***JDI Plague Reps Kritik***

1NC – Plague Reps – Shell

Disease representations denote healthy populations and deviant ones. This creates a mechanism of security that normalizes entire populations in the name of securityMelanie Armstrong (B.A., Communications, Brigham Young University, 2001 M.A., Telecommunications, Ohio University, 2003 Ph.D., American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2011) December 2011 [“BIO+TERROR: SCIENCE, SECURITY, SIMULATION” DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy American Studies @The University of New Mexico, loghry]

Disease is a bearer of deviance, rendering some members of a population less healthy than others, but if the risk of disease can be calculated, then mechanisms of security can be put in place to regulate disease within a population . In his 1977-78 lectures, Security, Territory, Population, Michel Foucault theorized a population as a collection of living beings defined by their biological and pathological characteristics and subject to common mechanisms of governing. People’s relationship to disease changes with the ability to conceive of a population, for a level of disease might be tolerated within the population which cannot be accepted individually. Thus, mechanisms of security can be used to work against deviant cases of disease in order to maintain a “normal” condition of the population. The population, however, encompasses both those who are ill and those who are not, subjecting healthy bodies to the techniques of governing the sick for the promise of security for the whole. Because liberal subjects have the right and responsibility to govern their social interactions in order to ensure the security of the population, the mechanisms of security extend deeply into the many social conditions which produce disease risk. The biopreparedness plans undertaken by the city of Albuquerque exemplify how identifying and delineating the population enables the calculation of risk and determines the acts of governance which will care for the population when disease is introduced. Here, the common biological characteristic that defines the population is a shared vulnerability to disease, and the state is attempting to predetermine the extent of its care by identifying who shares that vulnerability. This case exemplifies how far the mechanisms of disease control might extend into the population, for the population is healthy in the present moment, but every individual is inscribed with the potential to become diseased. Furthermore, because disease is borne by living entities, it is also characterized by moments of sudden expansion and growth, which will continue unless checked by environmental or human-imposed controls, a moment Foucault labels “the crisis.”10 Each body within the population—even the presently healthy ones— contains within it the potential to create the crisis, requiring that the calculation of risk account for healthy bodies because they are vulnerable to disease and that acts to mitigate risk focus upon all members of the population who bear vulnerability. The state of emergency is thereby sustained when disease is not present, for a disease event might erupt at any moment and the healthy population bears within it the potential to become ill. Biosecurity can thereby be achieved by preparing for that moment of crisis, planning a response which will maintain the health of the population by containing the disease and preventing those moments of sudden expansion and growth.

The alternative is to vote negative to reject and criticize the disease representations of the affirmative. It is only through constant criticism and interrogation of the assertion of disease outbreaks that we can solve the impacts of the 1AC in addition to endless stigmatization, violence, and racismEichelberger 07

(Laura, University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, Social Science and Medicine, “SARS and New York's Chinatown: The politics of risk and blame during an epidemic of fear,” 2007, Science Direct) //jdi-mm

Epidemic risk discourses and social responses are produced by many historical, political and economic

factors within global, national and local contexts, and may stigmatize marginalized populations in places without infection. These communities may resist discourses that other them, yet they may also perpetuate and even legitimize these same discourses by redirecting them towards the marginalized members of their own community. (Indeed, this problematizes the notion of community.) This research has shown that these two processes can occur simultaneously. Though we may never fully eliminate othering during an epidemic, numerous studies have identified its origins, paths of dissemination, local and global manifestations, and effects on public health such that we can begin to chart ways to reduce its incidence and

consequences. First, scholars concerned with health and stigma need to pay attention to the ways in which people are othered within a community, not just externally. This necessarily requires paying attention to the ways in which risk discourses legitimize power inequalities within a community, which may in turn contribute to lower health status and higher risk of disease among the stigmatized. We need to vigorously criticize othering in the media and in public health statements, and do so to an audience beyond the social sciences . News media is a crucial tool for rapid health communication in the midst of an epidemic, but it also

contributes to and disseminates misleading discourses of risk and blame. Journalists need to understand the human consequences of constructing an epidemic in terms of protagonists and antagonists. Finally, studies of stigmatization need to be integrated with those of cultural constructions of disease to understand more fully the ways in which people perceive a disease, their risk, and the appropriate measures for prevention. Othering is not simply a result of the social construction of an epidemic; it is part of the process and shapes further responses to a disease . As is evident by the reappearance of historical discourses blaming Chinese people for disease, othering perpetuates, legitimizes, and repeats particular forms of discrimination during and after an epidemic. As we move further into an era of increasingly identified emerging infectious diseases, where the idea of a pandemic flu periodically looms large in the public imagination, locating and addressing othering beyond academic circles is paramount. Othering hampers the containment of contagion during an infectious epidemic by compelling people to reject public health instructions (Briggs, 2004; Briggs & Mantini-Briggs, 2003; Nations & Monte,

1996). Furthermore, it hinders the curtailment of emerging and re-emerging infections by normalizing illnesses affecting marginalized populations. Risk discourses that attribute disease to intractable “tradition” label the sick as willfully dangerous and inferior (Briggs & Mantini-Briggs, 2003; Farmer, 1992). The result is that these populations are blamed for their own infection, and their higher rates of illness confirm their inferiority and marginalization. Thus, sufficient investment in fighting diseases is only justified when they threaten wealthy populations, for whom infection is considered aberrant. As is evident from the 2003 SARS epidemic, international concerns about emerging infections are uni-directional: they are only of importance when they “emerge” from a poor population to threaten a

wealthy one (Farmer, 2003). Diseases such as tuberculosis have therefore been allowed to persist among the world's marginalized, contributing to these pathogens’ mutation and drug resistance (Farmer, 1999). The SARS epidemic

illuminates the ways global discourses of risk and blame naturalize the poverty deepened by the processes of globalization and simultaneously contribute to the (re)emergence of diseases . Indeed, many of the discourses in Chinatown reflect concerns related to the processes of globalization that restructure economies and encourage migration. Further, globalization has created global cities, such as New York City, and transnational family networks that are connected by rapid international air travel (Ali & Keil, 2006). SARS dramatically demonstrates the possibilities for rapid worldwide spread of infections and the need

for a coordinated global public health body. Cultural change as a solution to infection diverts attention from the poverty, poor sanitation, and deterioration of public health systems that facilitate the emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases, both in the United States and abroad (Briggs & Mantini-Briggs, 2003; Farmer, 1992). Without access to appropriate drugs and vaccines, emerging infections, such as a potential influenza pandemic, will likely be very severe (Weiss

& McMichael, 2004). As cultural scholars, we must draw attention to the social and biological causes of disease and actively work to find ways to correct the historically entrenched pattern of using cultural reasoning to blame infection on the “Other .”

*Links*

2NC – Link – BioterrorBioterrorism concerns rely on a vision of catastrophic risk that paradoxically make us more susceptible to “naturally-occurring” pandemics due to preparations of bioagents as weaponsLisa Keränen (Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado, Denver) 2011 [“Concocting Viral Apocalypse: Catastrophic Risk and the Production of Bio(in)security” Western Journal of Communication Vol. 75, No. 5, October–December 2011, pp. 451–472, loghry]

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 fundamental 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 rhetorically 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 pandemic 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 nature, has become a potential weapon (because terrorists might acquire it from existing laboratory stocks), requiring urgent preparation and planning. In order to understand 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 implications of widespread infectious disease. The resultant rhetoric of risk (Ayotte, Bernard, & O’Hair, 2009; Beck, 1992; Sauer, 2003) framed bioterrorism as a serious, catastrophic threat to both national security and international order.

2NC – Link – Capitalism disease representations are purely capital drivenNancy Tomes (History Prof. @ Stony Brook University) 2002[“Disease and Popular Culture in Early-Twentieth-Century America” American Literary History 14.4 muse, log]

Even brief reflection on the question of what makes one disease threat more culturally salient than another suggests how complicated an answer it requires. The obvious explanation, that attention follows numbers, is in fact quite problematic. Although sudden spikes in disease incidence do tend to attract both scientific and media attention, the overall relationship between rates of mortality and morbidity and popular preoccupations with specific diseases is actually much, much messier. As David Morris points out, the leading causes of death in the US are cardiovascular disease and cancer, not infectious diseases (221). Yet narratives about superbugs still remain popular subjects for media attention. Even more curiously, at a time of heightened concern about anthrax and AIDS, popular awareness of other, more common infectious diseases, such as syphilis or the various forms of hepatitis, remains muted. 2 We are left with questions such as: Why AIDS and Ebola and not syphilis and hepatitis C? How do we compare the significance of five deaths from an unknown terrorist's mailing of anthrax versus almost three million deaths from AIDS in the last year?

As these questions suggest, the dynamics governing popular attention to specific diseases are not easily reducible to patterns in the rise and fall of mortality and morbidity rates. Nor does a simple model of popularization, which sees public perception as a transparent reflection of scientific knowledge, provide a satisfactory model of understanding these complexities. Like all forms of popular culture in a modern consumer society, popular awareness of disease outbreaks reflects a complex interaction among many producers and consumers of meaning. To understand the ebb and flow of disease concerns, then, we need to better understand which groups have played leading roles in making and sustaining attention to disease problems and what common patterns of cultural angst they have reflected.

I want to focus on one aspect of this problem, namely, how portrayals of deadly disease function as cultural commodities—that is, ideas and experiences that circulate through the medium of modern consumer culture. Narratives of disease serve not only as personal accounts or ideological markers of cultural anxieties; they also constitute potentially profitable forms of news and entertainment. The newspaper scoop, the best-selling book, and the blockbuster film seek to translate cultural anxiety into economic [End Page 627] gain. I am especially interested in how certain new features of modern American consumer culture, specifically the close connections among journalism, advertising, and entertainment media, produced new conventions of representing dread disease. 3

2NC – Link – Containment RhetoricThe concept of epidemic and threat containment is precisely the language used to justify racial demarcation against the infected othersSmith 06

(Richard, Health Economics Group, School of Medicine, Health Policy & Practice, Social Science and Medicine, “Responding to global infectious disease outbreaks: Lessons from SARS on the role of risk perception, communication and management,” 2006, Science Direct) //jdi-mm

In this respect, the reporting of SARS tended to follow that of other infectious disease outbreaks, following two distinct phases (Ungar, 1998).

The first phase characterises the outbreak as a frightening threat. Microbes are on the rampage, are cleverer than us and know no boundaries, and that somehow this potential ‘new plague’ is the result of population growth, environmental degradation and globalisation. For instance, Wilson, Thomson, and Mansoor (2004), in a study of the media representation of SARS by the New Zealand Herald in the first three months of the outbreak, found that headlines and particular words that could be considered alarming (e.g., ‘deadly’) were frequently used, and comments were often overly pessimistic. Indeed, Razum, Becher, Kapaun, and Junghanss (2003) predicted that within two years every citizen of Hong Kong would be infected with SARS. However, phase two soon occurs, which stresses that this, still relatively abstract, threat is happening in a geographically

and/or culturally distant population, that containment of the threat will therefore occur through ‘othering’, and that the promise of medical progress will soon diminish the threat (Douglas, 1992). This is well illustrated in an in-depth study of media representation of SARS conducted in the UK. Washer (2004) found that the media represented SARS as a dangerous threat to the UK, whilst simultaneously suggesting that this threat had been ‘contained’—that SARS was unlikely to affect the British as it had the Chinese, as the Chinese are so ‘different’. In this sense, the media can contribute to stigmatisation and discrimination, which

in the case of SARS was evident against those with an Asian appearance (Chang, 2003; Person et al., 2004). This resonates with the presentation by the media of outbreaks of other infectious disease in previous years, such as Ebola

(Joffe & Haarhoff, 2002). Important, however, is Washer's view that the combination of infectious diseases, and re-emerging infections, in recent years has reduced the confidence of the British populace in the ability of Western medicine to successfully ‘conquer’ infectious disease.

If Washer is correct, this reduction in faith in modern medicine may heighten the perception of risk in future years, and thus emerge as an increasingly significant factor in the management of future infectious disease outbreaks. However, it is worth noting that at present the impact of this is a moot point, as the success of traditional public health measures in the case of SARS may, alternatively, contribute to a strengthening of the confidence in Western medicine.

2NC – Link – Disease Reps > New Truths Using representations of disease and pandemics results in a symbolic shift in how the truth of these diseases operate- carves out a space for racialization and demarcation of bodies considered inferior and infectedPower 95

(J. Gerard, Journal of Communication Inquiry, “Media Dependency, Bubonic Plague, and the Social Construction of the Chinese Other,” 1995, Sage Publications) //jdi-mm

This study has suggested a number of theoretical considerations. First, consistent with MSD, the bubonic plague episode reflects how structural dependency relations between the media system and other social systems can greatly affect differing truth constructions about the same events. In the case described here, the emphasis in these

structural relations is between the media and the political and medical systems. Based on their respective goals and the access to the information resources of the media system, opposing political and medical interests fought to have their competing truth constructions represented. The nature of this competition is similar to the way in which abortion groups have tried to influence how abortion is value-framed in the media (Ball-Rokeach, et al. 1990). In the case of the N-P group, it is very clear that an underlying motivation was to protect the economic interests of the city of San Francisco and the S tate of California by denying the existence of the plague and deriding those who claimed it existed. Second, not only did the structural dependency relations differ in their construction of the plague, but also managed to characterize it as a racial issue. Research on how issues are racialized has tended to attribute the outcomes to characteristics of the content rather than the structural forces responsible for producing the content. MSD offers this possibility by explaining how media fare is a function of

structural relations. In the case presented here, the hostile environment for Chinese people in California at the turn of the century was worsened by the association of the plague with the Chinese population. Rather than establishing the real causes of the disease, political and medical interests allowed the Chinese people to become easy scapegoats for the media. The implication of this media coverage was to reinforce the perception of Chinese identity as different and inferior on criteria of morality and competence. Third, this racialization of the cause of the disease was reflected in public knowledge and opinion. The dependency relations placed the media in the position of being the essential link between individuals and their social environs (Ball-Rokeach 1985). On the individual level, people were concerned for their

health and safety and did not know how to behave or react to the plague epidemic. Gandy (1982) explains that it is most likely that media content contributes to heightened medical anxiety, which results in the search for more health-related information and the services of health professionals, and contributes to a willingness to support expansion of government support of medical research and the health care delivery system.

Thus the media system-medical journals and newspapers-played a major role in shaping the public perception about the plague and its victims. It heightened the fear of plague and marked the Chinese community for their

&dquo;moral&dquo; contagion. These considerations raise a number of questions and suggest a number of criteria to be incorporated into studies of the structural relations of media systems and the construction of racial and ethnic identity. First, how do media portrayals relate to people’s perceptions of difference in terms of identity? In other words, what are the textual and visual elements that constitute the communication of difference and inferiority? Second, to what extent do media portrayals contribute to a hierarchical way of thinking, which some regard as natural (Paglia 1992), or as, what Sidanius (1991) terms, the propensity for social dominance? Third, are all groups affected in the same way when race and ethnicity is portrayed as different and inferior ? In hooks’ (1992) words, do dominated groups stereotype dominant groups in the same way as the reverse? The investigation of this case study was subject to a number of limiting factors. First, not all medical journals and newspapers were available for analysis. Only the Occidental Medical Times and the San Francisco Chronicle could be accessed directly. The other journals and newspapers were either no longer in publication or inaccessible. Second, a more representative sample of additional journals and newspapers printed during the 1900s would also have enriched the analyses and perhaps allowed for a comparison with the second outbreak of the plague. Future research directions might involve identifying incidents of plague or other epidemics which have occurred in different countries. A comparison might indicate how different system level relations in other societies are manifested in differential effects on the individual level.** Finally, the

framework adopted in this research, relating media coverage, disease, and the construction of marginal

group identity could be applied to other historical events with the a similar set of elements such as

Gillman’s (1988) study on the AIDS crisis in the United States. These research efforts would serve to crystallize the manner in which structural dependency relations determine how difference and inferiority are communicated in the culture.

2NC – Link – Homeland SecurityBiosecurity in the context of homeland security is self defeating, mono-causal explanations of disease or bioterror fail to account for the complex network of politics and rhetoric that shape politicsLisa Keränen (Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado, Denver) 2011 [“Concocting Viral Apocalypse: Catastrophic Risk and the Production of Bio(in)security” Western Journal of Communication Vol. 75, No. 5, October–December 2011, pp. 451–472, loghry]

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 of Cultural Studies, where James Hay and Mark Andrejevic addressed ‘‘Homeland Insecurities,’’ which ‘‘foreground safety and security as 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 explanations 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 Biesecker’s 2007 Communication 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 perceptions 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 international 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 noting 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 contributes 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 underwrite the expansion of biodefense as a supposed safeguard against germs and terrorists run amok, while engendering a significant set of ethical concerns and possible security dilemmas.

2NC – Link - IllnessThe demarcation of disease and health discourse makes possible the foundation of exclusion from the nation stateWiebe, 2009

(Sarah, “Producing Bodies and Borders: An Review of Immigrant Medical Examinations in Canada. Surveillance & Society 6(2): 128-141. http://www.surveillance-and-society.org | ISSN: 1477-7487, Online, MB)

Immigration and citizenship technologies in Canada separate qualified and worthy citizens from unqualified, unworthy lives. Not only does the state divide its population into citizens and foreign nationals, but the state also divides people into dichotomous categories of the healthy and the sick . As Susan Sontag states in Illness as Metaphor: ‘illness is the night-side of life, a more

onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick’ (Sontag 1997: 47-48). Sontag discusses how the metaphor of illness operates to formulate a certain (mis)perception about people. She evaluates two diseases in particular, tuberculosis (TB) and cancer and the stigmas that are associated with these illnesses. Her research illuminates the myth about these diseases and how this myth places the onus of responsibility for one’s health on the individual rather than society or the state (Sontag 1997). Illness is depicted as a negation of self-responsibility and a negative consequence resulting from reckless self-conduct . These expectations for citizens to be responsible for their health appear in contemporary public health policy, discourse and practice. Consequently , these health- related expectations, both repressive and productive, motivate justifications for exclusion or inclusion into the Canadian state . Public health policies as well as citizenship and immigration law, policy and practice have historically and

continue today to operate as spatial forms of exclusion , integral to forming the Canadian nation. Since the end of the 19th Century in Canada,

(Mawani 2003: 4). In a quest to evaluate the meaning a healthy citizenry, I discuss medical diagnostics at the border. While contemporary health screening of migrants reflects historical exclusionary practices, current policy and discursive directions focus on how to use these exclusionary technologies for inclusive and productive population-health based strategies . The final section of this article evaluates this re- conceptualization of inclusive and productive population management at the border.

2NC – Link – InstitutionsEven if you don’t try to mis-represent carriers of infections- it’s empirically proven that institutions symbolically construct infected population as outgroups to be avoided- magnifies marginalization and stigmaGreen et. al 11

(Eva, Pascal Wagner-Egger, Adrian Bangerter, Ingrid Gilles, David Rigaud, Franciska Krings, Christian Staerklé and Alain, Public Understanding of Science, “Lay perceptions of collectives at the outbreak of the H1N1 epidemic: heroes, villains and victims,” 2011, Sage Publications) //jdi-mm

The social representations approach (Wagner and Hayes, 2005) emphasizes the symbolic aspects of coping with disease threat through interpersonal and mass media communication. Extensive research by Joffe and

colleagues has shown how disease outbreaks around the world are viewed as being caused by collective actors in the form of outgroups. This has been shown for Ebola as apprehended by the British press and laypersons

(Joffe and Haarhoff, 2002), AIDS as viewed by Zambian adolescents (Joffe and Bettega, 2003), SARS in the British press (Washer, 2004) or

avian influenza as viewed by Hong Kong Chinese (Joffe and Lee, 2004). Outgroups were construed as being at fault because of dirty practices or immoral behaviour (Joffe and Staerklé, 2007) or by intentionally (i.e. malevolently)

plotting to disseminate disease (Joffe, 1999). Recent work from this approach emphasizes the role of institutions as central elements in representations of disease threat . For example, in British media coverage of

MRSA (the “hospital superbug”) the National Health Service plays a prominent role symbolizing a decaying institution and nostalgia for an earlier age of order and hygiene (Washer and Joffe, 2006). This recent work suggests

that groups, institutions and other collectives feature prominently in laypersons’ representations of disease. We therefore build on the social representations approach to disease to systematically focus on the role of collectives as actors.

2NC – Link – SecuritySecuritizing biological threats in debate make technological advances in biotechnology and disease warfare more likely. Their rhetoric ties together security, the military industrial complex, and disease anxieties into a self fulfilling prophesy that turns their argument, regardless of their intentLisa Keränen (Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado, Denver) 2011 [“Concocting Viral Apocalypse: Catastrophic Risk and the Production of Bio(in)security” Western Journal of Communication Vol. 75, No. 5, October–December 2011, pp. 451–472, loghry]

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 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, technical, 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 labyrinthine 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 asking what the biodefense buildup represents, I also want to probe how it 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 like brucellosis, 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 constellation 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 initiatives to include a collection of self-styled biosecurity experts, military planners, pharmaceutical firms, political actors, medical professionals, venture capitalists, and citizen advocacy and watchdog groups (Rothkopf, 2002). Beyond this arena, scores of viral thriller novels, films, and popular cultural artifacts support biodefense when they repackage the anxieties and uncertainties of biological threats for mass audiences, thereby solidifying perceptions of the biological threat (Mayer, 2007). Operating 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.

2NC – Link – Superbugs their “superbugs” representations cease examination of more lethal, though less romantic diseases like tb or malaria and are used as a vehicle to express anxieties about race.Nancy Tomes (History Prof. @ Stony Brook University) 2002[“Disease and Popular Culture in Early-Twentieth-Century America” American Literary History 14.4 muse, log]

Over the last 20 years, "killer germs" and "superbugs" have become familiar features of American popular culture. Against the backdrop of a global AIDS pandemic that has claimed almost 14 million lives, the news media and entertainment industries have used the specter of real and imagined plagues to promote a wide variety of cultural products, from nonfiction tomes to made-for-TV movies. Through their efforts, Americans have become familiar with a host of frightening new ailments, including AIDS, Ebola, flesh-eating streptococcus, and the West Nile virus. Since September 11, what once seemed implausible scenarios involving bioterrorists and international conspiracies have taken on chilling new believability. With memories fresh in mind of airplanes used as bombs and anthrax sent through the mails, Americans seem headed for another "epidemic of signification," to use Paula Treichler's phrase, in which books, television specials, and movies explore the theme of disease apocalypse (1). 1

The events of September 11 make the purpose of this special issue more complex and urgent. As Priscilla Wald writes in the introduction, this issue aims to provide "a richer and more nuanced understanding of the multifaceted relationships among culture and contagion." Responding to the various plague scenarios being circulated in media and policy circles today requires engagement with a larger crisis in what sociologist Ulrich Beck has termed our modern "risk society," that is, a culture increasingly aware of its potential for self-annihilation through nuclear war, environmental degradation, and pandemics of deadly disease. Since the end of the Cold War, widening disparities between the economic resources and ideological outlooks of the developed and developing worlds, coupled with the greater ease with which people and ideas move about the globe, have seemingly expanded the potential for [End Page 625] political and biological disruptions. Simultaneously, improved global telecommunications have ensured that these disruptions will be broadcast around the world, courtesy of video cameras, satellite networks, cable TV, and the Internet. New biological realities of disease converged with more intense scientific and media scrutiny of them have combined to heighten anxieties about what Jacqueline Foertsch terms "postmodern plagues" (4). As she writes, "Despite multiple medical and social advancements throughout the twentieth century, fears of plague have not been eradicated by science, politics, or religious fervor but have instead spawned a plague of fears that worsens the crises attending any period of true biological threat and fuels the fires of mistrust and misinformation in contexts where this threat is nonexistent" (4).

Given renewed anxieties about bioterrorism, it is all the more important that we reflect more deeply on how this "plague of fears" gets conceptualized and acted upon. Over the past decade, critical theorists have done exemplary work exposing the manifold ways that class, race, and gender differences have shaped popular representations of infectious diseases. A generation of AIDS-inspired scholarship has raised our consciousness about the ways that popular narratives of disease and risk, whether in fictional or nonfictional form, influence health care politics and policy. Critics have raised important questions about the way that media attention defines a disease's newsworthiness. Barry Glassner and Susan Moeller describe how media competition has helped make Americans overly fearful of rare diseases they are unlikely to encounter, such as Ebola and the flesh-eating streptococcus, while distracting them from more widespread public health problems. Similarly, Treichler and her colleagues, in an unpublished presentation delivered at the twelfth World AIDS Conference, have identified a "global AIDS template" evident in policy statements and media coverage, a narrative in which "dramatic themes of microbiological apocalypse or merciless chemical and biological genocide obscure the more lethal and prevalent threat to human populations of boring, unromantic diseases like TB [and] malaria" (16).

Scholars such as Treichler, Lisa Lynch, and Heather Schell have shown how representations of infectious diseases frequently become a vehicle for expressing cultural anxieties about economic interdependence and racial mixing. Yet we still know too little about how the multiple disease narratives circulate and intersect, and the cumulative impact they have on their hearers. Over the last century, an escalating number of disease facts, possibilities, and rumors have become part of the everyday texture of American life. Although historians and literary critics have produced many useful studies of individual diseases, they

have only rarely [End Page 626] explored the larger process of competition for attention that operated in making one disease seem a more compelling subject than another. We need to better understand the cultural mechanisms of selection, comparison, deflection, and denial that work to highlight specific disease patterns at the expense of others.

2NC – Link – Victim RhetoricUsing the rhetoric of victim-blaming exacerbates the difference between the infected and non-infected- opens up space for demarcation Green et. al 11

(Eva, Pascal Wagner-Egger, Adrian Bangerter, Ingrid Gilles, David Rigaud, Franciska Krings, Christian Staerklé and Alain, Public Understanding of Science, “Lay perceptions of collectives at the outbreak of the H1N1 epidemic: heroes, villains and victims,” 2011, Sage Publications) //jdi-mm

Villains are characters depicted as untrustworthy and animated by malevolent intentions. A prime candidate for the role of villain is often the disease itself, as when the British media personified SARS as a “killer,” or a

“single unified entity” (Wallis and Nerlich, 2005: 2634). Such allegories have a long cultural history. For example, in the Bible, the threat of disease is symbolized by Pestilence, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In many situations, though, laypersons tend to construe the origin of the disease as being due to malevolent actions of groups of humans. The narrative genre that best frames the actions of the villain character is the conspiracy theory, of which there are basically two kinds (Campion-Vincent, 2005; Wagner-Egger and Bangerter, 2007). The first kind (called evil others by CampionVincent, 2005) is historically very old. It depicts outgroups as villains, typically foreigners,

stigmatized groups or other minorities (Moscovici, 1987). The classical example of an evilother narrative is the belief that the Black Death was caused by Jews conspiring with the Devil to poison Christian wells (Kelly, 2005). Evil-other conspiracy theories are special cases of the more general narrative of blaming “others” (i.e., outgroups; Joffe, 1999) for causing

disease, typically through attributions of unhygienic or immoral practices. What distinguishes them from the garden-variety other-blame narrative is precisely the malevolent intentions of the villain (Klein and Van der Linden, 2010). The second kind of conspiracy theory (called evil elites by Campion-Vincent, 2005) is more recent (perhaps having emerged with the

Enlightenment; Campion-Vincent, 2005). It depicts powerful elites as villains. Examples abound in popular culture, for

example, the widespread belief that the US government has engineered AIDS to control the Black population (Goertzel, 1994). It is unclear what kind of symbolic function villains serve, although by defining a scapegoat (Berkowitz, 1962), they may provide a relatively simple explanation for an otherwise unfathomable phenomenon. Moreover, evil-other narratives may also fulfil social identity needs, with the derogation of an outgroup. Victims Victims are collectives (sometimes personified as individuals) depicted as

directly or indirectly affected by disease. Victims have ambivalent status. They are to be pitied for their plight but are also dangerous because they can potentially carry the disease (Wallis and Nerlich, 2005; Washer, 2010). Victims also often need to be protected or helped, because they are unable to cope with disease themselves. The other-blame narrative (Joffe, 1999) operates here again. Indeed, British media reports of the Ebola outbreak depicted Africans as passive victims of the virus who were unable to control it themselves. Western medical science, however, was able to contain it (Joffe and Haarhoff, 2002). As we will see in our study, developing nations are sometimes depicted in such a role. The ambivalent and potentially blameworthy nature of the victim character converges with social psychological research on victim blame and the belief that the world is a just place (Furnham, 2003) where individuals get what they deserve, suggesting that victims may also serve collective coping functions.

2NC – Link – Western Knowledge Disease representations are rooted in a western concept of the relationship between difference and the perceived “norm.” Uses the threat of disease to justify biopolitical control against anything deemed “political disorder”Eugene Tucker (Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Inst.

of Technology) 3-7-2005 [“NOMOS, NOSOS AND BIOS” http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/25/32]

In fact, the entire second half of Book VIII and all of Book IX of The Republic can be understood as a single argument: the greatest threat to the body politic comes from within. Surprisingly, Plato spends relatively little time discussing war or foreign invasion, other than to comment on the

characteristics of the auxiliary or guardian class. What is of primary concern are the elements that may threaten the body politic from within, the political disorder brought about by diseased forms of government. That is,

of central concern for Plato is the relation between the order of law (nomos) and the various elements that would threaten law with disorder or ‘disease’ (nosos). What is at stake in this tension-filled relation between

nomos and nosos? In one sense, it is nothing less than ‘life itself,’ a social bios that is at once more than mere animal,

organismic life, and yet never quite separated from its naturalistic base. Perhaps it is in the space between The Republic

and the Epidemics, that we can begin to identify a specific type of ‘life itself’ taking shape, a life (bios) that is always undone from within by a disease (nosos) that threatens order and law (nomos), be it in the shape of an actual epidemic, or the diseases caused by the imperfect societies of democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny. Nomos, nosos, and bios in U.S. biodefense initiatives The triangulation of nomos, nosos, and bios is still with us today, but, of course, in a markedly different historical context. The U.S. ‘war on terror’ is but one example. On one level, we are witnessing the development of a social, political, and military consciousness surrounding bioterrorism. Although bioterrorist acts had certainly been committed prior to 9-11, it has only been recently that bioterror has become a central issue in national and homeland security. The first letters containing weaponized strains of anthrax were dated September 11th, and, presumably, were to be seen as part of a larger attack on the U.S. infrastructure - air travel, postal system, news, government offices (Cole, 2003). The FBI’s investigation into the anthrax attacks has turned up little in the way of meaningful evidence, but the investigation has been made more urgent in light of reports by the Washington Post that the particular strain of anthrax used in the 2001 attacks (the ‘Ames’ strain) matches the strain held at the Fort Detrick military base in Maryland (Cohen et al., 2004; U.S. Government, 2002). While the anthrax letters resulted in far fewer casualties than the World Trade Center attacks, they nevertheless put the specter of bioterrorism on the covers of Time, U.S. News, and Newsweek, as well as in the popular television dramas 24 and Medical Investigation. These and subsequent attacks by unknown perpetrators (e.g. a series of ricin attacks in Washington, D.C. in the fall of 2003) follow a common pattern: (i) the use of a toxic substance, usually in a powdered or airborne form, which does not cause death but mild to severe illness, (ii) the use of the postal system as a largely untraceable network for delivering the weapon, and (iii) an accompanying message with ideological content. If this is a pattern, then the medium is indeed the message. The aims of such bioterrorist attacks seem to be geared

more towards disruption than destruction. A news feature and heightened public anxiety are as important as the actual contagion of individuals. Alongside this emerging consciousness of bioterrorism, the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen a drastic increase in the prevalence of ‘emerging infectious diseases’ (Garrett, 1994; Lashley, 2004; U.S. CDC, 2000). While AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria continue to impact many individuals and populations worldwide, there has also been the emergence of a range of diseases which are, arguably, of a different sort. Mad cow, West Nile, monkey pox, bird flu, and SARS have, at one time or another, made headlines. These diseases are highly unstable – in some they cause the flu, in others death – and they also display erratic patterns of contagion. But what is perhaps most noteworthy of such diseases is that they have been known to rapidly mutate, enabling them to cross species barriers (including the human-animal boundary), and they are often spread via modern means of transportation (airplanes, cargo ships). In the case of SARS in 2003, the condensed run of the disease (some six months) has become emblematic of the nature of these types of epidemics (Bell et al., 2003). Poor sanitation conditions in rural poultry markets may have

provided the conditions for the virus’s mutation, enabling it to jump from animals to humans. An extended incubation period in humans meant

that infected individuals had time to travel by car, rail, and plane to other parts of China, southeast Asia, and Canada. Urban hotels and airports may have provided a further site for opportunistic infection as well. In response to what was quickly becoming a global health issue, the World Health Organization (WHO) made use of computer networks to coordinate patient data, gather reports from selected hospitals, and issue air travel advisories to selected airports. That is, the WHO made use of information networks to counteract an epidemic network, information transmission to counteract biological contagion and technological transportation. The rapid spread of SARS from mainland China to Canada

illustrated the tight relationship between contagion, transportation, and transmission. Both bioterrorism and emerging infectious disease present us with unique instances in which the tension-filled zone between nomos and nosos is displayed in a new light. Specifically, the concurrence of bioterrorism and emerging infectious disease provides us with a biopolitical situation in which biology, information, and war all play a role. Consider the U.S. responses to these twin ‘threats.’ On the issue of bioterrorism, the U.S. Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act (2002) significantly increases the monitoring of a wide range of ‘suspect’ biological materials in the U.S. – including those used in legitimate, federally-funded, university-based biology labs

(Kevles, 2003).2 Likewise, the U.S. Project BioShield, which was announced in 2003, offers unprecedented funds for three key areas: the development of ‘next-generation medical countermeasures’ (some $6 billion over the next ten years), NIH funding for those research projects that show promise in the development of vaccines and drugs to counter bioterrorist attacks, and new legislation which gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the ability to designate ‘fast track’ drug candidates and speed up the FDA approval process (the ‘FDA Emergency Use Authorization for Promising Medical Countermeasures Under Development’) (U.S. White House, 2003). All in all, in 2002 the U.S. dedicated

nearly $6 billion to biodefense initiatives for the 2003 budget - a 300% increase from the previous year (U.S. DHS, 2004). Even the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) - a program that has traditionally dealt with non-defense-

related initiatives - was awarded $85 million under Project BioShield for research into ‘human immunity and biodefense’ (U.S. NIH, 2003). In programs such as these, we see several themes coming together which characterize the post-9-11 era of national and homeland security . One of these is the emphasis on bioscience research, especially in the areas of genetic engineering, immunology, and the possible linkages to the emerging fields of genomics, proteomics, and genetic diagnostics.3 The ability to sequence the genomes of pathogens is seen by many scientists as the important first step to understanding how those pathogens are able to

mutate and infect healthy cells. But alongside this there is also an equal emphasis on the technological infrastructure that enables federal, state, and local health officials to communicate and make decisions in response to possible health crises (U.S. DHS, 2004). This infrastructure includes computer databases and networks (e.g. hospital informatics, up-to-date diagnostic technologies, emergency communications systems), as well as drug production and distribution systems, and the training of health care personnel. In the broadest sense, ‘information’ plays a key role in enabling the communication of health-related data, be it via teleconferencing, via patient-specific data being uploaded to a server, or via the rapid distribution of drugs from the U.S. Strategic National

Pharmaceutical Stockpile. Yet, from the U.S. perspective, an emphasis on biology and information is only part of the equation. At all levels, the ability of government to respond to an emergency is crucial for the biological and informatic components of biodefense to operate in an effective manner. This is where the particular philosophy of war adopted by the U.S. has come into play, and it is a philosophy in the sense that, at the same time that familiar Cold War concepts are deployed (a pharmaceutical ‘stockpile’ or

scenarios involving a ‘dirty bomb’), U.S. policy has ontologically redefined war along the lines of terrorism; that is, terrorism as precisely a series of non-catastrophic but highly threatening events. In this sense not only is all

terrorism bioterrorism, but we may be witnessing a new definition of ‘life itself’ in which terror exists virtually in relation to life. What might this mean, for terror to exist virtually in relation to life? For one thing, it means that the use of the metaphor of war to talk about disease has ceased to be a metaphor, and that the biological affair of intentionally causing or of fighting disease is literally, in bioterrorism, a form of war. A 2003 NIAID progress report outlines some of the results of its research, which has had an added benefit for diseases not related to bioterrorism. It notes that the ‘increased breadth and depth of biodefense research not only is helping us become better prepared to protect citizens against a deliberately introduced pathogen, it also is helping us tackle the continuous tide of naturally occurring emerging infections

such as SARS and West Nile virus’ (U.S. NIAID, 2003). In short, the U.S. response to the twin phenomena of bioterrorism and emerging infectious disease has been to treat the latter in terms of the former, and to define the former – bioterrorism – in terms that efface their differences in cause, and only focus on their unanimity in effect. U.S. policy articulates this in three ways: through an emphasis on biology,

through an equal emphasis on information as the inverse of biology, and through enabling an ontological redefinition of war to contextualize the links between biology and information.

*Impacts*

2NC – Turns Case (General )The criticism turns the entirety of the case- using disease reps as a justification to vote for the aff makes it impossible to solve for disease spread, bioterrorism, crushes trust in the medical industry and causes mass dehumanizationBarrett and Brown 08

(Ron, School of Nursing, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, Peter, Department of Anthropology, Emory University, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, “Stigma in the Time of Influenza: Social and Institutional Responses to Pandemic Emergencies,” 2008, Oxford Journals) //jdi-mm

The best models of influenza pandemics highlight the powerful influence of fear and stigma in the management of infectious disease emergencies. Analogous models based on recent epidemics of plague and severe acute respiratory syndrome illustrate the role of stigma in the delayed and disproportionate responses by affected populations and institutions. The historical model of the 1918 influenza pandemic presents similar themes across nations and localities. Although avian influenza has only recently attracted public and political attention, the recurring dynamics of fear and stigma have a very long history. “Stigma” was originally a classical Greek term for a permanent

mark that branded a person as a criminal, traitor, or slave. In recent decades, the word “stigma” has been used to describe the process of negative discrimination against people with certain physical, behavioral, or social attributes [1]. This concept of stigma as discrimination has been central to the medical social sciences, particularly in studies of disability, the social aspects of mental illness, race and gender disparities in health care, and the cultural constructions of biomedicine [2–4]. The social consequences of stigma can result in adverse health effects in general [5, 6], as well as in exacerbation of the effects of the epidemiology and pathology of certain diseases [7, 8]. It therefore can be argued that stigma is more than just a negative outcome of certain diseases; it is an illness in itself, comorbid with respect to its marked physical conditions. The

same argument can be made for the social stigma of infectious diseases. In many countries, the stigma of Hansen disease (HD), or leprosy, is far worse than the disease itself [9]. Although HD can be cured with antibiotics, the social mark of leprosy can last a lifetime. This stigma motivates widespread concealment, delaying early detection and treatment and furthering the spread of the infection [10]. Similar dynamics can be found for HIV infection and AIDS, a potentially stigmatized disease that some have described as the “new leprosy .” As with HD, the stigma of AIDS can perpetuate the spread of HIV, especially when the costs of social exposure outweigh the benefits of early testing and treatment [10]. Farmer and Kleinman [11] explored these dynamics in the early years of the HIV/ AIDS pandemic, tracing the ways in which the suffering of patients with AIDS and of their families is created by socioeconomic inequalities, compounded by the in appropriate use of resources, magnified by discrimination, augmented by fear, and amplified by the loss of social identity. Despite subsequent biomedical advancements, these observations are as true for the world today as they were 18 years ago [12]. By extension of these

lessons to infectious diseases in general, stigma can be seen as a biosocial phenomenon with 4 essential elements. First, stigma can present major barriers against health care seeking, thereby reducing early detection and treatment and furthering the spread of disease. Second, social marginalization often can lead to poverty and neglect, thereby increasing the susceptibility of populations to the entry and amplification of infectious diseases . Third, potentially stigmatized populations may distrust health authorities and resist cooperation during a public health emergency . Finally, social stigma may distort public perceptions of risk, resulting in mass panic among citizens and the disproportionate allocation of health care resources by politicians and health professionals . Issues of risk perception and resource allocation are particularly relevant

to the prevention of avian influenza. Compared with many neglected health problems, the threats of avian

influenza and bioterrorism currently receive a remarkable degree of attention and resources. They occupy a prominent position in many public health agendas, even if they exist only as worst-case simulations and nightmares in the public imagination [13]. In the same issue of Science that describes the public health

risk from an outbreak of H5N1 influenza [14], an editorial entitled “Perceived Threats and Real Killers” argues that US health priorities have become overly focused on unknown risks from new diseases and the unknowable consequences of bioweapons at the expense of known threats such as influenza [15]. This argument does not question the value of disease surveillance and public health preparedness, and it does not exclude the possibility that biosecurity investments might be leveraged to improve the public health infrastructure and the surge capacity of primary health care facilities. Nevertheless, it is extremely difficult to predict an outbreak of virulent influenza or any other specific epidemics with any precision . We must look for common themes by relying on the history of previous epidemics and the social and epidemiological lessons that they provide.

2NC – Turns TrustFears of disease/epidemics results in fear-mongering, makes disease spread worse, and kills doctor-patient trust necessary for solving disease outbreaksAnnas et. al 08

(George, Wendy K. Mariner and Wendy E. Parmet, George J. Annas, Edward R. Utley Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights, Boston University School of Public Health; Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law; and Professor of Socio-Medical Sciences, Boston University School of Medicine. Wendy K. Mariner, Professor of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights, Boston University School of Public Health; Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law; and Professor of Socio-Medical Sciences, Boston University School of Medicine. Wendy E. Parmet, George J. and Kathleen Waters Matthews Distinguished University Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law., American Civil Liberties Union, “Pandemic Preparedness: The Need for a Public Health – Not a Law Enforcement/National Security – Approach,” 2008, https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/privacy/pemic_report.pdf) /jdi-mm

The threat of a new pandemic will never subside. But the notion that we need to “trade liberty for security” is misguided and dangerous . Public health concerns cannot be addressed with law enforcement or

national security tools. If we allow the fear associated with a potential outbreak to justify the suspension of liberties in the name of public health, we risk not only undermining our fundamental rights, but alienating the very communities and individuals that are in need of help and thereby fomenting the spread of disease . Maintaining fundamental freedoms is essential for encouraging public trust and cooperation . If our public agencies work hand in hand with communities to provide them with a healthy environment, access to

care, and a means for protecting their families, rather than treating them as the enemy, we will be far better prepared for a potential outbreak.

2NC – Turns BioterrorSimulating their technological “fix” for bioweapons turns the aff: 1) intimately ties national security with public health, threatening both; 2) trades off with research and solutions for more probable, but less romantic diseases like tuberculosis and malaria; 3) inadvertently creating more dangerous and lethal pathogens that can escape the laboratory; and 4) greatly increase the risk of “routine accidents”Lisa Keränen (Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado, Denver) 2011 [“Concocting Viral Apocalypse: Catastrophic Risk and the Production of Bio(in)security” Western Journal of Communication Vol. 75, No. 5, October–December 2011, pp. 451–472, loghry]

Persuaded that the United States is vulnerable to biological threats through a catastrophic 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 of Emerging Infectious Disease, ‘‘The events of September 11, 2001, emphasized that the United States should use every tool available 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 epidemiology, 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 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 of anticipated bioterrorism, political solutions to the problems 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 dramatically 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 governments in 2002 was fourteen times greater than the previous year’s biodefense spending’’ and ‘‘represented the single largest investment in public health infrastructure 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 biological 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 bioterrorism (Franco, 2008; Reynolds, 2005). Moreover, President Obama appears just as vigorous 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 biological

weapons agents. Indeed, a commonly expressed concern is that the funding for 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 Officials, 2003, as cited in Barrett, 2006, p. 185). Leitenberg (2005) noted that ‘‘currently one-third of both the National Institutes of Health (NIH) infectious disease 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 considered 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. Moreover, peddlers of home biological weapons testing devices, safe rooms, sniffer

systems, 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 laboratories. The now-disbanded bioweapons watch group ‘‘Sunshine Project’’ found dozens 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 biodefense industry now employs more than 14,000 researchers at 327 institutions, raising the potential for leaks or accidental exposure with at least 32 additional 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. laboratory. Moreover, two researchers at the National Institute of Virology in Beijing contracted 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 infection.

2NC – Link – Generic Disease representations result in social stigmatization, dehumanization and kills value to life- only an alternative change persistently challenges these notions of differences can be effective at solving Singer 09

(Merill, Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, “Pathogens Gone Wild? Medical Anthropology and the “Swine Flu” Pandemic,” 2009, Taylor and Francis) //jdi-mm

Like the bodies they afflict, diseases are simultaneously physical and symbolic artifacts that are “both naturally and culturally produced, and securely anchored in a particular historical moment” (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1997:7). Public health and more so biomedicine, however, tend to focus on the biology of disease, and certainly at the moment of a rapidly spreading lethal pandemic, express heightened interest in identifying medical magic bullets. One lesson of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, however, is that effective vaccines for viral infections are not easily acquired (both because viruses hijack and reproduce in body cells and because they can rapidly change

their genetic composition). Additionally, from the standpoint of people living with infection, the press of the “social disease” (i.e., how they feel treated by others) can outweigh the biological burden of infection . In a small qualitative study of MSM in London, for example, Owen (2008) found people feel heavily stigmatized because of having hepatitis C. As one participant reported: “I think how it makes you feel is worse than the actual thing itself…. The fear of rejection, the fear of the stigma and all that is actually more toxic than the disease itself” (Owen 2008:603). Similarly, in a study of SARS-related stigma in Amoy Gardens, the

site of a significant community outbreak in Hong Kong, Lee et al. (2005) found that residents feel shunned, insulted, marginalized, and rejected in interpersonal relationships, acquiring services, employment, and education. These researchers report that their findings underline the roles played by inconsistent health policy responses and the risk of miscommunication by the media in amplifying stigma during an emergent disease breakout. Stigmatization does not emerge in a vacuum , however. Rather, it adheres to and provides undergirding for prevailing axes of social division. An important social function of stigmatization is the legitimation of unequal group status in society. As such, the cultural construction of stigmatization serves as a hegemonic “hierarchy-legitimizing myth” for both dominant and subordinate social strata.

2NC – Impact – Biopower The call to securitize against disease creates the individual as a prison which the individual must now survey and disciple. The AFF vision and fear of a catastrophic disease outbreak necessitates the capillary diffusion of carceral and biopolitical violence, turning life into a biological carcass absent vitality. Debrix and Barder 2009/Francois, Professor and Director of the Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought (ASPECT) Program @ Virginia Tech, Ph.D., Purdue University and Alexander D., Department of Political Studies & Public Administration, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon, PhD in Political Theory from John Hopkins, ”Nothing to Fear but Fear: Governmentality and the Biopolitical Production of Terror,” International Political Sociology (2009) 3, 398–413/

A telling example of this self-mobilization and self-anticipation against one’s own conduct can be found in the way Western states (or, rather, their governmental agencies) along with some transnational organizations (the World Health

Organization, the United Nations) have ask ed populations to preemptively take care of their health , hygiene, and everyday routines in the context of the ongoing A⁄H1N1 or ‘‘swine flu’’ pandemic . In this recent case of popular health scare, as with many other instances of spreading epidemics over the past decade (SARS, the H5N1 ‘‘bird flu,’’ but also AIDS before), individuals and groups are asked to be the first layers of securitization by turning their bodies (or those of family members, neighbors, coworkers, etc.) into primordial sites

of analysis and scrutiny from where not only the disease but, just as importantly, the fear about what might happen with the disease will be monitored. With the ‘‘swine flu,’’ a constant questioning of one’s body movements and symptomatic features, but also of one’s daily habits, becomes an automatic (and autoimmune) measure against the endemic fear. Individual and collective bodies become the most vital dispositifs of containment of the pandemic and of the terror that inevitably will spread . This management or governance of the ‘‘swine flu’’ and its scare (the disease and its terror are inseparable from the moment a pandemic discourse is launched) is said to require constant self-checking (Do I have a fever? Is my cough a sign that I have been infected? Did I remember to wash my

hands after riding the bus or the subway?). But it also demands what can be called selfcarceralization measures (we must stay home for several days if we feel sick; we must wear protective masks if we venture outside and have a runny nose; we must close entire

schools for as long as necessary if we suspect that children in the community have the flu). In the end, it is a full-blown biopolitics of selfterror that sets in whereby people must allow themselves to be quarantined , must accept being placed

in hospital isolation, and must even be willing not to be treated if pharmaceutical companies fail to produce enough vaccines for everyone. As the A⁄H1N1 pandemic preemption regime reveals, individual and collective bodies must always be prepared to immerse themselves into disciplinary and regulatory procedures, into security mechanisms , and into governmental tactics . In fact, they must act as dispositifs of fear governance themselves. This means that bodies become the required lines of forces that connect the possible localized symptoms to the global pandemic and its terror. From this perspective on how bodies in societies of unease enable regimes of biopolitical terror and are themselves the product of operations of governmentalized fear , no return to a centralized model of power is necessary to make sense of the terror embedded in

contemporary regimes of government. Rather, as the ‘‘swine flu’’ case shows, it is the horizontality, the capillarity, and the propagation of carceral effects across space and through time that authenticates this (self) imposition of governmental power and force. But what this system of reproduction of self-governmentalized scare tactics and biopolitical (in)security calls for, however, is the beginning of a different understanding of life, or of what life means. Indeed, it is not enough anymore to think of life as docile or regulated. It may also not be sufficient to think of today’s living bodies as abandoned beings (Agamben 1998) caught in a state of sovereign exception. Rather, the self-rationalizing, self-

securitizing, and self-terrorizing bodies that act, react, and interact in coordination with agents ⁄ agencies of government and are found at the heart of societies of fear production are more likely to represent what Mick Dillon has called ‘‘emergent life ’ ’ (Dillon 2007).

Normalization of populations enables total annihilation and extinctionBernauer ’90 (James Bernauer, Professor of Philosophy, Boston College, Michel Foucault’s Force of Flight, 1990, p. 141-142)

This capacity of power to conceal itself cannot cloak the tragedy of the implications contained in Foucault's examination of its functioning. While liberals have fought to extend rights and Marxists have denounced the injustice of capitalism, a political technology, acting in the interests of a better administration of life, has produced a politics that places man's existence as a living being in question. The very period that proclaimed pride in having overthrown the tyranny of monarchy, that engaged in an endless clamor for reform, that is confident in the virtues of its humanistic faith_this period's politics created a landscape dominated by history's bloodiest wars. What comparison is possible between a sovereign's authority to take a life and a power that, in the interest of protecting a society's quality of life, can plan, as well as develop the means for its implementation, a policy of mutually assured destruction? Such a policy is neither an aberration of the fundamental principles of modern politics nor an abandonment of our age's humanism in favor of a more primitive right to kill; it is but the other side of a Power that is "situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large_scale phenomena of population." The bio_political project of administering and optimizing life closes its circle with the production of the Bomb. "The atomic situation is now at the end point of this process: the power to expose a whole population to death is the underside of a power to guarantee an individual's continued existence." The solace that might have been expected from being able to gaze at scaffolds empty of the victims of a tyrant's vengeance has been stolen from us by the noose that has tightened around each of our own necks.

2NC – Impact – Ethnic Cleansing Their discourse of disease securitizes the alien body of the infected – justifies ethnic cleansing in pursuit of community vitality Gomel 2k (Elana Gomel, English department head at Tel Aviv University, Winter 2000, published in Twentieth Century Literature Volume 46, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0403/is_4_46/ai_75141042)

In the secular apocalyptic visions that have proliferated wildly in the last 200 years, the world has been destroyed by nuclear wars, alien invasions, climatic changes, social upheavals, meteor strikes, and technological shutdowns. These baroque scenarios are shaped by the eroticism of disaster. The apocalyptic desire that finds satisfaction in elaborating fictions of the End is double-edged. On the one hand, its ultimate object is some version of the crystalline New Jerusalem, an image of purity so absolute that it denies the organic messiness of life. [1]

On the other hand, apocalyptic fictions typically linger on pain and suffering. The end result of apocalyptic purification often seems of less importance than the narrative pleasure derived from the bizarre and opulent tribulations of the bodies being burnt by fire and brimstone, tormented by scorpion stings, trodden like grapes in the winepress. In this interplay between the incorporeal purity of the ends and the violent

corporeality of the means the apocalyptic body is born . It is a body whose mortal sickness is a precondition of ultimate health , whose grotesque and excessive sexuality issues in angelic sexlessness, and whose torture underpins a painless--and lifeless--millennium.The apocalyptic body is perverse, points out Tina Pippin, unstable and mutating from maleness to femaleness and back again, purified by the sadomasochistic "bloodletting on the cross," trembling in abject terror while awaiting an unearthly consummation (122). But most of all it is a suffering body, a text written in the script of stigmata, scars,

wounds, and sores. Any apocalypse strikes the body politic like a disease, progressing from the first symptoms of a large-scale disaster through the crisis of the tribulation to the recovery of the millennium. But of all the Four Horsemen, the one whose ride begins most intimately, in the private travails of individual flesh, and ends in the devastation of the entire community, is the last one, Pestilence. The contagious body is the most characteristic modality of apocalyptic corporeality . At the same time, I will argue, it contains a counterapocalyptic potential, resisting the dangerous lu re of Endism, the ideologically potent combination of "apocalyptic terror", a nd "millennial perfection" (Quinby 2). This essay, a brief sketch of the poetics and politics of the contagious body, does not attempt a comprehensive overview of the historical development of the trope of pestilence. Nor does it limit itself to a particular disease,

along the lines of Susan Sontag's classic delineation of the poetics of TB and many subsequent attempts to develop a poetics of AIDS. Rather, my focus is on the general narrativity of contagion and on the way the plague-stricken body is manipulated within the overall plot of apocalyptic millennialism , which is a powerful ideological current in twentieth-century political history, embracing such diverse manifestations as religious fundamentalism, Nazism, and other forms of "radical desperation " (Quinby 4--5). Thus, I consider both real and imaginary diseases, focusing on the narrative construction of the contagious body rather than on the precise epidemiology of the contagion.

All apocalyptic and millenarian ideologies ultimately converge on the utopian transformation of the body (and the body politic) through suffering. But pestilence offers a uniquely ambivalent modality of corporeal apocalypse.

On the one hand, it may be appropriated to the standard plot of apocalyptic purification as a singularly atrocious technique of separating the damned from the saved. Thus, the plague becomes a metaphor for genocide, functioning as such both in Mein Kampf and in Camus's The Plague.[2] On the other hand, the experience of a pandemic undermines the giddy hopefulness of Endism. Since everybody is a potential victim, the line between the pure and the impure can never be drawn with any precision . Instead of delivering the climactic moment of the Last Judgment, pestilence lingers on, generating a limbo of common suffering in which a tenuous and moribund but all-embracing body politic springs into being. The end is indefinitely postponed and the disease becomes a metaphor for the process of livi ng. The finality of mortality clashes with the duration of morbidity. Pestilence is poised on the cusp between divine punishment and manmade disaster. On the one hand, unlike nuclear war or ecological catastrophe, pandemic has a venerable historical pedigree that leads back from current bestsellers such as Pierre Quellette's The Third Pandemic (1996) to the medieval horrors of the Black Death and indeed to the Book of Revelation itself. On the other hand, disease is one of the central tropes of biopolitics, shaping much of the twentieth-century discourse of power, domination, and the body. Contemporary plague narratives, including the burgeoning discourse of AIDS, are caught between two contrary textual impulses: acquiescence in a (super) natural judgment and political activism. Their impossible combination produces a clash of two distinct plot modalities. In his contemporary incarnations the Fourth Horseman vacillates between the

voluptuous entropy of indiscriminate killing and the genocidal energy directed at specific categories of victims. As Richard Dellamora points out

in his gloss on Derrida, apocalypse in general may be used "in order to validate violence done to others " while it may also function as a modality of total resistance to the existing order (3). But my concern here is not so much with the difference between "good" and "bad" apocalypses (is total extinction "better" than selective genocide?) as with the interplay of eschatology and politics in the construction of the apocalyptic body.

2NC – Impact – Marginalization Using disease represenetations as a justification for voting affirmative creates new standards of purity, by demarcating the bodies infected as not-worthwhile- this creates a cycle of legitimized perpetual marginalization, stigmatization, and violenceEichelberger 07

(Laura, University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, Social Science and Medicine, “SARS and New York's Chinatown: The politics of risk and blame during an epidemic of fear,” 2007, Science Direct) //jdi-mm

Psychosocial responses to unfamiliar epidemics include fear, stigmatization , explanation, and action based on little available information (Strong, 1990). The public and media draw on historical, political and economic metaphors, as well as personal experiences, to interpret and explain the origin of an epidemic, resulting in the collective construction of

multiple and diverse narratives (Briggs & Mantini-Briggs, 2003; Farmer, 1992; Moeller, 1999). Narratives can be recontextualized to fit other temporal and social settings, becoming “authoritative” representations of truth in the process (Briggs &

Mantini-Briggs, 2003). A historical political-economic perspective that considers both the local and global is therefore crucial for understanding the production of risk and blame . High levels of fear and blame during a deadly epidemic are associated with lack of information and perceived loss of control (Des Jarlais,

Stuber, Tracy, Tross, & Galea, 2005; Nelkin & Gilman, 1991; Van Damme & Van Lerberghe, 2000). Individuals and groups may project the risk of infection and death onto an “Other” in order to reduce the powerlessness experienced during a deadly epidemic (Crawford, 1994; Joffe, 1999). In this process of othering, disease origins and risk of infection are explained through moralizing metaphors of cultural superiority so as to locate risk and responsibility among marginalized populations. Such discourses often define community membership vis-à-vis one's relationship to modernity, a contemporary metaphor representing purity . Those who are labeled as unsanitary subjects ( Briggs & Mantini-Briggs, 2003) threaten community health because of their cultural inferiority and thus their status as matter out of place ( Douglas, 1966). This othering is crucial to the maintenance of a healthy identity because the boundaries of the healthy self are never secure ( Crawford,

1994). The identification of a ‘risk group’ is part of this boundary maintenance that creates and legitimizes the stigmatization of already marginalized populations, resulting in their identification with a disease ( Goldin, 1994). The media makes distant, often unaffected, populations aware of an epidemic and disseminates the dominant framework by which it is interpreted: the cause, explanation, and vocabulary of risk and responsibility (Briggs & Mantini-Briggs, 2003; Farmer, 1992; Herzlich & Pierret, 1989; Joffe & Haarhoff, 2002; Kasperson,

Jhaveri, & Kasperson, 2001; Ungar, 1998). It provides an effective medium for health communication by bridging medical discourses and society, but it also

contributes to the formation of social relations and representations around the disease by explaining epidemics in terms of social processes (Herzlich & Pierret, 1989; Joffe, 1999). Further, the media emphasizes dramatic events (Buus & Olsson, 2006; Moeller, 1999) and risks that are easily tied to moral and political agendas (Joffe, 1999), resulting in higher coverage of rare diseases and relatively little

coverage of more common ones (Moeller, 1999). The media uses familiar symbols to simplify the abstract risk of emerging infections, often by blaming the sick for putting others at risk for premodern diseases by not participating in modern, sanitary society (Beck, 1999; Briggs & Mantini-Briggs, 2003; Farmer, 1992; Moeller, 1999). Media coverage is therefore a good source of data for measuring the dominant stigmatizing discourses during an epidemic. Othering in media coverage is masked by the prominent position of scientists and by cultural reasoning, whereby anthropological terms are used to describe a population's inferiority vis-à-vis their culture (Briggs & Mantini-Briggs, 2003). Indeed, as Barde (2003, p. 161) noted regarding epidemiological advances of the 19th century, discoveries of the causes of disease have “changed only the language of the scapegoating, not the target.” While many scholars agree on the role of the media in disseminating knowledge and risk discourses, the media's effect on risk perceptions is much debated. Sensationalistic media coverage does not necessarily create heightened anxiety of being infected (Bergeron & Sanchez, 2005; Joffe & Haarhoff, 2002). Audiences may instead respond to the messages of reassurance (Ungar, 1998) and locate the risk of infection among those othered

by news coverage (Joffe & Haarhoff, 2002). Stigmatized populations may reject being labeled as at-risk by not complying with public health measures that would confirm their inferiority (Nations & Monte, 1996), while sanitary citizens may position themselves outside the defined risk category to create a sense of protection (Briggs, 2004; Joffe, 1999). Finally, variability exists within any group around how individuals respond to risk discourses (Joffe, 1999).

2NC – Impact – Racism/Discrimination/T’s CaseFears of disease and epidemics justifies discrimination, racism, and makes it impossible to solve diseaseAnnas et. al 08

(George, Wendy K. Mariner and Wendy E. Parmet, George J. Annas, Edward R. Utley Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights, Boston University School of Public Health; Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law; and Professor of Socio-Medical Sciences, Boston University School of Medicine. Wendy K. Mariner, Professor of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights, Boston University School of Public Health; Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law; and Professor of Socio-Medical Sciences, Boston University School of Medicine. Wendy E. Parmet, George J. and Kathleen Waters Matthews Distinguished University Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law., American Civil Liberties Union, “Pandemic Preparedness: The Need for a Public Health – Not a Law Enforcement/National Security – Approach,” 2008, https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/privacy/pemic_report.pdf) /jdi-mm

American history contains vivid reminders that grafting the values of law enforcement and national security onto public health is both ineffective and dangerous . Too often, fears aroused by disease and epidemics have justified abuses of state power. Highly discriminatory and forcible vaccination and quarantine measures adopted in response to outbreaks of the plague and smallpox over the past century have consistently accelerated rather than slowed the spread of disease, while fomenting public distrust and, in some cases, riots . The lessons from history should be kept in mind whenever we are told by government officials that “tough,” liberty-limiting actions are needed to protect us from dangerous diseases. Specifically: • Coercion and brute force are rarely necessary. In fact they are generally counterproductive—they gratuitously breed public distrust and encourage the people who are most in need of care to evade public health authorities . • On

the other hand, effective, preventive strategies that rely on voluntary participation do work. Simply put, people do not want to contract smallpox, influenza or other dangerous diseases. They want positive government help in avoiding and treating disease. As long as public officials are working to help people rather than to punish them, people are likely to engage willingly in any and all

efforts to keep their families and communities healthy. • Minorities and other socially disadvantaged populations tend to bear the brunt of tough public health measures.

2NC – Impact – Structural Violence Plague reps legitimize ongoing structural violenceBriggs 05

(Charles, Annual Review of Anthropology, “Communicability, Racial Discourse, and Disease,” 2005, Jstor) //jdi-mm

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) analyzes how inequalities are embedded in linguis tic patterns (Blommaert & Bulcaen 2000, Reisigl & Wodak 2001). Researchers have identified linguistic strategies for reconciling claims to being color blind with racist state ments (Bonilla-Silva & Forman 2000, van Dijk 1991). Reisigl & Wodak (2001) argue that seemingly universal discourses even lib eral or left varieties can contain historical residues of racism (Blommaert &

Verschueren 1998, Wodak & Reisigl 1999). Accounts of epidemics, which are analyzed at greater length below, suggest CDA's value for un derstanding racialization and medicalization. Theories of medical causation constitute ways of thinking about the world and acting on it (Lindenbaum 2001, Rosenberg 1992). Ac cordingly, narratives about epidemics make racial and sexual inequalities seem natural as if bacteria and viruses gravitate toward populations and respect social boundaries. CDA would stress how linguistic features grant agency to microbes as they purport edly threaten and invade persons, institutions, and nation-states. Latour (1987, pp. 172-73), Sontag (1990), and others draw attention to overlaps between military and medical lexi cons; Arnold (1993) reads the militarization of health more as institutional strategy than as metaphor. The title of a New York Times article on SARS suggests that "From China's Provinces, a Crafty Germ Breaks Out" (Rosenthal 2003, p. 1); stereotypes of Asians as sneaky and/or cunning are seem ingly transferred onto the SARS virus. Offi cials assert their own agency investigating, taking precautions, and providing informa tion. Racialized and/or sexualized populations are

deprived of agency, becoming passive vic tims lacking knowledge, resources, and initia tive (Briggs & Mantini-Briggs 2003, Epstein 1996). Immigrant groups are often character ized metaphorically as a racialized flood or invasion, even though individual immigrants are denied agency (Chavez 2001, Santa Ana 2002); this convergence in metaphorical dis placements of agency suggests why efforts to blame immigrants for outbreaks find ready audiences and mesh so neatly with political economic inequalities (see Lowe 1996). Insofar as traditional linguistic analysis imagines linguistic patterns as divorced from politics and history (Bauman & Briggs 2003), juxtapositions of linguistic and political analysis will prove problematic. Rather than analyses of how seemingly neutral, objective fea tures are bent to racist uses, we need to examine how political ideologies shape com municative practices (Bourdieu 1991, Hanks 1996). Similarly, if racialized representations circulate on a daily basis, why do they gain such force when embedded in accounts of epidemics? Why do some narratives become authoritative? Why are statements that chal lenge them erased from public discourse? Questions of reception are crucial meanings do not spring directly from textual features but are appropriated through practices of ap propriation and reception. Foucault's Birth of the Clinic (1973) illumi nates how medicine generates new types of subjects and bodies, and his History of Sexu ality (1978, 1990)

reveals how medicalization produces ideas of pleasure, desire, and self. Scholars now pursue Foucault's notion of gov ernmentality

(1991), the rational, calculated ways that the conduct of individuals and popu lations is regulated through their active self regulation in becoming self-actualizing sub jects (Dean 1999, Rose 1996). Foucault (1990)

argues that health becomes an ethical imper ative, requiring individuals to regulate their behavior and reshape their selves in keep ing with new medical knowledge. Those who seem to succeed acquire the status of sanitary citizens (Briggs & Mantini-Briggs 2003), in dividuals deemed to possess modern medical understandings of the body, health, and ill ness, practice hygiene, and

depend on doc tors and nurses when they are sick (Ong 1995, Reid 1997, Shah 2001). People who are judged to be incapable of adopting this modern medical relationship to the body, hy giene, illness, and healing or who refuse to do so become unsanitary subjects (Briggs & Mantini-Briggs 2003). These terms incorpo rate what have been referred to as biom d ical citizens (Ong 1995, Shah 2001) and, at the same time, draw attention to the broader moral, social, political, and cultural meanings that shape how citizenship is defined in terms of health. They also evoke the deep historical residue of how a broad range of conceptions health have shaped notions of state and citizenship since the nineteenth century (An derson 2003, Hammonds

1999, Leavitt 1996, Molina 2005, Rosenberg 1962). Governmen tality constructs epidemics in such a way that getting cholera or living in an infected neighborhood constitutes natural proof of a moral failure to conduct oneself in a ra tional, informed manner. Governmentality scholars have emphasized notions of risk, which locate individuals in relation to epi demics and contagion. Here, medicalization emerges in specialized cartographies that map demographics, "environmental" conditions, and "lifestyle choices" onto projections of health and disease outcomes (Lupton 1995, 1999; Reid 1997). Discourses of risk invite individuals to interpellate

themselves in rela tion to scientifically based imperatives ("don't smoke," etc.), thereby performatively con structing themselves in multiple and shifting ways. As

the stigmatization of "homosexu als" vis- -vis HIV/AIDS suggests, individuals can become objects of discrimination simply through inclusion in "risk groups" (Epstein 1996). Analyzing risk in terms of governmen tality can help us understand how representa tions of epidemics are transformed into self knowledge and self-regulation.

*Alternative*

2NC – Alt Solvency – BioterrorThe alternative solves- critically interrogating the ways in which we conceptualize disease and stigma is necessary to establish a new community of trust and cooperation necessary to resolve bioterror threatsBarrett and Brown 08

(Ron, School of Nursing, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, Peter, Department of Anthropology, Emory University, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, “Stigma in the Time of Influenza: Social and Institutional Responses to Pandemic Emergencies,” 2008, Oxford Journals) //jdi-mm

The historical models discussed in this article illustrate the ways in which stigma and fear can severely impede efforts to manage the spread of an outbreak of virulent influenza . Yet, they also provide lessons for the mitigation or prevention of these social dynamics. Chief among these lessons is the importance of building a surge capacity for public trust. As with other surge capacities, this cannot happen without a preexisting public health infrastructure for all segments of the population, especially those who are the most susceptible. Community trust is strongly influenced by the degree to which officials and health care providers have addressed local health needs prior to epidemic emergencies . Only when these conditions are preestablished is it realistic to expect affected populations to cooperate with programs such as contact tracing and to distinguish isolation measures from the historical specter of quarantines . Hospitals and isolation centers should be seen as treatment zones to be sought rather than places of death to avoid. In the earliest stages of an epidemic, care must be taken to support the social status of first-line health care providers and to ensure the safety of their immediate families. Otherwise, they may be forced to choose between the good of their families and the good of their larger society. At the same time, government transparency must be established from the very beginning. Official silence only reinforces misinformation and public mistrust. Without clear and reliable information, the unknown risks of infection can exacerbate stigmatization and create undue alarm [29]. Finally, it is important to note that transparency does not preclude optimism, even under the worst health conditions. In the last century, many nations experienced their largest declines in infectious disease—related mortality before the advent of antimicrobial drugs [30]. Even the 1918 influenza pandemic provides strong evidence that coordinated nonpharmacological interventions (NPIs) played a major role in reducing the incidence of cases and disease-related mortality in several major US cities [31]. In the event of a similar pandemic, it is imperative that such NPIs include the prevention and management of stigma.

2NC – Alt Solvency – Debate Debate is key site for interrogating and negotiating the complex interrelationships of biosecurityMelanie Armstrong (B.A., Communications, Brigham Young University, 2001 M.A., Telecommunications, Ohio University, 2003 Ph.D., American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2011) December 2011 [“BIO+TERROR: SCIENCE, SECURITY, SIMULATION” DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy American Studies @The University of New Mexico, loghry]

This research is concerned with questions of citizenship, particularly what it means to be a biological citizen under the bioterror crisis. The breadth of the bioterror crisis demands a research design that acknowledges that biosecurity is produced locally , nationally and globally, within expansive systems of science and capital. Every day , modern subjects perform political, scientific, and discursive acts that constitute biosociality at the local level. Through close attention to daily practice and the research techniques of observation, interview, historical and textual analysis, this research shows how policymaking practices of science and government manifest in the informal spaces where people negotiate and legitimate state practice . This research details “the elements that unsettle and entangle people’s lives,” with the further goal of “maintaining a prospective sense of the contingencies of human existence, such that its forms find a place within the discipline of observation.”45 Bioterrorism takes form as citizens rearrange their lives in response to social fears. Furthermore, the biosecurity state brings together science, the market, and government in new ways, producing new institutions and spaces where citizen-making takes place. By attending to how these practices emerge and find legitimacy within the public, this dissertation recognizes how citizens make sense of the possibilities presented to them within subtle and changing systems of power. The cultural forces of bioterrorism produce subjects who are as diverse and farreaching as global networks allow, and the challenge of this research is to identify the meaningful connections that give bioterrorism form and tenacity in people’s lives. A multitude of myths, images, events, and lifestyles—not always dependent upon whom one knows and where one lives—cohere around modern subjects, and global systems heighten the “presence-availability” of ideas to form and fix diverse subjects.46 In other words, biological citizens in the 21st century live in a world where they can access a range of meanings through global markets and bring a wider array of experiences into the process of subject making. The blurring of boundaries between local subjects and global systems demands a reconceptualization of ethnographic projects to account for the multiplicity that arises when a range of agents in diverse places and contexts have access to subjects.47 An “ethnography of global connection” asks how a site exists within a global system of exchange, where macro-interdependencies in market, media and science are evident in complexly entwined micro worlds, such as a small disease laboratory which is shaped by new cultural formations of fear and contagion along with a political War on Terror.48 The goal of this research is to identify how biological citizens produce the macro-systems of security through their daily practices. In turn, I look for “zones of awkward engagement” where the instability of the bioterror encounter facilitates deeper understanding of modern modes of governance and possibilities of citizenship.49 Following Tsing, Fortun, Petryna, Rajan, Moore, and others, I use ethnographic methods to expose points of connection and entanglement that have brought about the bioterror crisis in the modern age, with the intent to understand how bioterrorism rearranges the possibilities for political subjects.50

2NC – Alt Solvency – Scholarship Bioterror representations reduce citizenship to bare life, voting negative to reject these representations enables new scholarship to challenge biosecurity and opening new possibilities for changeMelanie Armstrong (B.A., Communications, Brigham Young University, 2001 M.A., Telecommunications, Ohio University, 2003 Ph.D., American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2011) December 2011 [“BIO+TERROR: SCIENCE, SECURITY, SIMULATION” DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy American Studies @The University of New Mexico, loghry]

This project to excavate the underpinnings of biological terrorism presumes that an existent bioterror threat is incidental to the establishment of the security state. Indeed the systems of security are better sustained by an ever-present threat than by a single catastrophic event, for they work to convince populations to continuously strive for a state of preparedness. The ideological power of bioterrorism, produced by vivid cultural memories of disease, draws strength from the many daily acts of life, science, and politics which affirm human vulnerability to disease. Furthermore, our imaginings of the threat, whether on the Hollywood screen, in a simulation exercise, or calculated by science, readily stand in for lived experience, and are typically bigger and farther-reaching than the quotidian experience of bioterror acts. The case studies presented here explore how bioterrorism touches down in people’s lives in unexpected ways. In examining the similar ways the bioterror threat is manifest in wide-ranging geographies, three key outcomes of the bioterror crisis emerge. First, bioterrorism remakes nature as a prominent threat of the modern age, particularly through the blending of nature and technology through science practice. The cultural histories of germs have produced powerful ideologies of contagion and control, which have been reinvigorated by the genomic ways of knowing life. The case of smallpox, for example, showed how the belief that the most virulent disease of human history could be contained by a program of social control emerged from new knowledge of germs and vaccination. In the modern age, that belief is expressed anew through the large-scale stockpiles kept by the national government as the primary countermeasure for small-pox attack. The revitalization of the smallpox virus through advances in science and technology therefore demands a parallel expansion of the mechanisms of control. Similarly, the risk created by the globalization of science and the transportation of microbes from their “natural” environments mobilizes the microbial threat and expands the field of risk to global proportions . Finally, the perception that under the new biology, terrorists have ready access to dangerous pathogens and easily-developed knowledge of how to use them creates a politics of nature where microbes can be harnessed to increase their harm. Thus, a secondary narrative of “nature under control” creates a basis for bioterrorism in the belief that individuals can readily manipulate microbes to create more virulent, directed, or insidious effects. Citizens demand that the state demonstrate how microbial risk is being controlled, as seen during the protest in Hamilton where residents pleaded with Rocky Mountain Laboratories to use the EIS protocol to show them that the agency recognized their biological interest in the lab’s security and had developed plans to mitigate that risk. Such political acts define the terms of biosecurity, requiring outcomes that can be seen and measured by citizens. In so doing, they express the new parameters of

fear in the contemporary moment, borrowing from the lexicon of disease which has characterized public health and biological science for many years. Second, as conceptions of microbial risk change our ways of knowing nature and the quality of life itself, the terms of biological citizenship are renegotiated. When biological risks abound, citizenship becomes rooted in the basics of human survival and the protection of “bare life.” In turn, the care practices of government shift away from more intimate concerns of health and well-being in favor of protecting the population holistically. This shift is manifest, for example, in the state health apparatus, as the influx of funding for bioterrorism preparedness changes the involvement of government in citizens’ health. A health system attending to the healthy, but vulnerable, population manages for the enduring life of the citizens, rather than the present well-being of individuals. For example, building Biosafety Level-4 laboratories to increase national security through the study of dangerous pathogens shows the calculation of the greater good over the well-being of those who live in proximity to the labs themselves. The repurposing of health care technologies and the development of new federal research priorities around bioterrorism further demonstrate how national attention to and funding allocations for biosecurity motivate different types of research and dual-purposing of health care technologies. This influx of funding is changing the spaces of public health and science in the modern age. BSL4 laboratories, terrorism training centers, fenced borderlands, post offices, and incident command centers have emerged as the spaces where bioterrorism will be managed; these spaces change the ways people live, how they work, and how they interact with each other, and sustain the idea that with enough funding and citizen participation, bioterror threats can be mitigated. This research shows that despite considerable federal funding and national support for biosecurity practices, these sites and their work are contested. They challenge citizens to evaluate the multiple biological threats in their immediate and distant environments and situate their own lives in relation to the national security complex. Thus, the material outcomes of biosecurity practices challenge groups and individuals to act on behalf of their collective well-being, bringing debates over the character of biological security into the public discourse and opening new possibilities for biological citizenship.

*Answers to Answers*

2NC – AT: No RacismThe outbreak of SARS proves the link- fear of disease/reps translates into the demarcation of racialized bodies Eichelberger 07

(Laura, University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, Social Science and Medicine, “SARS and New York's Chinatown: The politics of risk and blame during an epidemic of fear,” 2007, Science Direct) //jdi-mm

During the height of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in spring 2003, stories of infection and warnings (such as the e-mail above) to avoid Asian areas circulated throughout the United States. News media speculated on the possibility of a domestic epidemic, despite the fact that only eight people nationally had laboratory evidence of SARS—and most of these had contracted the virus abroad (Schrag et al., 2004).

Fourteen percent of Americans reported avoiding Asian businesses (Blendon et al., 2003), and New York City's Chinatown experienced heightened anxiety and fear of stigmatization (Chen & Tsang, 2003). The above rumor and its news coverage caused a tremendous drop in business and tourism in Chinatown. Even without a single case of SARS, the community was identified quickly as a site of

contagion and risk. The American public, including Chinatown, had become infected with an epidemic of fear, not

of disease. This research draws on anthropology, sociology, history, and media studies to examine the production of the dominant American risk discourses during the 2003 SARS epidemic, focusing specifically on those who blamed the disease on Chinese culture. I then use

ethnographic research to investigate how these discourses played out in New York City's Chinatown. I use the term discourse in the Foucauldian sense to refer to the contested field of possible ideas, images, and metaphors that structure the ways in which people understand diseases. Many informants rejected community association with infection while simultaneously deploying dominant discourses to blame recent Chinese immigrants as potential infectors. This discursive strategy distances the self from biological and social risk, echoes discourses produced globally and disseminated by the media, and reflects local concerns related to the community's changing demography. The collected narratives illustrate that many historical, political and economic factors shape responses to an epidemic, even in places without infection.

2NC – AT: Impact RealBe skeptical of their impacts – the medical industrial must maintain the threat of outbreak to exempt themselves from responsibility and justify ever-increasing consumptionIllich 76Ivan, Ph.D from the University of Salzburg, Medical Nemesis, 1976 SJE

Advanced industrial societies have a high stake in maintaining the epistemological legitimacy of disease entities. As long as disease is something that takes possession of people , something they "catch" or

"get," the victims of these natural processes can be exempted from responsibility for their condition. They can be pitied rather than blamed for sloppy, vile, or incompetent performance in suffering their subjective reality; they can be turned into manageable and profitable assets if they humbly accept their disease as the expression of "how things are";

and they can be discharged from any political responsibility for having collaborated in increasing the sickening stress of high-intensity industry. An advanced industrial society is sick-making because it disables people from coping with their environment and, when they break down, substitutes a "clinical," or therapeutic,

prosthesis for the broken relationships. People would rebel against such an environment if medicine did not explain their biological disorientation as a defect in their health, rather than as a defect in the way of life which is imposed on them or which they impose on

themselves.33 The assurance of personal political innocence that a diagnosis offers the patient serves as a hygienic mask that justifies further subjection to production and consumption.

2NC – AT: Bioterror Threat RealEmpirically bioterrorism and its potential for epidemics and disease pandemics have served as the justification to demarcate entire populations, pushing them to the margins, resulting in unending, perpetual stigma and violence- the impact has global racial impacts- SARs provesEichelberger 07

(Laura, University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, Social Science and Medicine, “SARS and New York's Chinatown: The politics of risk and blame during an epidemic of fear,” 2007, Science Direct) //jdi-mm

Most studies of SARS coverage document that mainstream Western media sensationalized “the world war against SARS” (US News & World Report, May 5, 2003) and painted a grim picture of a deadly disease that threatened national borders (cf. Bergeron & Sanchez, 2005; Person, Sy, Holton, Govert, & Liang, 2004; Schram, 2003; Washer, 2004;

Wilson, Thomson, & Mansoor, 2004). Several noted that this sensationalization resulted in the stigmatization of Asians around the world (Person et al., 2004; Schram, 2003), and poor care for those suspected of carrying SARS (Karlberg & Lai, 2003). Wallis and Nerlich (2005) provide a detailed review of the metaphors used throughout the epidemic in British media. They conclude that the usual stigmatizing metaphors and militaristic language were largely absent, perhaps marking a shift in how the media covers disease. In contrast, Washer's study (2004), which samples only articles from March 2003, identifies many instances of othering directed toward Chinese people. My review of American media coverage throughout 2003 more closely mirrors Washer's data. As I will illustrate in the subsequent section, understanding the media's role in risk perception requires identifying the media discourses contained in individuals’ explanations of risk and precautionary measures, and connecting these to the local historical and political-economic context. Though the media

identified many factors that contributed to the epidemic, I argue that othering discourses that fit personal experience and local

concerns have more influence on social responses during a frightening epidemic. In American mainstream media, discourses of risk and blame reflected heightened fears of foreign threats to national health and security. Indeed, since the 9/11 attacks, metaphors of the diseased immigrant “Other” have increased

(Fairchild, 2004). When the epidemic was identified in mid-March 2003, Americans were in the midst of debates over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. News media abounded with stories of “Dr. Germ's” bio-weapons and smallpox vaccines for military and medical personnel. The public was primed for a frightening epidemic of foreign origin. China was defined as a diseased threat to the modern healthy world. Descriptions of SARS's origin echoed those of the early 1900s that blamed the plague on the Chinese rice-centered diet (Edelson, 2003) and agricultural practices such as “the promiscuous manner in which the cattle, fowls, and domestic animals are permitted to live in close association with human beings” (Simpson, 1905, p. 177). Almost identical descriptions identified Chinese farms as culpable for SARS: Pigs, ducks, chickens and people live cheek-by-jowl on the district's primitive farms, exchanging flu and cold

germs so rapidly that a single pig can easily incubate human and avian viruses simultaneously. (Newsweek 5/5/2003) The solution to infection thus becomes cultural change, as evidenced by this quote from Newsweek in December of 2003, when the world was waiting to see if the epidemic would re-emerge: One thing China hasn’t learned from its SARS experience is that its eating habits—particularly the taste for freshly killed meat—might have to change. Scientists found that civets, a cat-size creature and a local delicacy, can harbor the SARS virus…This winter the battle will be shaping up between China's tradition and the world's safety. (Newsweek, 12/8/2003, pg. 79) Scientists are still debating the origin of SARS—some believe that it may have originated from horseshoe bats (Li et al., 2005). Although how the virus jumps species is unclear, the press still explained this new finding through the lens of culture: In Asia, many people eat bats or use bat feces in traditional medicine for asthma, kidney ailments and general malaise. (New York Times, 9/30/05, emphasis added.) Some cultural factors do

facilitate the spread of disease. However, the focus on “tradition” obfuscates the many political and economic factors that create at-risk populations, as well as the “modern” Western practices that contribute to emerging infectious diseases and antibiotic resistance (Weiss & McMichael, 2004). At the same time, they provide a sense of security and control by identifying a responsible “primitive” Other (Joffe, 1999) while asserting Western superiority .

Be skeptical of their impacts – the medical industrial must maintain the threat of outbreak to exempt themselves from responsibility and justify ever-increasing consumptionIllich 76Ivan, Ph.D from the University of Salzburg, Medical Nemesis, 1976 SJE

Advanced industrial societies have a high stake in maintaining the epistemological legitimacy of disease entities. As long as disease is something that takes possession of people , something they "catch" or

"get," the victims of these natural processes can be exempted from responsibility for their condition. They can be pitied rather than blamed for sloppy, vile, or incompetent performance in suffering their subjective reality; they can be turned into manageable and profitable assets if they humbly accept their disease as the expression of "how things are";

and they can be discharged from any political responsibility for having collaborated in increasing the sickening stress of high-intensity industry. An advanced industrial society is sick-making because it disables people from coping with their environment and, when they break down, substitutes a "clinical," or therapeutic,

prosthesis for the broken relationships. People would rebel against such an environment if medicine did not explain their biological disorientation as a defect in their health, rather than as a defect in the way of life which is imposed on them or which they impose on

themselves.33 The assurance of personal political innocence that a diagnosis offers the patient serves as a hygienic mask that justifies further subjection to production and consumption.

2NC – AT: No Impact The impact is empirically proven- plague reps have been used throughout history as a justification to marginalize and otherizeWasher 05

(Peter, Social Science and Medicine, Academic Centre for Medical Education, University College London, “Representations of mad cow disease,” 2005, Science Direct) /jdi-mm

The motivation for the choice of existing concepts is primarily to do with identity protection, which refers simultaneously to the protection of

the in-group and self-identity (and to building its cohesion by negatively identifying the ‘other’ from it). Notions of risk and blame are

therefore used to construct boundaries between self and ‘other’, with misfortunes understood to be the price paid by people who are bad, dirty, bizarre, promiscuous; people who are ‘not like us’. Joffe's work draws

on that of the cultural anthropologist Mary Douglas. For Douglas (1992), the same blaming mechanisms are evident when we ‘moderns’ are faced with a new threat as there are in so-called ‘primitive’ societies. When a new disease appears, boundaries are constructed between ‘self’ and ‘other’ which function to apportion blame.

Therefore the people in the category of ‘other’ are seen as responsible for the genesis of the disease; and/or for bringing it on themselves; and/or it's spread, because they are portrayed, for example, as dirty; because they eat disgusting food; have bizarre rituals and customs; or because they are sexually perverted or promiscuous ( Douglas, 1992). In this risk/blame model, ‘foreigners’, or already marginalised out-groups from within a society, are blamed for new epidemics of diseases. The model works well to explain many different epidemics, both modern and historical. There is a large body of literature on how different groups are blamed for so-called ‘emerging infectious diseases’. See, for example, Watney (1987), Sabatier (1988), Joffe and Haarhoff (2002), Ungar

(1998) and Washer (2004). In this sense this risk/blame model connects with reactions to plagues stretching back through history.

2NC – AT: We =/= MisrepresentEven if you don’t misrepresent people, the media doesGreen et. al 11

(Eva, Pascal Wagner-Egger, Adrian Bangerter, Ingrid Gilles, David Rigaud, Franciska Krings, Christian Staerklé and Alain, Public Understanding of Science, “Lay perceptions of collectives at the outbreak of the H1N1 epidemic: heroes, villains and victims,” 2011, Sage Publications) //jdi-mm

Clémence, Lay perceptions of risks are dramatized on the stage of various mass media (Bauer et al., 2001),

making them more concrete and thus more real. As a special class of risk, emerging infectious diseases

(EIDs) are also subject to media dramatization, as has been documented in several studies (Ungar, 1998, 2008; Wallis and Nerlich, 2005). Who are the dramatis personae on the stage of the disease threat drama? In this article, we argue that the main actors are collectives, in other words large social systems that are constituted by demographic and cultural factors, or institutionalization based on shared values and norms (Brewer and Chen, 2007; Etzioni, 1968). These characteristics empower collectives to act as coherent units. Collectives may include nations, organizations, or even informal groups and other social categories. An analysis of the social history of disease outbreaks supports the

idea of collectives as actors. For example, in many cases, nations, not individuals, are depicted as being threatened by disease. Thus, disease spreads from one nation to another, much as the Black Death plague advanced through Europe from Asia in the Middle Ages and avian influenza advanced through Europe some years ago. Nations can seal their borders to outsiders or block imports of contaminated foreign foodstuffs, as many

did with British beef in the wake of the BSE scare. Many other collectives are actors. There are political authorities, who act to

contain the disease, initiate public health measures or disseminate disease-relevant information. There are private corporations like pharmaceutical companies who manufacture vaccines and drugs for a profit. And there are groups defined by ethnicity, sexual orientation and other dimensions, who are often perceived as vulnerable to disease threat or as carriers of disease. For example, in the history of AIDS, gays, intravenous drug users, prostitutes and scientists have variously shared the dubious honour of being originators or propagators of the disease in the public eye (Joffe,

1999; Kalichman, 2009). Finally, all of these collectives are orchestrated through depictions in the mass media.

Although the media have classically been treated as an “invisible environment” (Glessing and White, 1976), i.e.,

as part of the scenery, increasing evidence suggests they are perceived by the public as key characters in the drama. Such perceptions are not inconsequential epiphenomena, because the symbolism with which collectives are construed has cognitive, affective and behavioural consequences. Social psychological research shows that trust in institutions constitutes an important psychological buffer against anxiety caused by fear of death (Solomon, Greenberg and Pyszczynski, 1991) or loss of control (Kay et al., 2009), both feelings often associated with a sudden disease outbreak. Traumatic collective events can lead individuals to increase trust in institutions (Chanley, 2002), while individuals’ distrust of institutions like health authorities is associated with various forms of risky health behaviour (e.g., Bird and Bogart, 2005). Despite the importance of collectives as actors in the drama of EIDs, little systematic attention has been devoted to their study. In this article, we investigate collectives mentioned by Swiss laypersons at the outbreak of the H1N1 (“swine flu”) pandemic in May 2009 and the themes associated with them. Before describing our study, we review research on lay perceptions of disease threat and on individuals’ symbolic relationship to collectives in times of crisis.

2NC – AT: Simulation GoodSimulation and prediction of a viral apocalypse relies heavily on low-probability modeling that is epistemically suspect. Their policy simulation renders the entire global population to bare lifeLisa Keränen (Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado, Denver) 2011 [“Concocting Viral Apocalypse: Catastrophic Risk and the Production of Bio(in)security” Western Journal of Communication Vol. 75, No. 5, October–December 2011, pp. 451–472, loghry]

‘‘Readers should imagine the possibilities [of attack] for themselves, because the most serious constraint on current policy is lack of imagination,’’ declared the Catastrophic Terrorism report in 1998 (Carter et al., 1998a, p. 5). This statement indexes the growing role of anticipatory imagining (Vogel, 2008) in biopreparedness efforts. As I have written elsewhere (Kera¨nen, 2008, 2011b), simulation and spectacle (Baudrillard, 1983, 1994=2004) comprise key mechanisms that make concrete the otherwise invisible threat of biological weapons across a wide swath of political, technical, and cultural 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.3 As 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 containment (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 breakdown conclude in desolated daytime streets and despairing citizens. Films such as the 2003 biothriller 28 Days Later (MacDonald & Boyle, 2002) and its equally haunting sequel 28 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 in I Am Legend (Goldsman et al. & Lawrence, 2007), a remake of the Cold War–era Omega 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 cited Foreign Affairs essay, ‘‘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 epidemics 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 residents. 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), the Atlantic Storm tabletop 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 the International Herald Tribune, the exercise ‘‘destructive and disruptive as it was—could have been much worse’’ (Hamilton & O’Toole, 2005). That the outcomes of their fictional scenario could have 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 mandated by the Clinton Administration (see Erickson & Barratt, 2004). Each TOPOFF exercise entailed at least 2 years of planning and more than 10,000 volunteers representing 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.

2NC – AT: Discourse =/= FirstDiscourse first – speech acts that legitimize security create the only scenario for extinctionJohn Collins, Ass. Prof. of Global Studies at St. Lawrence, and Ross Glover, Visiting Professor of Sociology at St. Lawrence University, 2002, Collateral Language, p. 6-7

The Real Effects of Language

As any university student knows, theories about the “social construction” and social effects of language have become a common feature of academic scholarship. Conservative critics often argue that those who use these theories of language (e.g., deconstruction) are “just” talking about language, as opposed to talking about the “real world.” The essays in this book, by contrast, begin from the premise that language matters in the most concrete, im mediate way possible: its use, by political and military leaders, leads directly to violence in the form of war, mass murder (in cluding genocide), the physical destruction of human commu nities, and the devastation of the natural environment . Indeed, if the world ever witnesses a nuclear holocaust, it will probably be because leaders in more than one country have succeeded in convincing their people, through the use of political language, that the use of nuclear weapons and, if necessary, the destruction of the earth itself, is justifiable . From our perspective, then, every act of political violence —from the horrors perpetrated against Native Americans to the murder of political dissidents in the So viet Union to the destruction of the World Trade Center, and now the bombing of Afghanistan— is intimately linked with the use of language . ¶ Partly what we are talking about here, of course, are the processes of “ manufacturing consent” and shaping people’s per ception of the world around them; people are more likely to sup port acts of violence committed in their name if the recipients of the violence have been defined as “terrorists,” or if the violence is presented as a defense of “freedom.” Media analysts such as Noam Chomsky have written eloquently about the corrosive effects that this kind of process has on the political culture of supposedly democratic societies. At the risk of stating the obvious, however, the most fundamental effects of violence are those that are visited upon the objects of violence; the language that shapes public opinion is the same language that burns villages, besieges entire populations, kills and maims human bodies, and leaves the ground scarred with bomb craters and littered with land mines. As George Orwell so famously illustrated in his work, acts of violence can easily be made more palatable through the use of euphemisms such as “pacification” or, to use an example discussed in this book, “targets.” It is important to point out, however, that the need for such language derives from the simple fact that the violence itself is abhorrent. Were it not for the abstract language of “vital interests” and “surgical strikes” and the flattering lan - guage of “civilization” and ‘just” wars, we would be less likely to avert our mental gaze from the physical effects of violence.

2NC – AT: Framework – Serial Policy FailureTheir framework results in serial policy failure Biswas 7 (Shampa, Professor of Politics – Whitman College, “Empire and Global Public Intellectuals: Reading Edward Said as an International Relations Theorist”, Millennium, 36(1), p. 117-125)

The most serious threat to the ‘ intellectual vocation’ , he argues, is ‘professionalism’ and mounts a pointed attack on the

proliferation of ‘specializations’ and the ‘ cult of expertise’ with their focus on ‘relatively narrow areas of knowledge’, ‘technical

formalism’, ‘impersonal theories and methodologies’ , and most worrisome of all, their ability and willingness to be seduced by power.17 Said mentions in this context the funding of academic programmes and research which came out of the exigencies of the Cold War18, an area in which there was considerable traffic of political scientists (largely trained as IR and comparative politics scholars) with institutions of policy-making. Looking at various influential US academics as ‘organic intellectuals’ involved in a dialectical relationship with foreign policy-makers and examining the institutional relationships at and among numerous think tanks and universities that create convergent perspectives and interests, Christopher Clement has studied US intervention in the Third World both during and after the Cold War made

possible and justified through various forms of ‘intellectual articulation’.19 This is not simply a matter of scholars working for the state, but indeed a larger question of intellectual orientation . It is not uncommon for IR scholars to feel the need to formulate their scholarly conclusions in terms of its relevance for global politics, where ‘relevance’ is measured entirely in terms of policy wisdom . Edward Said’s searing indictment of US intellectuals – policy-experts and Middle East experts - in the context of the first Gulf War20 is certainly even more resonant in the contemporary context preceding and following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The space for a critical appraisal of the motivations and conduct of this war has been considerably diminished by the expertise-framed national

debate wherein certain kinds of ethical questions irreducible to formulaic ‘for or against’ and ‘costs and benefits’ analysis can simply not be raised . In effect, what Said argues for, and IR scholars need to pay particular heed to, is an

understanding of ‘intellectual relevance’ that is larger and more worthwhile, that is about the posing of critical, historical, ethical and perhaps unanswerable questions rather than the offering of recipes and solutions , that is about politics (rather than techno-expertise) in the most fundamental and important senses of the vocation.21

2NC – AT: Language Doesn’t MatterLanguage creates, reaffirms and empowers hegemonic institutions while excluding other forms of knowledge. Nimmer 11

[Livio Nimmer, Master's student in the University of Tartu,ENDC Proceedings, “DE-CONTEXTUALIZATION IN THE ¶ TERRORISM DISCOURSE:¶ A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST VIEW”, ¶ Volume 14, 2011, pp. 223–240.¶

http://www.ksk.edu.ee/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/KVUOA_Toimetised_14_10_livio_nimmer.pdf, \\wyo-bb]

Norms and institutions are not things existing objectively out there, but ¶ are created in and by particular communities that exist in particular contexts . ¶ And these institutions again shape those communities. There are no objective ¶ measures of good or bad, right or wrong. Rather what is considered to be good ¶ or bad, right or wrong depends on what viewpoint one takes. Our perception of reality depends on the

community one identifies oneself with. Norms ¶ and institutions change with time, taking multiple forms in different contexts. ¶ What might seem right in one community might be wrong in another; what is ¶ considered normal for one community might be

abnormal to another. In sum, ¶ different communities have different sets of norms, goals and aspirations. ¶ Language has an important role in creating worlds that communities identify themselves with. Language functions as an instrument for creating, normalizing and reinforcing particular worldviews , affixing certain knowledge ¶ and institutions in society; at the same time alternative worldviews and ¶ knowledge are excluded and de-legitimatized. Through language identities ¶ are created and maintained, and as such, language is never neutral. Groups ¶ struggling for power and trying to reaffirm their identities use language to ¶ create and maintain a hegemonic regime of truth .18

Discourse shapes reality- Engenders solutions, problems and invoke social history Jackson 05

[Richard Jackson, Lecturer in International Security at The University of Manchester, “Language power and politics: critical discourse analysis and the War on Terrorism”, 49th Parallel, 2005, http://www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/back/issue15/jackson1.htm#_edn1,\\wyo-bb]

Second, language plays an active role in creating and changing perceptions , cognition and emotions . As

something particularly human, language moulds how we see the world; it is the main determinant of our perceptions and our access to concrete reality . From knowing the difference between an apple and a hand grenade, to

knowing what to do with each in relevant situations, language shapes our understanding of the world around us.[9]

More than affecting perceptions, language also structures cognition—it affects the way we think, and particularly how we make strategic choices . By using a restricted set of words and word formations, some choices can appear perfectly reasonable and commonsensical while others appear absurd. Expressed another way, the language we use at any given moment privileges one viewpoint over others, naturalising some understandings as rational and others as nonsensical.[10] As a consequence, language also affects our emotions . It is in an important sense, the place where our psychic and social lives intersect. Certain

words or combinations of words can make us feel anxious, fearful, angry or joyful. This generates immense power for those that deploy them. Politicians , propagandists and advertisers have known this for a long time , and in fact, we see it almost every day in people’s reactions to the use of certain words in the media, such as

‘paedophile’ , ‘AIDS’, ‘ humanitarian disaster’ , ‘murder’, ‘ weapons of mass destruction’ and ‘terrorist’ . ¶

¶ A third reason why words cannot be considered neutral is because words have histories. In themselves , words have no inherent meaning ; rather, they have to acquire meaning in their own discursive setting.[11] The process by which words obtain meaning is often lengthy and takes place through repetition and their careful and selective use in specific contexts. For example, the use of the terms ‘civilised’ and ‘barbarous’ cannot avoid invoking the history of these words as they were applied by Christian Europe in the Middle Ages, and by imperialists and colonists in the nineteenth century. There is a history to their meaning that affects their usage in a contemporary context. In other cases, words can take

on new meanings through specific forms of usage.[12] Because words have histories, the act of naming things is always a highly charged process that can have serious political and social consequences. This effect of naming is especially powerful in terms of political violence because, for example, to ‘call an act of political violence terrorist is not merely to describe it but to judge it.’[13] Consider the difference between calling the killing of an abortion doctor ‘a murder’ and calling it ‘an act of terrorism’ ; the two names for the same act have very contrasting meanings and would likely elicit very different responses from both the public and the authorities . ¶ ¶ The methodological approach I have employed to examine the official language of the ‘war on terrorism’ is known broadly as critical discourse analysis. This approach is at once both a technique for analysing specific texts or speech acts, and a way of understanding the relationship between discourse and social and political phenomena. By engaging in concrete, linguistic textual analysis—that is, by doing systematic analyses of spoken and written language—critical discourse analysis aims to shed light on the links between texts and societal practices and structures, or, the linguistic-discursive dimension of social action.[14]¶ ¶ The approach is based on a

number of crucial assumptions. It assumes that discourse is a form of social practice which both makes or constitutes the social world, and is at the same time constituted by other social practices. Discourses both contribute to the shaping of social structures and are also shaped by them; there is a dialectical relationship between the two. Of even greater import, critical discourse analysis assumes that discursive practices are never

neutral, but rather they contribute to the creation and reproduction of unequal power relations between social groups. That is, discourses possess a clear ideological character; they are the construction and deployment of ‘meaning in the service of power. ’[ 15] Or, more specifically, discourses act as constructions of meaning that contribute to the production, reproduction

and transformation of relations of domination in society.[16] Thus, a central aim of critical discourse analysis lies in revealing the means by which language is deployed to maintain power. What makes critical discourse analysis ‘critical’ is its normative commitment to positive social change.

Language is key when discussing disease/pandemicsBeemer 11

(Jeffrey, University of Massachusetts, Dissertation, “Social Meanings of Mortality: The Language of

Death and Disease in 19th Century Massachusetts,” 2011, http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1425&context=open_access_dissertations) //jdi-mm

Language exhibits its social significance by drawing distinctions that divide the world into manageable pieces. It reduces complexity by distinguishing one thing from another, it provides a shared framework for meaningful discourse, and it regulates our interactions in predictable and acceptable ways. We use language to identify objects and events against a backdrop of other objects and events, to coherently express ourselves under presumptions of mutual understanding, and to coordinate everyday

interactions through shared expectations. Language also functions as a means for expressing difference, disagreement, and for generating conflict. But even within such divergent or oppositional modes, language never abandons its

integrative role because it can never do so. Using language to mark difference or shatter boundaries can only be accomplished by conversely denoting sameness and establishing limits – to exclude on the one hand is to include

on the other. Language use, whether integrative or oppositional in practice, inherently imposes order on our experiences. It is the means by which we classify ordinary interactions, objects and events as self-evident, invisible configurations. Pierre Bourdieu (1984, 470) speaks of our "sense of limits" and "principles of division" as internalized cognitions that are forgotten but nevertheless reproduced in our everyday experiences. In whatever fashion we use language, we use it from within communities of language practitioners where meaning and identities emerge as a result of such communicative, self-evident practices. Medicine like any other profession defines itself through its communicative practices. The professionals who carry out those practices use language to distinguish their activities from other professionals and nonprofessionals alike. Professional identities depend on carving out proprietary boundaries that mark distinctions which extend beyond the practitioners themselves, e.g., teacher/student, priest/parishioner,

doctor/patient, and so on. Consequently, all professions are understandably jealous of their distinctions. As Paul Starr notes, "Doctors and other professionals have a distinctive basis of legitimacy that lends strength to their authority. They claim authority, not as individuals, but as members of a community that has objectively validated their competence" (Starr 1985, 12). Competency is a feature of collective recognition and validity. I will return to this idea in more detail in a later chapter, but for now I want to highlight Starr's point that professional authority rests not on an individual's demonstrated competency

per se but on the professional community's validation of competency as a collective practice. Language functions in the same manner. Its authority as a medium for communication rests not on an individual's demonstrated competency to successfully use it but on a community's validation of competency as a collective practice. Language does its work by tying individual experiences, events, and thoughts together into a broader set of collective practices.

2NC – AT: Reps =/= FirstRepresentations are key to political coherence- makes sense of political reality Jourde 6 – Cedric Jourde * Ph.D., Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, 2002 * M.A., Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, 1996 * B.Sc., Political Science, Université de Montréal, Montréal, 1995 Hegemony or Empire?: The redefinition of US Power under George W Bush Ed. David and Grondin p. 182-3 2006

Relations between states are, at least in part, constructed upon representations. Representations are interpretative prisms through which decision-makers make sense of a political reality , through which they define and assign a subjective value to the other states and non-state actors of the international system, and through which they determine what are significant international political issues.2 For instance, officials of a given state will represent other states as 'allies', 'rivals', or simply 'insignificant', thus assigning a subjective value to these states. Such subjective categorizations often derive from representations of these states' domestic politics, which can for instance be perceived

as 'unstable*, 'prosperous', or 'ethnically divided'. It must be clear that representations are not objective or truthful depictions of reality; rather they are subjective and political ways of seeing the world, making certain things 'seen' by and significant for an actor while making other things 'unseen' and 'insignificant'.3 In

other words, they are founded on each actor's and group of actors' cognitive, cultural-social, and emotional standpoints. Being fundamentally political, representations are the object of tense struggles and tensions, as some actors or groups of actors can impose on others their own representations of the world, of what they consider to be appropriate political orders, or appropriate economic relations, while others may in turn accept, subvert

or contest these representations. Representations of a foreign political reality influence how decision-making actors will act upon that reality . In other words, as subjective and politically infused interpretations of reality, representations constrain and enable the policies that decision-makers will adopt vis-a-vis other states; they limit the courses of action that are politically thinkable and imaginable, making certain policies conceivable while relegating other policies to the realm of the unthinkable.4 Accordingly,

identifying how a state represents another state or non-state actor helps to understand how and why certain foreign policies have been adopted while other policies have been excluded. To take a now famous example, if a transnational organization is represented as a group of 'freedom fighters', such as the multi-national mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s, then military cooperation is conceivable with that organization; if on the other hand the same organization is represented as a

'terrorist network', such as Al-Qaida, then military cooperation as a policy is simply not an option. In sum. the way in which one sees, interprets and imagines the 'other* delineates the course of action one will adopt in order to deal with this 'other'.

Our discourse is key: it shapes reality and we can’t separate it from how we act.Bosworth 10

(Kai A., Macalester College, “Straws in the Wind: Race, Nature and Technoscience in Postcolonial South Dakotan Wind Power Development,” 2010, http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=envi_honors&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fstart%3D40%26q%3D%2522grid%2522%2B%2522electricity%2522%2Band%2B%2B%2522PTC%2522%2B%2522bad%2522%2B%2522politics%2522%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D0%2C51#search=%22grid%20electricity%20PTC%20bad%20politics%22)

Academic writing is a critical node in knowledge production, and thus I am cognizant of the worlds, narratives, and objects further enacted in the performance of this paper. As John Law notes, “methods, their rules, and even more methods’ practices, not only describe but also help to produce the reality that they understand” (2004, 5). There is no singular world to be solely “discovered” or “understood.” There are only multiple worlds enacted and performed. I have a responsibility to the communities which I describe and discuss. For Donna Haraway, response-ability is “a relationship crafted in intra-action through which entities, subjects and objects, come into being...Responders are themselves co-constituted in the responding” (2008, 71; see also Barad 2007). In responding to the various humans and non-humans in my story, I am constituted as subject and author. Therefore, I additionally deploy a method for response-able enactment, in order that this paper can help create space for new and diverse possibilities.

Representations are key to policy makingDoty ‘96

(Roxanne Lynn. Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representations in North-South Relations. 1996. Pg 170-171)

The political stakes raised by this analysis revolve around the question of being able to “get beyond” the representations or speak outside of the discourses that historically have constructed the North and the South. I do not believe that there are any pure alternatives by which we can escape the infinity of traces to which

Gramsci refers. Nor do I wish to suggest that we are always hopelessly imprisoned in a dominant and all-pervasive discourse. Before this question can be answered – indeed, before we can even proceed to attempt an answer – attention must be given to the politics of representation. The price that international relations scholarship pays for its inattention to the issue of representation is perpetuation of the dominant modes of making meaning and deferral of its responsibility and complicity in dominant representations.

2NC – AT: Realism Realism has gaps that destroys its explanatory ability --- recognizing social influences enriches and sustains the theoryNiarguinen 1

(Dmitri, Professor of International Relations and European Studies – Central European University, Rubikon, December, http://venus.ci.uw.edu.pl/~rubikon/forum/dmitri.htm)

Morgenthau’s state-centric theory is clearly set, but it is not to say he envisages it as being pre-destined and unchangeable. The political, cultural and strategic environment will largely determine the forms of power a state chooses to exercise, just as the types of power which feature in human relationships change over time. In addition, Realists should not be wedded to a perennial connection between interest and the nation-state which is 'a product of history, and therefore bound to disappear'[19]. Later (in 1970) Morgenthau anticipated that the forces of globalization would render the nation-state no longer valid: “the sovereign nation-state is in the process of becoming obsolete”[20]. He stresses that a final task that a theory of international relations can and must perform is to prepare the ground for a new international order radically different from that which preceded it[21]. Kenneth Waltz's neo-realism is both a critique of traditional realism and a substantial intellectual extension of a theoretical tradition which was in danger of being outflanked by rapid changes in the contours of global politics[22].

The international system (anarchy) is treated as a separate domain which conditions the behavior of all states within it. Paradoxically, with the advent of neo-realism, the scope and flexibility of Realism have significantly diminished . The theory has become deterministic, linear, and culturally poor . For neo-realists, culture and identity are (at best) derivative of the distribution of capabilities and have no independent explanatory power. Actors deploy culture and identity strategically, to further their own self-interests[23]. Nevertheless, it is wrong to assert that neo-realist perspectives do not acknowledge the importance of social facts. Gilpin has developed a compelling argument about war and change[24]. While his book is built on (micro)economic premises, he does not neglect sociological insights as necessary for understanding the context of rational behavior. "Specific interests or objectives that individuals pursue and the appropriateness of the means they employ are dependent on prevailing social norms and material environment…In

short, the economic and sociological approaches must be integrated to explain political change "[25]. Waltz was implicitly talking about identity when he argued that anarchic structures tend to produce “like units”[26]. He allows for what he calls ‘socialization’ and ‘imitation’ processes. Stephen Krasner suggested that regimes could change state interests[27]. Regimes are an area where

knowledge should be taken seriously. If regimes matter, then cognitive understanding can matter as well [28]. Realism is not necessarily about conflict; material forces may as well lead to cooperation. However, the minimalist treatment of culture and social phenomena increasingly proved neo-realism as losing ground empirically and theoretically. It was the suspicion that the international system is transforming itself culturally faster than would have been predictable from changes in military and economic capabilities that triggered the interest in problems of identity[29].

Reconstruction of the theory was vital in order to save Realism from becoming obsolete . The realization of this fact has triggered a shift in Realist thinking and gave way to the emergence of a 'constructivist' re-incarnation of Realism. Friedrich Kratochwil has once observed that no theory of culture can substitute for a theory of politics[30]. At least, nobody has ventured to accomplish

such an enterprise so far. To disregard culture in politics, it seems obvious today, is inappropriate, not to say foolish. There remain opportunity costs incurred by Realism in its asymmetric engagement with cultural phenomena. Thus, Realism , notwithstanding its concern with parsimony, should make a serious commitment to building analytical bridges which link identity- and culture-related phenomena to its explanatory apparatus (like anarchy, sovereignty, the security dilemma, self-help, and balancing)[31]. Alexander Wendt in his seminal article “Anarchy Is What States Make of It” has masterfully shown how power politics is socially constructed[32]. Salus populi supreme lex. This classical metalegal doctrine of necessity is associated with raison d’etat, the right of preservation, and self-help. Wendt is convinced that the self-help corollary to anarchy does enormous work in Realism, generating the inherently competitive dynamics of the security dilemma and collective action problem[33]. What misses the point, however, is that self-help and power politics follow either logically or causally from anarchy. They do not; rather, they are just among other institutions (albeit significant ones) possible under anarchy. Consequently, provided there is relatively stable practice, international institutions can transform state identities and interests. Let me focus on two concrete security issues - the security dilemma and nuclear deterrence - to illustrate the point. A central tenet of Realism, the security dilemma[34], arises for the situation when “one actor’s quest for security through power accumulation ... exacerbates the feelings of insecurity of another actor, who in turn will respond by accumulating power”[35]. As a result of this behavior, a vicious circle or spiral of security develops, with fear and misperception exacerbating the

situation[36]. Nevertheless, security dilemmas, as Wendt stresses, are not given by anarch y or nature[37]. Security dilemmas are constructed because identities and interests are constituted by collective meanings

which are always in process . This is why concepts of security may differ in the extent to which and the manner in which the self is identified cognitively with the other. Because deterrence is based on ideas about threat systems and conditional commitments to carry out punishment, it has proved particularly congenial to the strategic studies scholarship within the Realist tradition[38]. Deterrence is a conditional commitment to retaliate, or to exact retribution if another party fails to behave in a desired, compliant manner. Thus defined, deterrence has been invoked as the primary explanation for the non-use of nuclear weapons. The nuclear case, in contrast to chemical weapons, for example, is definitely problematic for challenging traditional deterrence theory because it is widely felt that the tremendous destructive power of thermonuclear weapons does render them qualitatively different from other weapons. Yet, the patterns of the non-use of nuclear weapons cannot be fully understood without taking into account the development of norms that shaped these weapons as unacceptable. By applying social constructivist approach, it is possible to emphasize the relationship between norms, identities, and interests and try to provide a causal explanation of how the norms affect outcomes[39]. Norms shape conceptualizations of interests through the social construction of identities. In other words, a constructivist account is necessary to get at 'what deters,' and how and why deterrence 'works' [40]. International relations

theory cannot afford to ignore norms. Demonstrating the impact of norms on the interests, beliefs, and behavior of actors in

international politics does not and must not invalidate Realism. Rather, it points to analytical blind spots and gaps

in traditional accounts . In so doing, it not only casts light into the shadows of existing theory but raises new questions as well.[41] However, with all the 'constructivist' adjustments made (which are absolutely credible), it is important to keep in mind 'pure rationalist' tools as well. Krasner points out that whenever the cost-benefit ratio indicates that breaking its rules will bring a net benefit that is what states will do[42]. Wendt introduces a correction that instrumentalism may be the attitude when states first settle on norms, and "continue(s) to be for poorly organized states down the road"[43]. States obey the law initially because they are forced to or calculate that it is in their self-interest. Some states never get beyond this point. Some do, and then obey the law because they accept its claims on them as legitimate[44]. This is truly an excellent observation. The problem here, however, could be that even when states remove the option of breaking the law from their agenda, this already implies that benefits overweight costs. And even if this is not the case, how can we know where exactly this point is, beyond which states respect law for law’s sake? Furthermore, states that supposedly have stepped over this point might break the law, when it has become least expected, if they consider this of their prime interest. Powerful illustration of this is France, which resumed its nuclear testing to the great surprise of the world[45]. Another interesting example is the case of NATO. Traditional alliance theories based on Realist thinking provide insufficient explanations of the origins, the interaction patterns, and the persistence of NATO. The 'brand new' interpretation is that the Alliance represents an institutionalized pluralistic community of liberal democracies. Democracies not only do not fight each other, they are likely to develop a collective identity facilitating the emergence of cooperative institutions for specific purposes[46]. Thus presented, old questions get revitalized. Why is NATO the strongest among the other post-Cold War security institutions – as compared to, the WEU, not even to mention the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy? Why is not the OSCE given a chance to turn into a truly pluralistic European 'Security Architecture'? Why was NATO so eager to bomb Kosovo, which was a clear breach of international law? Because it is ‘an institutionalized pluralistic community of liberal democracies’? Or yet because it is a predominantly military organization? Why do public opinion polls in Russia[47] repeatedly show that NATO is an aggressive organization (and which can also be observed in official rhetoric, as in the national security conception and the military doctrine[48])? All these questions suggest that to claim that

Realist explanation of NATO existence can be thrown into a dustbin is at minimum inappropriate. Social sciences do not evolve via scientific revolutions, as Thomas Kuhn argues is the case for the natural sciences. Not paradigm shifts but rather style and fashion changes are what characterize social science[49]. Thus posed, paradigm development promises Realism a

bright future. In this respect, recent success of constructivism has , metaphorically speaking, breathed in a new life into Realism . Realism is in much debt to constructivism for being revitalized. Yet, paying full credit to the contribution of constructivism, it should be noted that to a large extent constructivists take off from the Realist positions.

Aff Answers

2AC – No Link/Perm SolvesTheir link is describing reactionary responses to pandemics and emergencies- Aff creates a new model of decision-making that’s net better than the status quo, by create cooperation and prevention strategies- erodes uncertainty and marginalization– means perm is desirable and solves the linkSmith 06

(Richard, Health Economics Group, School of Medicine, Health Policy & Practice, Social Science and Medicine, “Responding to global infectious disease outbreaks: Lessons from SARS on the role of risk perception, communication and management,” 2006, Science Direct) //jdi-mm

Serious infectious disease outbreaks need to be identified and dealt with quickly . Adverse health and economic effects can be reduced by early detection and response . Clearly, this will require taking action before all the facts are known and investigations are completed, and thus acting on incomplete information . In this respect, a concrete development could be to invest in epidemiological and economic modelling . Indeed, there has been a recent call for the development of such an integrated epidemiological and economic modelling approach, stemming directly from the SARS outbreak (Smith, Drager, & Hardimann, 2006). Key in this development will be the integration of the impact of risk perception upon actions by actors (population, government, nations and so forth), and the effect of different

strategies on this perception, and hence action. At present little is known about how uncertainty concerning the outbreak in question, or its level of risk, affects behavioural response. For instance, how do people determine their own risk of exposure? How does this perceived risk affect behaviour? Assessment of these factors in modelling the likely impact of an outbreak is therefore

crucial. In addition, there is need for better understanding and managing of risk surrounding infectious disease outbreaks. For example, understanding the relationship between infectious disease flows and flows of goods, services and people can help decision makers assess the relative risk of and to specific countries during an outbreak . This can contribute to more informed decisions that are taken proactively, rather than reactively, prior to and during emergencies. Risk assessment can also be used to improve public communication. Research shows that some hazards or events deemed by experts as presenting a low risk

become the focus of social and political concern, or amplification (Department of Health, 2003). In other cases, where experts perceive there to be a high risk, there can sometimes be insufficient social or political concern, or attenuation (Sandman 2004). An understanding of what drives the perception of risk is therefore sorely needed.

No link- Even if the aff isn’t perfect, it doesn’t result in the same fear-mongering as status quo emergency-responses to disease outbreaks- trust in the healthcare industry fundamentally shifts the nature of disease outbreaks by focusing on prevention strategies firstSmith 06

(Richard, Health Economics Group, School of Medicine, Health Policy & Practice, Social Science and Medicine, “Responding to global infectious disease outbreaks: Lessons from SARS on the role of risk perception, communication and management,” 2006, Science Direct) //jdi-mm

There are also several other lessons for policy concerning risk and infectious disease that may be learnt from the SARS experience. First, a change in attitude from emergency responsiveness to preventive

preparedness is needed, as part of a more holistic and strategic approach to planning for infectious disease outbreaks. By definition, emergencies offer a limited timeframe for taking action, and would

thus benefit from a clear chain of command, strong coordination among relevant institutions, and strong

political leadership. Clarity of responsibility, authority and accountability during outbreaks, from local to the global

levels, is imperative for effective action. This includes institutions beyond the health sector, such as transportation, immigration, communications, finance, water and sanitation, defence, housing and education. When multiple sectors are involved, when there is scientific

uncertainty, and when the timeframe is urgent, political leadership becomes especially important. Further, when an outbreak occurs, decisions need to be taken by a diverse range of actors, from different perspectives and at varying points in the policy making process. Given the nature of public health emergencies, in terms of timeframe, potential unknowns and geographic reach, this decision making process can be complex and highly

challenging. Yet the effectiveness of the emergency response can ultimately hinge on the quality of decision-making. For example, during the SARS outbreak there were different ways of organising health controls for incoming passengers in the EU which had a negative effect on the trust placed by the public on the responsible official bodies. Such reductions in trust ‘make a

suspicious public sceptical of official health warnings’ (Pickles & Goodwin, 2006; p. 11). Effective decision-making is characterised by such features as timeliness, accuracy, appropriateness, feasibility and clarity of purpose and message. It is therefore essential to reflect on how decision-making can best be carried out during public health emergencies. Second, as a part of this decision-making process, there is a need for understanding more fully the costs and benefits of effective responses. Economic data is currently focused on direct and immediate costs, such as drugs, other interventions, health care services, to the relevant national health sector. A fuller and wider account of macroeconomic costs will underpin a more strategic approach to decision making, and contribute to more informed decisions that are taken proactively, rather than reactively, prior to and during emergencies. Although macroeconomic modelling of health issues is very novel, with only a few applications (e.g. Lee & McKibbin, 2004; Smith et al., 2005), a current European Union Framework 6 project is developing this approach, using the case of SARS (http://icadc.cordis.lu/fep-cgi/srchidadb?CALLER=FP6_PROJ&ACTION=D&RCN=73835&DOC=5&CAT=PROJ&QUERY=1). Work such as this is required to provide the foundations for recommending how such economic information may best be assessed and best incorporated in to the decision-making process for outbreak response. Third, SARS demonstrated the importance of a worldwide surveillance and response capacity to address emerging risks through

timely reporting, rapid communication and evidence-based action (Greaves, 2004). Since international infectious disease outbreaks may arise in resource poor countries, international agencies and wealthy countries must be encouraged to support policies, mechanisms and technologies that help resource poor countries to tackle these threats, whilst at the same time ensuring that national public health priorities are not distorted. One clear lesson from SARS and other outbreaks is the need for a more effective incentive system to encourage countries to notify these outbreaks. Fourth, it will be critical to ensure that interventions respect public health ethics and fundamental human rights. Many

of the public health measures used during the SARS outbreaks, especially isolation and quarantine, may conflict with certain human rights. In order to plan a response to global infectious disease outbreaks it will therefore be important to consider a range of issues concerning the nexus between containment and human freedoms. For example, taking isolation and quarantine, there needs to be consideration of the level of transparency with which such policies are enacted and enforced, proportionality in the imposition of these policies compared with the benefits they offer and the assurance of a safe and habitable environment

for persons subject to these measures (Gostin, Bayer, & Fairchild, 2003). Finally, SARS emphasised the importance of communications with domestic and international policy makers, financial markets, the travel industry and other key sectors. However, perhaps the most important lesson from SARS was the importance of effective communication to the public. For example, social cohesion and compliance with quarantine in Toronto may be attributed to, at least in part, clear communication and practical guidance by authorities (Health Canada, 2003). However, the constant coverage by the press, and the manner with which some of the travel advisories were handled, were linked by some to ‘over reaction’ (Gatehouse, 2003; Hurst, 2003; Lam & Hong, 2003). It is therefore important in the future to accompany

advisories with educational messages designed to help the public understand the risks of infection, and an appropriate response. To assist this there is a need for research to identify how the public responds to such a public health threat and what may be done to better manage this.

2AC – Disease Threats RealNew emerging diseases are real and proliferating rapidly- the alternative doesn’t account for new diseases. Only the affirmative takes steps towards resolving disease pandemics growing in the most marginalized populationsSinger 09

(Merill, Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, “Pathogens Gone Wild? Medical Anthropology and the “Swine Flu” Pandemic,” 2009, Taylor and Francis) //jdi-mm

The anthropological study of epidemics, as Lindenbaum (2001:380) observed, “provides a unique point of entry for examining the relationships among cultural assumptions, particular institutional forms, and states of mind.” At the same time, it offers a window on the underlying structures of social relationship within and across group boundaries, including the mechanisms used to sustain complex social architectures of inequality over time. In this, it is clear that in addition to the existence of a microbiopolitics, in which, as Paxson (2008:16) argued, social disagreements “over how to live with microorganisms reflect disagreement about how humans ought live with one another,” there is also a macrobiopolitics in which the cultural construction of infectious disease reflects structures and contestations in human social relationships. These dual and mutually influencing biopolitical processes are of particular note of late in that the enduring threat from infectious diseases creates a world very different from the one imaged 50 years ago by many health experts. As Binder et al. (1999:1311) indicated, the

widespread optimism in developed countries after World War II that “good sanitation, vaccines, and antimicrobial agents would conquer infectious diseases” was followed “by ominous developments, such as the recognition of the extent of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the resurgence of diseases such as tuberculosis.” Globally , in fact, infectious diseases remain the leading cause of death almost ten years into the 21st century, and even in highly developed nations like the United States infections rank third among causes of mortality . Moreover, the danger posed by infectious agents has been growing. There has, for example, been a mounting concern among public health officials, health care providers, and the general public about an increasingly long list of “emerging diseases.” The discovery of new pathogens, some of which are already widespread in human populations by the time they are recognized, is now occurring at a rapid pace. On average, three new human infectious diseases are identified every two years, with a new pathogen being reported in the health literature every week. One indicator of the level of attention now being given to the new “killer germs” is the launch by Springer Publishing Company of a book series titled Emerging Infectious Diseases of the 21st Century with ten new titles. Of historic note, the series editor is I. W. Fong, Chief of Infectious Disease at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, a facility that during the SARS epidemic of 2003 (which caused 43 deaths in Toronto and cost the city about 15% of its annual economy) was forced to cancel all elective surgery for three months. As a consequence of the lingering memory of this frightening experience, which “created an air of anxiety” at St. Michael's (Sullivan 2004), the hospital quickly posted on its Web site a reassuring message informing would-be patients that the current swine flu outbreak “is not SARS” and that St. Michael's is “taking every precaution to ensure the health and safety” of patients, staff, and students. Similar reassurances have been issued by many hospitals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, state and provincial health departments, ministries of health, and

the President of the United States (while asking Congress for an increase of $1.5 billion in influenza-related funding). Truly we live in a time of perplexing vulnerability and high anxiety. From a crashing global economy linked in part to the self-serving deeds of corporate criminals, to shadowy bomb-wielding terrorists, to would-be pirates on the high seas, to raging microbes, there are enemies at the gate everywhere we look. It bears asking: Are these phenomena linked together in some fashion—by underlying cultural assumptions, social practices, and particular states of mind, as Lindenbaum might suggest—or do they represent a mere temporal coincidence? From the perspective of anthropology, the current rapid appearance and spread of emerging diseases among human populations (as well as other challenges we face) appears in no small part to be a consequence of major environmental changes like deforestation and reforestation, intensification of agriculture, dam construction and irrigation, housing and road building, concentration of people in overcrowded and densely packed cities, the fast-paced movement of people around the planet, the global reorganization of food production following an industrial model, the development of pathogenic resistance to

overused and misused antibiotics, unregulated and unsustainable economic activities, and global climate change. Because all of these anthropogenic global changes are expected to continue and even to accelerate in coming years, the threat of new and renewed pathogens is significant, particularly in developing nations, where

comorbid old and new infectious diseases are common; immunohealth may be compromised by dietary deficiencies, prior infection, and stress; and health prevention and intervention infrastructures are weakest. So too with the poor of rich countries, people who often experience a novel infection as yet another encounter with a prevailing pattern of socially produced health disparities. In short, while emergent pathogens are components of nature, their appearance among humans and their health and social impacts are mediated by microsocial processes embedded within large-scale inegalitarian social

structures and their environment-shaping influences. Thus, so-called risk behaviors, common targets of epidemiological response to the spread of disease, are shaped by social environments and relationships more so than they are products of individual acts, attitudes, and understandings. Moreover, as seen in the HIV/AIDS pandemic, social and biomedical responses, from stigmatization to the inadequate allocation of intervention resources, reflect underlying social patterns and socially constituted attitudes. Consequently, in a world in which pathogens seemingly have gone wild (i.e., act in ways that frustrate human initiative and desire), a field like medical anthropology that brings unifying biosocial and micro-/macrobiopolitical perspectives to the on-the-ground examination of social and contextual factors in health may be of particular value. It is in this light that we can ask: What can medical anthropology bring to the (epidemiologically titled) novel strain H1N1 influenza A (popularly named “swine flu”) pandemic? The answer, I suggest, involves three responses: (1) field monitoring of the pandemic as a biosocial phenomenon; (2) assessment of the biosocial origins and ongoing social influences on the pandemic; and (3) research-based and culturally informed involvement in public health applications.

2AC – Simulation GoodBioterror simulations are good – engender new epistemologies and practices that help protect the population against any future crises Melanie Armstrong (B.A., Communications, Brigham Young University, 2001 M.A., Telecommunications, Ohio University, 2003 Ph.D., American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2011) December 2011 [“BIO+TERROR: SCIENCE, SECURITY, SIMULATION” DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy American Studies @The University of New Mexico, loghry]

In order for citizens to do their work to ready themselves for the catastrophe, the uncertain future threat must be brought into a space where it can be acted upon in the present. Large-scale simulations create the crisis in the present moment, not only staging a rehearsal, but teaching participants what their roles should be during the imagined future event. These simulations have consequence , for they will shape how future incidents are understood and managed.5 Furthermore, scenarios change the calculation of risk , for they produce expertise grounded in “imaginative enactment” rather than statistics and probability .6 As Collier has argued, these enactments are producing new knowledge about our ways of living in society, using an imagined future instead of a calculated past to determine what threatens our social being and how.7 The information gleaned from a scenario might be used in the same way as knowledge produced through the analysis of past events, rationalizing legislation or determining funding allocations. Unlike the insurance of risk produced through the careful study of the past, however, simulation trends towards an expansive response, one focused on increasing the capacity of the nation to respond to an ever-growing range of threats. Simulation thereby becomes a mechanism for managing the unthinkable . Because biological agents act upon individual bodies differently than chemical or nuclear weapons, planning the emergency response to a bioterrorist attack draws particular attention to the networks that constitute community. Unlike “duck and cover” or “shelter in place” guidelines which focus upon shielding the body during an attack of limited duration, the response to a biological event takes place over time as bodies are protected against disease by access to medical treatment. Bioterrorism preparedness plans largely focus upon medical infrastructure and access to bodies in order to provide medical care. Through rehearsal, planners seek to identify barriers that inhibit the flow of pharmaceuticals into the population, interactions that increase the transmission of disease, and weaknesses within the existing health infrastructure which would become critical if the system were stressed by the rapid onset of disease within the population. Further, because the bioterror attack may not be accompanied by explosions or other indicators of a violent event, there may be no immediate change of behavior at the onset of the event. Thus, the everyday interactions that define the community—the movements and meetings of individuals—must be evaluated in terms of the crisis. Not only does the scenario have the potential to identify certain behaviors as damaging to people’s ability to survive an attack, as might be the case in a nuclear simulation, but the bioterror rehearsal seeks to pinpoint certain actions which constitute the event itself, revealing behaviors that spread disease and showing how citizens essentially become the weapon through those actions. Preparedness practices rationalized through bioterrorism simulation have a particular capacity to advocate changes in the daily activities that constitute community, for these are the acts that transmit disease.

2AC – Disease Reps Gooddisease representation are crucial to cross-discipline collaboration, incorporating the best of activism, theory and politics shapes public policyNancy Tomes (History Prof. @ Stony Brook University) 2002[“Disease and Popular Culture in Early-Twentieth-Century America” American Literary History 14.4 muse, log]

Exploiting the news and entertainment potential of deadly diseases encouraged new kinds of collaborations among scientific researchers, politicians, activists, journalists, and advertisers. Powerful synergisms grew up among these five groups, so that arguments and claims made in one arena were replicated and amplified in others. Through reading in a wide range of sources, such as popular magazines, advertising agency records, and trade journals, I have eavesdropped, so to speak, on their insider conversations about how to "sell" disease. These conversations provide revealing insights into the assumptions that publishers and advertisers used to guide their coverage of infectious diseases. Although not necessarily accurate, their beliefs about what attracted or entertained the "masses" played a crucial role in shaping the flow of information and images available in popular domains of culture.

By exploring their conceptions of what made epidemics entertaining, I hope to offer more than the historian's customary gesture of insisting that phenomena considered new and unique have important precursors in the past. For theoretical as well as policy reasons, we need to better understand the underlying dynamics of cultural attention as they operate in modern consumer societies. Too often critics implicitly contrast the sad state of contemporary media and entertainment industries with some mythic [End Page 628] good old days, when supposedly the dividing lines between fiction and nonfiction, information and advertising, advocacy and objectivity were sharp and clear. But a closer look at the history of disease-related journalism, advertising, and entertainment reveals that these boundaries have never been firm. Moreover, past practices of writing about and visualizing disease risks have considerable persistence; disease templates forged at the turn of the last century continue to shape popular culture and public policy to this day. Understanding historical continuities in the selling of stories about dread disease serve to remind us how deeply the dynamics of consumer culture shape perceptions of what is—and is not—a "real problem." With that knowledge in hand, we can better comprehend our own predilections for turning epidemics into entertainments.