At the cutting edge of research in biotechnology is the production of special genetically engineered organisms for use in an open, agricultural environment. We argue that the standard approaches to risk assessment and management employed by regulatory agencies are inadequate to the task of properly assessing the advisability of such experiments, as well as the even more significant prospect of widespread commercial use of genetically engineered organisms in agriculture. Given the current lack of sufficient information with which to make competent assessments of the risks involved and the extreme difficulties which are likely to inhibit attempts to gain such information in a timely fashion, we conclude that a compelling case for deliberate release programs has not been made.

This article proposes an interactional model in which individuals may actively seek suitable environments. Rejecting either a hereditarian or an environmentalist emphasis, this approach recognizes that both genetic endowment and social background determine the mobility of the individual. The article treats the following five topics: the basic biosocial assumptions underlying the interaction model; the operation of self-selection as an integral part of this model; the capacity of individuals to envision alternative environments; an examination of three basic genotype-environment interactions; the political ramifications of these interactions both on an individual and on a societal level.

This paper uses a Darwinian perspective to examine the nuclear arms race in the context of “arms races” in evolution and throughout human history. The rise of human “arms races,” or escalatory intergroup competition, is traced to a variety of environmental triggers initiated during the Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene. These triggers removed extraspecific environmental constraints to escalatory intergroup competition in some areas of the world, making it reproductively advantageous for individuals to live in increasingly larger and more competitive groups. This process is linked to the development of social complexity and the intensification of intergroup competition, warfare, and arms production, culminating in the nuclear arms race. Historically, escalatory intergroup competition has been reproductively advantageous to elites because it enables them to acquire a disproportionately large share of resources. It is argued that the continuation of the nuclear arms race past a level of mutual assured destruction results from the benefits it provides to elites as well as a variety of evolved behavioral mechanisms that encourage in-group affiliations, out-group hostilities, and obedience to authority.