Ethnic bioweapon

History

One of the first modern fictional discussions of ethnic weapons is in Robert A. Heinlein's 1942 novel Sixth Column (republished as The Day After Tomorrow), in which a race-specific radiation weapon is used against a so-called "Pan-Asian" invader.

Genetic weapons

In 1997, U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen referred to the concept of an ethnic bioweapon as a possible risk. In 1998, some biological weapon experts considered such a "genetic weapon" plausible, and believed the former Soviet Union had undertaken some research on the influence of various substances on human genes.

In its 2000 policy paper Rebuilding America's Defenses, think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC) described ethnic bioweapons as a "politically useful tool" that US adversaries could have incentives to develop and use.

The possibility of a "genetic bomb" is presented in Vincent Sarich's and Frank Miele's book Race: The Reality of Human Differences, published in 2004. These authors view such weapons as technically feasible but unlikely to be used. (page 248 of paperback edition.)

In 2004, The Guardian reported that the British Medical Association (BMA) considered bioweapons designed to target certain ethnic groups as a possibility, and highlighted problems that advances in science for such things as "treatment to Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases could also be used for malign purposes".

In 2005, the official view of the International Committee of the Red Cross 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."

In May 2007, it was reported that the Russian government banned all exports of human biosamples. The reason for the ban was allegedly a report by the head of FSB Nikolay Patrushev presented to Vladimir Putin. The report claimed about on-going development of "genetic bioweapons" targeting Russian population by Western institutions.

In 2008, the US government held a congressional committee, ‘Genetics and other human modification technologies: sensible international regulation or a new kind of arms race?’, during which it was discussed how “we can anticipate a world where rogue (and even not-so-rogue) states and non-state actors attempt to manipulate human genetics in ways that will horrify us”.

In 2012, The Atlantic wrote that a specific virus that targets individuals with a specific DNA sequence is within possibility in the near future. The magazine put forward a hypothetical scenario of a virus which caused mild flu to the general population but deadly symptoms to the President of the United States. They cite advances in personalized gene therapy as evidence.

In 2016, Foreign Policy magazine suggested the possibility of a virus used as an ethnic bioweapon that could sterilize a "genetically-related ethnic population."