• Question: Is genetic warfare a real thing or is it just made up?

    Asked by jetfire to Adam, Joanna, Louise S, Louise W, Marcus on 20 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Marcus Wilson

      Marcus Wilson answered on 20 Nov 2012:

      Ive never heard of genetic warfare, but it may be a way to make biological or germ warfare more dangerous by altering the biological agent to be better at infecting people.

      Biological warfare is the use of living things to infect people an make them sick. it has been used for hundreds of years, dating back to attackers throwing plague ridden bodies into seiged towns. in modern times it has never been overtly used, but has been tested. Anthrax is a bacteria that was weopenised suring the second world war. we tested it out on an island off scotland. it killed all mammmals on the island and was under quarantine until 1990.

      biological warfare is against the genva convention so illegal, so if anybodies doing it they would be pretty quiet about it.

    • Photo: Joanna Giles

      Joanna Giles answered on 20 Nov 2012:

      I had not heard of genetic warfare either, like Marcus I assume it is a way of altering the already nasty threat of biological warfare – but then maybe it is a made up thing!

      So I’m guessing it could either mean altering the genes of a biological threat (like Anthrax or smallpox) to be even more dangerous (?) or it could mean changing the genes of the biological agent to only target people with a certain genetic make up? Either way, neither Marcus nor I have never heard of it – so hopefully means it doesn’t exist!

    • Photo: Adam Paige

      Adam Paige answered on 20 Nov 2012:

      I also have not heard the term genetic warfare. But there was one kind of truly horrible idea to use genetics to kill, and that is eugenics. When people learned that children took after their parents it was realised that you could create the kind of children you want by choosing which adults you allow to become parents. A long time ago now, there were several suggestions that people with mental or physical disabilities, or certain ethnic minorities, should not be allowed to have children. The most extremely example of this eugenics idea was the Nazi party in the second world war who felt that all Jewish people should be killed to “improve the genetics of the human race”. Fortunately they lost the war, and very clear and powerful laws were set up all over the world to prevent anyone using genetics in such a cruel, shocking and horrendous way again.

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