[Kylon]

I'm just brainstorming here, but if you were to fight a foreign army, and a foreign population, why not deploy a virus which targets the germline stemcells, thus making the entire populace sterile.

Or, better yet, just have the virus target XY sperm, so that the populace will be made up nearly completely of women.

If we created a sterlizing biological weapon, and used it against foreign states, it would effectively eliminate the capacity of a high body count war. If they lose most of their young men in fighting, more young men won't be created to replace them.

If their sperm adapts, so will the virus.

This would have a much weaker political impact than using a virus to wipe out an entire nation. Furthermore, we have been violating most of our treaties anyways, so it wouldn't be a big stretch.

If the U.S/Western/Industrialized Country men got this virus, they could simply use anti-virals.

So it would make it harder to reproduce in the undeveloped world, but easier to reproduce in the industrialized world.

It would make it where having male offspring (which are the most aggressive, and likely to go to war) wouldn't populate also among groups that are less economically privileged, so that the groups that are most likely to revolt, and overthrow the government/become terrorist/criminals/thugs would be produced in smaller numbers.

This would also stem a large amount of the illegal immigrant problem, because the virus wouldn't be contained to any one nation. So it would spill over to all other nations, decreasing their population, especially among the poorer ones. Less people, less people to immigrate.

Do think the U.S could do this to their benefit? Maybe they could work in concert with China, as the Chinese are suffering from a female shortage, and there is a preference for boys. So it would help stabilize the population ratio of men to women (decreasing frustration and anger among young men, which could lead to social unrest, and possible revolution), and decrease the reproduction of the populace at large.

[Jack]

If it was part of a clandestine campaign it might work - otherwise, it would take too long.

Better: come up with a way to only turn out sick infants that can survive, but require expensive medical care. Then spread propaganda that God hates the target population.

And remember - live spelled backwards is evil.

[americandream]

Intriguing thought....concocting the virus for use in Muslim countries in the shadow of the Holocaust Monument to Jews in defence of Israel....defies the logic to say the least.

[Dreamtwister]

Yes, let's spread a virus that attacks human reproduction. That way, it can mutate in the wild and wipe us all out!

[gg3]

Aw poo!, I was hoping this was a news item rather than a "what if"?" item. Any progress in contraception would be a good thing, even if in the form of a weapon.

Here are a couple of things that could be done...

One, a virus that causes females to stop producing eggs after after the birth of the first baby. This could be done, for example, via an auto-immune response triggered by the onset of lactation or some other event that occurs around the birth of a baby.

Two, a virus that causes males to stop producing sperm after some age-related trigger event such as the production of facial hair or the loss of cranial hair. Note it's not possible to tie this to "birth of first baby" since the male body has no idea what happens inside the female body after the sperm are delivered. And we can't trigger this one with "first delivery of sperm" because the male body has no idea whether those sperm are swimming toward an egg or swimming in the guy's right hand (or left hand, as the case may be).

You don't want to throw off the gender balance too far. Polarities of human behavior that are presently correlated with gender would find another basis to continue (bearing in mind that human behaviors follow normal curves). And the idea of an all-female society being inherently peaceful is so much BS, considering the Amazons, and considering that scarce males would become a resource over which to fight wars. A 5% tilt toward females would probably be sufficient to offset the excesses of male psychobiology via the ballot box.

[RdSnt]

Ah! we haven't yet come up with an effective treatment for the common cold, what makes you think we can do this? Let alone control it.

Besides, sterilization isn't going to prevent the evil doers from cutting your throat in your sleep.

[gg3]

And there's no guarantee we will come up with something.

However, the common cold does not threaten to push the planet into runaway ecological collapse, and human breeding does. Therefore we must make this a priority like practically nothing else in the world of pharmacology.