The Mass Effect philosophical corner: Was the Genophage okay?

While I'm chewing my way through Mass Effect 3, which has both its ups and downs, I've run into several interesting moral dilemmas that I've started to think about.
I've decided to make of couple of ultra nerdy posts, where I want to talk about issues in the Mass Effect universe their surrounding issues.

The first Mass Effect subject that I'd like to discuss is the Genophage.
The Genophage is a biological weapon that was developed by the Salarians during the Krogan Rebellion wars, which was a decades long war between the Krogan and the Council races. The Krogan Rebellion was a result of massive Krogan expansion, which eventually started to transgress onto other Council races planets. The rebellion was looking to end up in the Krogans' favor until the Genophage was deployed and started to thin their ranks.

Krogans: They like killing stuff

The Genophage affects the entire Krogan species and leaves most of the Krogan females infertile, resulting in the slow and steady decline of the population of the species due to extremely low birth rates.

First of all let's start off by establishing that deploying a biological weapon against an entire species that is designed to produce infertility is clearly a horrible thing to do.
The Genophage is effectively a weapon that attacks the Krogan population regardless of whether they are men, women or children and no matter if they are a soldier or a civilian.
So the arguments for accepting the use of this weapon would have to extraordinarily strong!

I think that the arguments for using the Genophage against the Krogans can be boiled down to three:


1) The Krogans were moved out of their "natural environment" and were not yet at a point where they were ready to start traveling between the stars. 

The Krogans were originally not a space faring species.
They lived on their native world of Tuchanka where they spent their time fighting among themselves. Indeed their infighting was so fierce that they turned the planet into a radioactive wasteland by deploying nuclear weapons.

The Krogans did not posses advanced space technology, on account of Krogan scientists being too busy finding new ways of blowing their fellows into small pieces. But this all changed when the Salarians helped the Krogans off Tuchanka and gave them access to advanced technology.

This was not due to some severe brain hemorrhage on the part of the Salarians. At that point in time the galaxy was embroiled in a desperate struggle against the insect-like Rachni. The Rachni were pushing into Council controlled space and the war was going badly.

The Krogan were seen as the only species with the potential to be strong enough to turn the tables in the fight against the Rachni.

Thus the Salarians made sure that the Krogans were moved to a more habitable planet and provided them with ample supplies to take on the Rachni, which they did with so much success that they eventually hunted the entire species to (assumed) extinction.

The argument could therefore be made that the Krogan were not "supposed" to grow so strong and get their hands on advanced technology at the time that they did. The Krogan birth rates were adapted to the extremely harsh conditions of Tuchanka, which resulted in a massive population boom as soon as the species was moved to more hospitable worlds.
This fact, coupled with the somewhat primitive and extremely aggressive culture of the Krogan was a recipe for disaster.

The Genophage could be seen as the only possible answer to correct a bad decision taken during a desperate time. 

2) The Council races would quite likely have been destroyed by the expanding Krogan empire if they had not resorted to the Genophage.

The Council races knew the incredible strength of the Krogan war machine.
They had unleashed them on the Rachni and seen their effectiveness as a combat force. They had also seen the Krogan mercilessly hunt down a defiant race to the point of complete and total destruction.

For all intents and purposes it looked like their former allies were now going to give them the same brutal treatment that they gave to the Rachni. Despite years of fighting and the help of the incredible powerful Turian army and fleets the war was not going well.

Had the Council races continued to fight the war using conventional means it seems most likely that they would have been utterly wiped out, or at best ended up as slaves to the conquering Krogans.

Turians: Like killing stuff as well, but not quite as much as the Krogans

Also, it's worth considering that even if the Krogan Rebellions had ended with a Krogan victory, all signs indicate that the Krogans would simply return to their old ways of fighting among themselves, but this time it would be the entire galaxy that was turned into a nuclear wasteland instead of just one planet.

So it can also be argued that Genophage was a necessary evil to prevent genocide on a much larger scale.

3) The Genophage was not actually designed to render the Krogan extinct, but rather to reduce their birth rates to manageable numbers.

The Salarians did not want to create a weapon that would exterminate the Krogans completely.
The Genophage was designed to reduce the birth rates of Krogan to a level that would make them manageable, but still high enough to allow them to survive as a species.

The purpose of the Genophage is therefore not to be a weapon of complete annihilation, but rather a chance for allowing the Krogans and the other species of the galaxy to coexist.

Salarians: Don't like killing stuff so much. Like researching biological weapons

By lowering the birth rates of the Krogan they will not need to constantly expand their territory, instead giving them a chance to evolve their society towards a more peaceful state where there might no longer be a need for the harsh effects of the Genophage.

You could argue then that the Genophage is actually a helpful tool for the Krogan to allow them an opportunity to become a more advanced species and find a position of balance in the galactic order of things.


I think these three arguments are all pretty valid and it makes it hard to utterly dismiss the deployment of the Genophage as being completely unreasonable.
Since the Krogan are still a quite warlike species I would even go so far as to say that the Genophage might still be a necessary measure to protect the galaxy from another devastating war.

The Genophage discussion is a very interesting one and even though I've had three games to decide on my feelings about it I still find myself being quite on the fence about the subject.




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