主题：关于基因技术和战争，请教专家 -- meokey

on, I'm going to comment on the genetic weapons post because, well, I'm a card-carrying Molecular Biologist. (Although now I'm converting into a Capitalist, and hopefully soon, a Plutocrat--my new boss says he'd like to convert me to paid, full-time by July:) (knock wood)

A genetic weapon targeted to a particular ethnic group is so unlikely as to be impossible. Reasons:

1) There are few known gene variants that are ONLY present in particular ethnic groups.

2) Targeting these DNA stretches or the proteins produced would be extremely difficult, and unlikely to kill the desired numbers of people because of inter-group variations.

3) It would be impossible in a large, diverse group like the 300+ million Arabs, who run the gamut from previously Hellenized Levantine Arabs to half-sub-Saharan African Egyptians/Sudanese to completely mixed-up Yemeni Arabs (who probably have Jewish, East African, Indian and Arab genes) to Moroccan Berbers.

This does remind me of a simple conspiracy theory by Arabs and some other Muslims who ascribe every nefarious motive they think of to the Jews.

As an aside, to all the aspiring bioterrorists or weapons makers out there, it's much much easier conceptually to simply engineer a virus to be fast-spreading and deadly and then vaccinate your own people against it, while releasing it to your enemies. Of course, the Russians failed at that after 40 years or whatever. But they're Russians. And you'd have to somehow keep it secret from all the intelligence agencies in the world. And assume your enemies couldn't quickly develop a vaccine to it on their own, in the midst of your attack (while dealing with the attack with traditional quarantine measures, etc).

All in all....keep working on your nukes. Physics is easy and clean. Biology is complex and messy.