How to Ban Biological Weapons - by Santi Ruiz - Statecraft

"I purified rare earths in the garage"

In 1969, President Nixon announced the end of all American offensive biological weapons programs, and renounced the first use of chemical weapons. But it wasn’t until several months later that Nixon confirmed that the U.S. would end all military research into toxins, which can be created either in nature or in the lab. Nixon chose to end that toxin research because of one man, our interviewee today. Matthew Meselson is well-known in biology for his Meselson-Stahl experiment, which demonstrated that DNA replicates semiconservatively, and has won myriad awards for his academic work. But his…

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