Risks of Ethnic-Specific Weapons

Barry Kellman has an op-ed on this topic in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle.  Excerpts:

For $1,000, you soon will be able to purchase the text of your own DNA  -- the unique sequence of your genetic inheritance. You can get the information, that is, unless you're Russian. President Vladimir Putin has just announced a ban on the export of all human medical biological materials. He is worried that his citizens' genetic data could enable Western scientists to make ethnic-specific biological weapons for use against Russians.

[...] It is important to stress that there does not now appear to be any independent confirmation of Putin's fears. [...] If anyone actually decided to make an ethnic-specific weapon, are there laws in place to prevent a catastrophe? Are there controls to ensure that information about ethnic-specific genetic traits is kept away from terrorist organizations? The answer must be an emphatic no.   

Today, there is too much that is unknown about bioscience. We do not know where every well-equipped laboratory is, and we have inadequate systems for tracking the movement of pathogens and equipment. There are grossly deficient capabilities for putting information together to give law enforcers the best chance to stop evil applications of emerging techniques. In many parts of the world, a terrorist or criminal group could prepare bioweapons without substantial risk of detection and could inflict unimaginable damage against unprotected populations.

Link: The potential dark side of genetics.

Kellman has a book on this topic due out in August: Bioviolence: Preventing Biological Terror and Crime.