Biologics

Peter M. Weiske, Stephen Dovers, William J. Durch and John Handmer

Chapter 5 in Re-imagining Risk and Disruption, 2026, pp 83-109 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter examines complex unbounded biologic problems (bio-CUPs), their attributional features, their problem characteristics and the challenges associated with finding, developing and deploying problem-matching (P-M) and problemic solubility (PS) treatments. The microbial actioners driving bio-CUPs not only challenge P-M and PS but adapt to and confound them with rapid, pathogen-survival-enhancing evolutionary adaptation. Within this very large topic, the chapter focuses on the recent Coronavirus Disease 2019 bio-CUP (‘Covid-19’), with introductory discussions of historical pandemics (plague, smallpox and AIDS) and cognate ‘pathogens with pandemic potential’ such as measles. It examines the 1918 Great Influenza pandemic as a background for and comparator to its examination of Covid and associated P-M and PS efforts, in particular the political and public health responses of China, the United States and the United Kingdom. The chapter also examines the health and security implications of the recent, rapid global growth in numbers of High Containment Biological Laboratories (HCBLs) and the periodic escape of infectious agents despite efforts to make such laboratories closed systems. It weighs the unsoundness of existing regimes of biological weapons control and the existential risks posed by intentionally developed bio-weapons, their effects (which are hard-to-treat by design) and their impact, if used (or fumbled into the wild), highly likely to exceed their makers’ intent.

Keywords: Pandemics; Influenza; Covid-19; Biological Threats; Laboratories (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035375264
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