Ethnic bioweapon
Encyclopedia
An ethnic bioweapon aims to harm only or primarily persons of specific ethnicities or genotype
Genotype
The genotype is the genetic makeup of a cell, an organism, or an individual usually with reference to a specific character under consideration...

s.

History of ethnic bioweapons

One of the first fictional discussions of ethnic weapons is in Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...

's 1942 novel Sixth Column
Sixth Column
Sixth Column, also known under the title The Day After Tomorrow, is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, based on a story by editor John W. Campbell, and set in a United States that has been conquered by the PanAsians, a combination of Chinese and Japanese...

(republished as The Day After Tomorrow) in which a race-specific radiation
Radiation
In physics, radiation is a process in which energetic particles or energetic waves travel through a medium or space. There are two distinct types of radiation; ionizing and non-ionizing...

 weapon is used against a so-called "Pan-Asian
Pan-Asianism
Pan-Asianism is an ideology or a movement that Asian nations unite and solidify and create a continental identity to defeat the designs of the Western nations to perpetuate hegemony.-Japanese Asianism:...

" invader.

Genetic weapon

In 1997, U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen
William Cohen
William Sebastian Cohen is an author and American politician from the U.S. state of Maine. A Republican, Cohen served as Secretary of Defense under Democratic President Bill Clinton.-Early life and education:...

 referred to the concept as a possible risk. In 1998 some biological weapon experts considered such a "genetic weapon" a plausible possibility, and believed the former Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 had undertaken some research on the influence of various substances on human genes.

The possibility of a "genetic bomb" is presented in Vincent Sarich
Vincent Sarich
- Biography :Born in Chicago, he received a bachelor of science in chemistry from Illinois Institute of Technology and his masters and doctorate in anthropology from University of California, Berkeley...

's and Frank Miele
Frank Miele
Frank Miele is an American journalist and senior editor at Skeptic. He is best known for his controversial advocacy of hereditarian hypotheses about race, especially race and intelligence....

's book, Race: The Reality of Human Differences, published in 2004. The authors believe that information from the Human Genome Project
Human Genome Project
The Human Genome Project is an international scientific research project with a primary goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA, and of identifying and mapping the approximately 20,000–25,000 genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional...

 will be used in just such a manner.

In 2005 the official view of the International Committee of the Red Cross
International Committee of the Red Cross
The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. States parties to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005, have given the ICRC a mandate to protect the victims of international and...

 was "The potential to target a particular ethnic group with a biological agent is probably not far off. These scenarios are not the product of the ICRC's imagination but have either occurred or been identified by countless independent and governmental experts."

Israeli "ethno-bomb" controversy

In November 1998, The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...

reported that Israel was attempting to build an "ethno-bomb" containing a biological agent that could specifically target genetic traits present amongst Arab populations. Wired News
Wired News
Wired News is an online technology news website, formerly known as HotWired, that split off from Wired magazine when the magazine was purchased by Condé Nast Publishing in the 1990s. Wired News was owned by Lycos not long after the split, until Condé Nast purchased Wired News on July 11, 2006...

also reported the story, as did Foreign Report.

The article was quickly denounced as a hoax. Microbiologists and geneticists were skeptical towards the scientific plausibility of such a biological agent. The New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...

, describing the claims as "blood libel
Blood libel
Blood libel is a false accusation or claim that religious minorities, usually Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays...

", reported that the likely source for the story was a work of science fiction by Israeli academic Doron Stanitsky. Stanitsky had sent his completely fictional work about such a weapon to Israeli newspapers two years before. The article also noted the views of genetic researchers who claimed the idea as "wholly fantastical", still others admit that the weapon was theoretically possible.

A planned second installment of the article never appeared, and no sources were ever identified. Neither of the authors of the Sunday Times story, Uzi Mahnaimi
Uzi Mahnaimi
Uzi Mahnaimi is an Israeli-born journalist. He is a Middle East correspondent for the London-based The Sunday Times. He is best known for providing an array of exclusive and topical stories about the Middle East.-References:...

 and Marie Colvin, have spoken publicly on the matter.

Russian ban on export of biological samples

In May 2007, Russian newspaper Kommersant
Kommersant
Kommersant is a commerce-oriented newspaper published in Russia. , the circulation was 131,000.- History :The newspaper was initially published in 1909, and it was closed down following the Bolshevik seizure of power and the introduction of censorship in 1917.In 1989, with the onset of press...

reported that the Russian government banned all exports of human biosamples.
The report claims that the reason for the ban was a secret FSB
FSB (Russia)
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the main domestic security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency of the Soviet Committee of State Security . Its main responsibilities are counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and...

 report about on-going development of "genetic bioweapons" targeting Russian population by Western institutions. The report mentions the Harvard School of Public Health
Harvard School of Public Health
The Harvard School of Public Health is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Area of the Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Mission Hill, which is next to Harvard Medical School. HSPH is considered a significant school focusing on health in the...

, American International Health Alliance, United States Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division
United States Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division
The U.S. Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division is one of seven litigating components of the United States Department of Justice...

, Karolinska Institutet
Karolinska Institutet
Karolinska institutet is a medical university in Solna within the Stockholm urban area, Sweden, and one of Europe's largest medical universities...

 and United States Agency for International Development
United States Agency for International Development
The United States Agency for International Development is the United States federal government agency primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid. President John F. Kennedy created USAID in 1961 by executive order to implement development assistance programs in the areas...

.

Melanin theorists

Some melanin theorists
Melanin theory
Melanin theory is a pseudoscientific theory, founded in the distortion of the known physical properties of melanin, a natural polymer and organic semiconductor. In humans, melanin is the primary determinant of skin color. People whose ancestors lived for long periods in the regions of the globe...

 have claimed that cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...

, because of its alleged ability to bind chemically to melanin
Melanin
Melanin is a pigment that is ubiquitous in nature, being found in most organisms . In animals melanin pigments are derivatives of the amino acid tyrosine. The most common form of biological melanin is eumelanin, a brown-black polymer of dihydroxyindole carboxylic acids, and their reduced forms...

, is an ethnic bioweapon deliberately designed to target blacks.

See also

  • Race in biomedicine
  • Pharmacogenomics
    Pharmacogenomics
    Pharmacogenomics is the branch of pharmacology which deals with the influence of genetic variation on drug response in patients by correlating gene expression or single-nucleotide polymorphisms with a drug's efficacy or toxicity...

  • Toxicogenomics
    Toxicogenomics
    Toxicogenomics is a field of science that deals with the collection, interpretation, and storage of information about gene and protein activity within particular cell or tissue of an organism in response to toxic substances. Toxicogenomics combines toxicology with genomics or other high throughput...

  • Project Coast
    Project Coast
    Project Coast was a top-secret chemical and biological weapons program instituted by the South African government during the apartheid era. Project Coast was the successor to a limited post-war CBW program which mainly produced the lethal agents CX powder and mustard gas; as well as non-lethal...

  • Biological Warfare
    Biological warfare
    Biological warfare is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi with intent to kill or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war...

  • Syphon Filter
    Syphon Filter
    Syphon Filter is a stealth-based third-person shooter video game for the PlayStation released in 1999. It is the first game in the Syphon Filter series. It was re-released on December 4, 2006, on the PlayStation Network for use on the PSP...

    , a video game in which terrorists attempt to release a genetically programmable virus.

External links

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