The US Military and the Research and Development of the First Ebola Vaccine

Keywords: biosecurity, geopolitics, humanitarianism, militarism, global health, imperialism
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

This paper examines the entanglements of militarism, biosecurity, and medical humanitarianism that have shaped the development of the first Ebola vaccine, rVSV-ZEBOV. The vaccine was approved for use by the United States and the European Commission in 2019 and it has since been deployed as a medical humanitarian tool to contain Ebola outbreaks in sub-Saharan Africa. However, its origins can be traced to the Public Health Agency of Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory, where it was first developed in collaboration with the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases over fears around the use of Ebola as a biological weapon. During the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, the disease’s rapid spread prompted the first clinical trials for the vaccine on human subjects, which were carried out by the US Army’s Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. In this paper, I explore the US military’s pivotal role in developing rVSV-ZEBOV. In doing so, I examine how military and biosecurity logics have guided the vaccine’s research and development. The vaccine’s development is indicative of the almost symbiotic relationship between militarism and medicine, where biological impediments to war have spurred medical developments, which have in turn further enabled violent practices of war. Though rVSV-ZEBOV has been deployed in humanitarian responses, it is not simply an apolitical medical technology. Situating the vaccine in colonial legacies of tropical and military medicine, I argue that its development was driven by geopolitical motivations and that it was created to enable the conditions for military force projection globally.