Making Threats

Abstract

The possibilities for biological warfare are chilling. But these possibilities should not lure us into the oversimplified notion that the threat from biowarfare grew linearly with the growth of scientific research. I have argued throughout this book that the role of experts and the construction of threat was not such a straightforward matter. Once advice was formalized, the imperative grew for experts to feed their knowledge about germ warfare into the flow of decision-making. But this knowledge was always fragile and constantly slipping from the grasp of the advisors, researchers and their patrons. As circumstances changed over time, the nature of the threat altered as a complex mixture of technical, economic, political and legal considerations combined to provide for successive changes in outlook. And even at any one time, the palpability of the threat often varied between the different groups in the policy arena.