Biosecurity in the Making: The Threats, the Aspects and the Challenge of Readiness

The explosive growth of bioeconomy and bioscience, coupled with an interconnected planet increases the potential impact of large-scale bio-events. Either causing public health threats as in epidemics or posing food security issues, from mass poisonings to large-scale starvation, such eventualities are direct threats and indirect destabilizers in a planetary context. The issue of Biosecurity thus pervades every affected aspect, from exploitations of the agro-sector and the food industry to the Public Health management, the novel therapeutic/treatment approaches, the new age of space, deep-sea and subterranean explorations and the interface with the cyber world and the massive or small-scale projection of violence. It has been present since ancient times tacitly and discreetly but only recently took its present guise, the different aspects of which are explored in this book.

Manousos E. Kambouris, BSc in Biology in 1993, 23 months military service (1993-5), PhD in Medical Molecular Mycology in 2000 and Post-Doc research in the USA (2000-2). He has been the Hellenic Police Headquarters advisor for chem/bio risks for the 2004 Olympics. He has taught in five universities and been pro bono advisor to the Commanding Officer of the Joint NBC intervention company of the Greek General Staff. He leads the Special Projects of the LaPIT in the Department of Pharmacy, Patras University.