Scientists recently built a virus from scratch- this is an amazing and scary feat. Scientists working on a virus to render mice sterile, they modified a relative of small pox- "mouse pox"... It sterilized them, all right- the modified virus had a 100% kill rate.

now, nothing unusual about the fact that some viruses infect some mammals and not others, but might it be possible to engineer a virus that only infected individuals _within_ a species that had very specific genetic markers. (Yes Davin, I know your answer is an emphatic "NO")

This may seem unlikely but hear me out... some people can be resistant to some viruses because of natural genetic resistance... For instance some people are more resistant to AIDS than others due to the fact that their ancestors evolved resistance to a virus that used some of AIDS' tricks...

Could a virus be engineered that infected only those with certain genetic markers? Such a vile creation would be a crime against humanity- a weapon of genocide. With the mixing of populations, such a virus would kill more than the population it was targeted for.

Is this something to worry about?