Ethnic bioweapon

An ethnic bioweapon (biogenetic weapon) is a type of weapon that aims to harm only or primarily people of specific ethnicities or genotypes.

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.

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" a plausible possibility, and believed the former Soviet Union had undertaken some research on the influence of various substances on human genes.

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 not very likely 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."

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