UK: BMA warns that "ethnic weapons" are approaching reality
01 November 2004
In October the British Medical Association (BMA) warned that the science required to target biological weapons at specific ethnic groups "is now approaching reality". The BMA report, entitled
Biotechnology, Weapons and Humanity 11, and written by Malcolm Dando, head of Peace Studies at Bradford University, argues that recent discoveries make it feasible to identify genes that are more common to certain groups and to target them. Dando says that recent developments in human genome analysis "showed the incidence of small mutations called single nucleotide polymorphisms varied considerably between populations." He added that a new targeting technology, RNA interference, "could be used to shut down a biologically important gene in a given population".
While many experts have doubted that it is possible to use human variability to target specific populations because no suitable "ethnic" genes exist, the possibility was explored by apartheid-era South African scientists. In the 1980s, the apartheid regime ran a biological weapons program called Project Coast that was designed to develop a "black bomb", via genetic engineering research, that would kill black people but not whites. In a similar fashion, Israel's Institute for Biological Research, which is involved in DNA sequencing research, has repeatedly been accused of trying to create an ethnic-specific weapon with which Arabs could be targeted. In 1998 the
Sunday Times newspaper reported that Israel, which has never signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, was close to completing an ethnic weapon.
In the BMA's first report on the subject, published in 1999, it found that ethnic weapons were a "theoretical" possibility. However, the BMA's head of science, Vivienne Nathanson, said that "The situation today is arguably worse than five years ago" and "the window of opportunity" to tackle developments was rapidly shrinking. She added "The very existence of laws to protect us is being questioned" and warned there is a danger "that legitimate research, often conducted to find potential therapies for debilitating diseases, could be perverted to develop weapons of mass destruction". Dando was critical of the reluctance of the United States to agree to a multilateral approach to biological monitoring. The BMA believes that urgent action is needed to strengthen the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which currently lacks adequate verification provisions.
Nathanson warned of the following scenarios if the development of biological and genetic weapons is not curtailed:
* weapons that target specific ethnic groups
* imitation viruses
* crop control viruses
* bio-regulators (agents that attack an individual's immune/nervous system)
* genetically engineered anthrax
* modified smallpox immune response
* Synthetic polio virus
Malcolm Dando Biotechnology, Weapons and Humanity II (ISBN 0954861507), price £9.99. Order at: info.science@bma.org.uk
Financial Times 26.10.04; Times 26.10.04; Medical News Today 25.10.04.