The German army's 1943 flooding of the Pontine Marshes south of Rome, which later caused a sharp rise in malaria cases among Italian civilians, has recently been described by historian Frank Snowden as a unique instance of biological warfare and bioterrorism in the European theater of war and, consequently, as a violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting chemical and biological warfare. We argue that archival documents fail to support this allegation, on several counts. As a matter of historical record, Hitler prohibited German biological weapons (BW) development and consistently adhered to the Geneva Protocol. Rather than biological warfare against civilians, the Wehrmacht used flooding, land mines, and the destruction of vital infrastructure to obstruct the Allied advance. To protect its own troops in the area, the German army sought to contain the increased mosquito breeding likely to be caused by the flooding. Italians returning to the Pontine Marshes after the German retreat in 1944 suffered malaria as a result of environmental destruction, which was banned by the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions and by subsequent treaties. In contrast, a state's violation of the Geneva Protocol, whether past or present, involves the use of germ weapons and, by inference, a state-level capability. Any allegation of such a serious violation demands credible evidence that meets high scientific and legal standards of proof.

This article develops a theoretical framework for biopolitical science as a science of political animals. This science moves through three levels of deep political history: the universal political history of the species, the cultural political history of the group, and the individual political history of animals in the group. To illustrate the particular application of biopolitical science, this essay shows how this science would help us to understand Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863.

This case study of the Australian Museum's Thylacine Cloning Project analyzes a frame dispute that emerged during public communication of a scientific project, which lasted from 1999 to 2005, and was premised on the idea of resurrecting an extinct species. In choosing the Tasmanian tiger—an iconic Australian marsupial officially declared extinct in 1986—the promoters of the cloning project ensured extensive media coverage. However, the popular and scientific attention generated by the idea of bringing back an extinct species challenged the Museum's efforts to frame the project in terms of scientific progress. The project repeatedly shifted from science to spectacle, as multiple stakeholders used the mass media to negotiate the scientific feasibility of trying to reverse extinction through the application of advanced biotechnology. The case study findings are relevant both to the emerging social issues surrounding the use of paleogenomics in wildlife conservation, and to the theoretical development of frame analysis as applied to scientific controversies.

This paper argues that the processes of evolutionary selection are becoming increasingly artificial, a trend that goes against the belief in a purely natural selection process claimed by Darwin's natural selection theory. Artificial selection is mentioned by Darwin, but it was ignored by Social Darwinists, and it is all but absent in neo-Darwinian thinking. This omission results in an underestimation of probable impacts of artificial selection upon assumed evolutionary processes, and has implications for the ideological uses of Darwin's language, particularly in relation to poverty and other social inequalities. The influence of artificial selection on genotypic and phenotypic adaptations arguably represents a substantial shift in the presumed path of evolution, a shift laden with both biological and political implications.

In his article from the previous issue of the journal, “Enhancing genetic virtue: A project for twenty-first century humanity?” Mark Walker proposes an interdisciplinary effort between philosophers, psychologists, and geneticists called the Genetic Virtue Program (GVP), whose aim is to employ biotechnology some time into the future to identify genetic correlates of “virtuous” behavior, such as truthfulness, justice, and caring.

Mark Walker's fascinating paper calls for a Genetic Virtue Program (GVP)—an interdisciplinary effort to enhance human ethics. He urges that we achieve this by “promoting genes that influence the acquisition of the virtues.” Although the GVP is a worthy focus of philosophical debate, I have to confess to some doubts about its viability. We patently don't live in the best of all possible worlds, but I'm skeptical about the notion that the way to improve the world is to make deliberate and specific ethical or moral enhancements.

Mark Walker has put forth a proposal which he calls the Genetic Virtue Program or GVP, whose kernel is that it is both possible and desirable to improve virtue by preimplantation selection or in utero engineering. Walker lists caveats to his thesis, although he consistently implies that their validity is doubtful by stating at each instance that he is including them “merely for the sake of completeness.”

We are not born virtuous or vicious. But we are born with innate temperaments and capacities that influence our acquisition of virtue by learning and judgment. As Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics, “virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature; but by our nature we can receive them and perfect them by habituation.”

I endorse Mark Walker's thesis that there is no moral difference between genetic interventions to make it more likely that children will develop moral virtues, such as truthfulness, caring, and justice—however, exactly, these are understood—and environmental interventions aimed at the same outcome. In this response, I offer some further considerations that tend to support the thesis in the face of “loss of freedom” or “loss of autonomy” arguments.

The Enlightenment bequeathed to us the notion that the human mind can and should dominate over nature—that there is nothing we cannot know or should not attempt. And, in fact, there is something to be said for this position, since a truthful historian has to admit that standards of living have generally been greatly bettered by the technology of the last two centuries. Without confidence in our ability to remake nature, the great medical advances of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would never have been possible: antisepsis, the discovery of the tuberculosis bacillus, sulfa drugs, the polio vaccine. Like twentieth-century researchers who faced polio and smallpox, Mark Walker has perhaps identified the central ethical malady of our twenty-first century civilization—how the lack of virtue impedes our moral progress. And just as biological researchers sought to use science to eradicate these diseases, so Walker seeks to use genetic manipulation to eradicate evil.

Breeding for virtue is no novelty. Conscientious prospective parents from deepest antiquity have hoped to breed for virtue in mate selection and peri-conceptual regimen. But methods may be changing. Plotting biotechnology's trajectory well beyond today's horizon, Professor Mark Walker asks if virtue is valuable enough to warrant breeding by molecular-genetic means. He presented this question as “Enhancing genetic virtue: A project for twenty-first century humanity?” in the previous issue of POLITICS AND THE LIFE SCIENCES.

The target paper of this invited forum has a vaulting ambition: to convince readers that we ought to attempt to reduce evil in our world by constructing an interdisciplinary program, which I call the Genetic Virtue Program (GVP), to enhance the biological aspects of virtue. Most of the contributors to this forum are not sympathetic to the project—to put it mildly. Yet, one of the surprising things, at least to this author, is that comparatively little is said about the paper's overall ambition. Jamie Bronstein offers the idea that better socialization may be key: “No one would argue that there have not also been great evils; but the historical record doesn't support the level of improbability for further moral improvement through socialization that Walker would like to assign.” However, nowhere do I claim that there is no prospect for further moral improvement through socialization. Indeed, in recently published work I specifically recommend that we improve socialization efforts to enhance virtue by tracking prosocialization efforts.