For instance, in December 2009, the U.S. government published its "National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats," representing the basic framework for the U.S. response to emerging bioterrorism threats. In the State of the Union address in 2010, President Barack Obama mentioned the National Strategy as an approach that "will give us the capacity to respond faster and more effectively to bioterrorism or an infectious disease." The implementation and oversight of this initiative is the responsibility of the U.S. Department of State's Biosecurity Engagement Program (BEP). This agency is tasked with promoting the National Strategy through efforts targeted at improving biorisk management and infectious disease surveillance practices around the world. To this end, the BEP has strengthened its commitment to the African continent, including countries in North Africa, the Horn of Africa, as well as the South Africa. In addition, the BEP has launched programs in those regions that are characterized by the highest terrorism and infectious disease outbreak threats, with West Africa and the Congo Basin being preeminent among these regions (Jenkins, 2011).
At the national level, the U.S. strategy for biorisk management is focused on a two-fold approach that uses indirect, preventative measures based on the goals of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which are (a) collaboration with State Parties to improve the security of laboratories that work with dangerous pathogens and (b) to improve global disease surveillance (e.g., the ability to detect and rapidly contain outbreaks of infectious disease, whether they are natural, accidental, or deliberate in origin) (Tucker, 2010). According to Tucker (2010), the 23-page National Strategy for Countering Biological Threats document was distributed all of the members of the annual meeting of states-parties to the BWC in Geneva in December 2009. Whereas the Bush administration's biosecurity policies focused on mitigating the consequences of a biological attack through a major investment in threat assessment research, early-detection systems such as BioWatch, the development of medical countermeasures under Project BioShield in 2004, and other domestic preparedness measures, the Obama strategy places a far greater emphasis on prevention (Pupura, 2007). Noting the two-phase approach used for the Bioshield initiative, Mayer (2007) adds that, "The [Bioshield I and II] proposals offered a sweeping array of reforms to coordinate national biodefense efforts and stimulate private development of medical countermeasures for deadly biowarfare agents" (p. 1753).
Conclusion
Without aggressive action today, the same innovations in biotechnology that have taken place in recent years may become humankind's doom in the future. Today, there is a compelling need to develop...
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