. 185). Leitenberg (2005) noted that ‘‘currently one-third of both the National Institutes of Health (NIH) infectious dis- ease budget and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) budget and more than half of U.S. Government and corporate vaccine development is relegated to biodefense, that is, it focuses on the ‘select agents,’ those pathogens that are con- sidered most likely to be used as biological weapon agents’’ (p. 66). While officials have been working to redress this imbalance, the question of what expenditures are justified for ‘‘low-probability=high-consequence’’ biological events remains. More- over, peddlers of home biological weapons testing devices, safe rooms, sniffer sys- tems, and germ masks testify to a rich and burgeoning culture industry, which caters to contamination anxiety. While their global neighbors die in droves from dirty water and malnutrition, citizens of the wealthy West can prepare for the unthinkable through niche consumerism designed to protect them from anticipated future contagion.

A third concern, known as the Persephone effect, is that modifications to existing pathogens may inadvertently create organisms that could be used malevolently (Atlas, 2005, p. 239; Kwik et al., 2003). It appears, for example, that an American scientist, ostensibly hired to protect the nation from biological threats, sent an engineered form of anthrax through the U.S. mail in the most significant act of bioterrorism since the term was coined (Warrick, 2008). In a statement that reveals the potential magnification of biorisks, Penrose Albright, formerly of DHS, has conceded: ‘‘De facto, we are going to make biowarfare pathogens at NBACC [National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center] in order to study them’’ (Albright as cited in Warrick, 2008, p. A1). And thus we come full circle to David Huxsoll’s daunting reality: the routine modification of biological weapons agents in the name of fighting biological weapons in an ever-expanding array of facilities.

Fourth, even if modified biological agents do not fall into malevolent hands, some industry observers raise concerns about routine accidents at a growing list of labora- tories. The now-disbanded bioweapons watch group ‘‘Sunshine Project’’ found doz- ens of accidents in biosafety laboratories following 9=11, including numerous violations of biosafety regulations and a number of classified or otherwise clandestine activities that suggest the illegal development of new classes of weapons in the name of self-defense. Virologist Jack Woodall explains that ‘‘recent laboratory accidents have shown that however secure the laboratory facilities, laboratory workers have become infected with SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] virus and tularemia bacteria, and in fact the last recorded outbreak of smallpox began with a laboratory infection in England’’ (Woodall as cited in Klotz & Sylvester, 2009, p. 124). The bio- defense industry now employs more than 14,000 researchers at 327 institutions, rais- ing the potential for leaks or accidental exposure with at least 32 additional Western Journal of Communication 465 high-security laboratories planned (Willyard, 2007, p. 1004). Some of the known accidents include a foot-and-mouth outbreak from germs leaked from a U.K. labora- tory. Moreover, two researchers at the National Institute of Virology in Beijing con- tracted SARS, infecting seven others, and a Russian scientist died after she stuck herself with a needle contaminated with Ebola (Willyard, 2007, p. 1004). The world’s biodefense laboratories therefore signify sites where ‘‘normal accidents’’ spur infec- tion.

Finally, U.S. intensification appears to be prompting what some have called a ‘‘global biodefense boom’’ (Warrick, 2008, p. A1). In 2006, theWashington Post reported that India, China, and Cuba also began construction of high-security laboratories. The secrecy surrounding global biodefense activities seems to be trigger- ing another biological arms race like the one the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in during the Cold War (Klotz & Sylvester, 2009; Warrick, 2006). In 2008, the new National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC, pronounced ‘‘en-back’’) opened at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the primal scene of our post–World War II=Cold War biological weapons program. While DHS officials laud the facility for improving our nation’s security, local residents express concerns. ‘‘It’s not only a huge threat to local public health and safety, it is in the forefront of the instigation of a brand-new arms race in the realm of bioweapons,’’ testified one lawyer and area resident to theWashington Post, ‘‘Here we are, expanding by about 20 times the size of the program that we’re now being told generated the only bioattack in our history’’ (Bruce Kissin as cited in Hernandez, 2008). And so it goes: The fear of biological weapons licenses work with biological weapons agents, which magnifies biological risk and raises a series of ethical dilemmas and security concerns.

Conclusion: A Brave New World of Biorisks The dominant critical read of the U.S.’s post-9=11 biodefense bonanza is that it represents a dangerous extension of the War on Terror into a technoscientific front that strips funding from crucial areas such as malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV=AIDS (Goldstein, 2003; Klotz & Sylvester, 2009). Supporters counter that because it extends public health response capacity, biodefense could potentially counter a host of nat- urally occurring outbreaks and lead to new medical advances (Palmquist, 2008).

Whether or not either or both of these claims bears out upon empirical scrutiny, this paper locates the biodefense buildup in a widespread vision of bio(in)security collec- tively produced through representations of catastrophic viral apocalypse that, in turn, licenses a proliferation of biological weapons agents in the name of biodefense.

Indeed, a collection of experts from security circles, the pharmaceutical industry, the scientific community, citizen advocacy groups, international policy circles, and even Hollywood have—across a variety of political, technical, and cultural fronts— pushed the guiding notion of biological vulnerability that may in fact be promulgat- ing bio(in)security in order to justify and perpetuate its existence. In short, while these elite decision-makers do not control the endless loop of Hollywood imagery and simulated confabulations that lodge the germ threat so firmly in the American 466 L. Kera¨ nen psyche, they do confront such visions of viral apocalypse through a series of techno- logical fixes that make germ work routine, and which sustain biodefense writ large.

The rhetoric of biological threats as catastrophic risk that emerged out of the mid– late 1990s and intensified after the post-9=11 anthrax mailings thus signifies a recon- figuration of anxieties about emerging infectious disease to the realm of national security, encouraging a robust ‘‘biodefense.’’ As necessary as protections from epi- demic may be, this development nevertheless raises questions about the interlacing of national security and public health. It also raises questions about which health risks merit large-scale economic and cultural outlays. For instance, while acknowl- edged acts of bioterrorism killed fewer than 10 people in the last 100 years, cell phone–related distractions are responsible for 2,600 annual deaths and 333,000 acci- dents with moderate to severe injuries (Richtel, 2009). Routine medical errors kill tens of thousands of citizens each year, food-borne pathogens cause more than 76 million illnesses each year in the United States with 5,000 deaths (Institute of Medicine, 2009; Mead et al., 1999), while cancer and heart disease kill more than a million (Goldstein, 2003). Yet, concerns about bioterrorism and possible pan- demic—more than the more mundane and regularly occurring killers—prompt large-scale funding and action; this imbalance is fueled, in part, through viral apoca- lyptic imaginations.

This essay represents but a beginning inspection of how naturally occurring germs and newly created biological agents are rising in prominence and symbolic power.

Future investigations of the rhetorical constitution, deployment, and operation of perceived biological threats are needed. For instance, much work remains to account for the evolution of viral apocalypse as a rhetorical form that cuts across political, technical, and cultural domains. The visual imaginary of viral apocalypse in parti- cular deserves scholarly scrutiny, as does the technical and public framing of biologi- cal risks across multiple time periods and contexts. Additionally, scholars should explore the meanings and consequences of the rhetoric of ‘‘public health security.’’ Indeed, the implications of biodefensive activities for research ethics, genetic manipu- lation, health and safety, and global transparency and international relations remain to be seen (and operate often under the radar), but deserve intense discussion and scrutiny from scholars and broader global community. These are but a few of the projects that scholars in communication and rhetoric can undertake to help explain how—and with what effect—biorisks are being generated, understood, and activated in public and private life.

Citing Mitchell Dean, Scott (2006) maintains that scholars should analyze how changing conceptions of risk ‘‘become latched onto different political programmes and social imaginaries that invest them with a specific ethos’’ (Dean as cited in Scott, 2006, p. 120). Scott concludes his essay concerning 9=11, BigPharma, and bioterror- ism with the ‘‘hope that others will join me in exploring rhetoric’s interdependent and relative roles in the construction, functions, and effects of risk across global socio-political contexts’’ (p. 138). By supplying a preliminary rhetorical history and example of biocriticism (Kera¨ nen, 2011a), this essay has attempted precisely that task. Harkening back to Hay and Andrejevic’s (2006) notion of ‘‘homeland Western Journal of Communication 467 insecurities,’’ it contributes a biological component to critical homeland security research and ends with an invitation for others to contribute to this emerging vein of scholarship. If, indeed, biological threats are multiplying both symbolically and materially, then rhetoricians and critical communication scholars can at the very least play a more significant part in explaining how biodefense might be reproducing the very bio(in)security that gives it meaning and power, hence generating a brave new world wherein biological weapons agents are normalized and awaiting further action.

Notes [1] I need to acknowledge that the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program of 1992 included biological weapons among its nuclear and chemical weapons threat reduction plans, highlighting the security concerns that arose following the demise of the Soviet Union.

[2] The termsbiosecurityandbiodefenseare sometimes used synonymously, although there are debates about what the terms do and should designate. Although some scholars argue that biosecurity is a broader term, I am using them interchangeably in this essay.

[3] Although some biological weapons agents are bacterial, the termviralinviral apocalypsesig- nifies the communicability of disease agents and indexes the reinvigorated fascination with viruses that emerged out of the 1990s.

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