This honestly is highly concerning - if that can be done for species, the next step could be to target ethnicity. I feel like this is one of those Oppenheimeresque moments in human history.
As a Jewish genealogist who got involved in direct-to-consumer genetic genealogy testing very early on (14+ years ago), this is one of my biggest fears. Genetic signatures for endogamous populations, in particular, are really easy to pick out of DNA samples. It’s already openly discussed in Jewish DNA Facebook groups and blogs which chromosome segments tend to be Ashkenazi “pile up” regions, to separate true potential cousin matches from just plain endogamy. A bad actor, or nation-state, could easily do the reverse and look for those segments on purpose…
It’s been tried and done before via chemical and biological methods (if you don’t want to sleep for awhile, check out what has been declassified on THOSE topics and realize that is what they were OK releasing to the public!).
The problem of course is that in deploying it, you’ll inevitably kill a bunch of your own - no population is so consistent you won’t kill a bunch of senior leaders who had parents 3 generations ago who were transracial or whatever and lied about it - and it will inevitably turn everyone in the world against you.
Even states like NK or Iran need friends, and those friends would have enough casualties from anything like this there is no scenario I can imagine anyone would intentionally release something like that.
Doesn’t mean a mad scientist type would cook it up accidentally in the garage, but there are always real world constraints stopping wide spread (physics sometimes, often effectiveness limits or the like).
Why do you bring Iran or NK into this? Let's get it straight: Until now, the only counties who have actually tried genocide on industrial scale, have performed inhumane tests on live subjects of other cultures or used Nukes on civilian targets have been mostly western. Heck, they were literally wiping each other out right until 75 years ago. They are also the ones actively ganging up and invading others TODAY. What delusion suddenly caused you to think it is again 'others' who are trying to wipe you out?
Huh? I guess that depends on your definition of western I guess, since Japan certainly had no issues genociding, testing chemical and biological weapons, and all that other stuff on a wide swath of Eastern Asia? Russia isn’t generally considered by anyone I’ve run across as a ‘Western’ country either, and they had (still may have) a massive program.
Near as I can tell, every industrialized power has gone through the phase.
The comment about nukes is weird, since I believe the US is the only power to ever nuke someone in anger - and near as I can tell, plausibly used it as little as possible and in self defense (though we could talk ourselves blue in the face on that point).
Nothing would have stopped the US from carpet nuking Japan for instance at the time, except some minor logistical hiccups.
My comment about Iran and NK is specifically because they’re consistently isolated by (and start fights/ideologically align themselves opposite) the bulk of countries.
They’ve been, and continue to encourage being ‘others’. I pointed out, they still have no incentive to wipe any groups out/start targeted plagues, wouldn’t start something like this, so why would anyone else?
