Biological Warfare As you can see, most of the possibilities brought by GE are constructive. Although there may be some controversial areas, they are overall considered improving the man’s quality of life. Biological weapon / warfare is one of the few exceptions. It is about the deliberate creation of nasty germs or lethal toxins. The twentieth century is full of examples of the dark side of microbiology. The modern history of BW starts in 1918 with the Japanese formation of a special section of the Army (Unit 731) dedicated to BW. Although The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention was signed at London, Moscow and Washington on 10 April 1972 to ban the research, production and use of any biological weapons, it is widely believed that many of the countries are still doing research in the dark. By conventional microbiology it is already easy and effective to create extremely toxic bacteria or virus. But if an organism is too virulent, its spread into the environment could easily backfire. Here is where GE technology comes into place. By GE the disease germ is able to tell the good guys from the bad guys. To do this, it would have to exploit some genetic trait that was common to the enemy population, but not your own. This might be difficult to do if your enemy was genetically similar to you. But the possibility of selective genocide is, nevertheless, real. There are readily observable genetic differences among Orientals (easterners), black, and Caucasians, and many more less obvious genetic difference among all human population groups. Furthermore, by GE it would be possible to produce an infectious bacterium with antibiotic resistance. It will be much harder or almost impossible to produce a new antibiotic to overcome this bacterium.

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