Genetic security

Author Jamie Metzl says the "genetic revolution" could threaten national security

Recent advances in reproductive technologies and genetic screening hold tremendous promise for the elimination of harmful inherited diseases, but they also may pose significant national security challenges, said Jamie Metzl, a technology and geopolitics expert and author of a new book on the genetics revolution.

Especially as societies decide whether or how much to allow citizens to screen and edit human embryos, the chances of division, and potentially conflict, could rise."Certainly if these technologies work as I believe they will, they will potentially confer tremendous benefits on people," Metzl said. But, he said, if certain technologies are unevenly adopted by different societies, "we run the very real risk of bifurcating our communities, bifurcating the world into the genetic haves and have-nots."