Bioterrorism, Smallpox and Race: The Bio-Politics of Mass Vaccination
Bioterrorism, Smallpox and Race: The Bio-Politics of Mass Vaccination

Summary/Abstract: A bioterrorist attack utilising smallpox would deliberately seek to sow public panic, disrupt and discredit official institutions and shake public confidence in government (O'Toole 1999, 540). A mass vaccination approach may well be implemented in response to such an attack in the US (Henderson et al. 1999, 1282).Trust and cooperation must be present for the effective distribution of vaccines, and further, official actions will prime the conditions for future expectations and reactions(O’Toole et al. 2004, 30). This essay will outline the issues which may result from any mass vaccination policy—a political strategy which intervenes in the biological dynamics of the population, to protect against the emergent threat of smallpox at the molecular level.

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