There is general agreement among scientists that biological factors form an essential ingredient of a comprehensive explanation for human violence. As we have already noted, displays of aggression, fighting, and other forms of violent behaviour are easy to find across many species, and it is mostly the case that aggression pays off when survival is at stake, if there are no other means of ensuring it. It is deployed in acquiring and protecting resources, for self-defence and to promote chances of reproductive success. Yet the public health approach in this area often appears to shy away from the issue of biological factors in human violence, especially from the potential role genes might play in a tendency toward such behaviour. One of the WHO’s key statements, the World Report on Violence and Health (Krug et al., 2002), gives only brief consideration to the possible role of genetic biomarkers as risk factors for self-directed violence, but notes that what individuals may inherit is a risk of mental disorder linked to suicide rather than a propensity toward suicide in itself. The subsequent Global Status Report on Violence Prevention (World Health Organization, 2014, p. 27) in contrast acknowledges that ‘violence is a multifaceted problem with biological, psychological, social and environmental roots’. However, neither of these two landmark publications allots any space to detailed consideration of biological processes, and neither mentions genetic factors in relation to violence at all. Both reports depict violence as a problem which encompasses biological as well as the other identified influences. Yet could it be that simultaneously they render genetic influences on human aggression as something of an ‘elephant in the room’? At issue again is the question of whether we consider this strategy to be integral to our biologically evolved makeup, to an extent whereby as humans we are incapable of refraining from it. Can we leave that history to one side in explaining and addressing violence, and is the WHO on secure ground in paying minimal attention to biological influences?