Word: meselson
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Matthew S. Meselson, professor of Biology, said yesterday that he and Robert W. Baughman, a graduate student in Chemistry, have discovered traces of the poison, dioxin, in fish and crustaceans caught in South Vietnamese rivers and coastal waters...
Dioxin forms during the manufacture of 2, 4, 5-T, a chemical in the military herbicide arsenal known as "agent orange." "Dioxin is 100 times more poisonous than the most powerful nerve gas," Meselson said...
...most popular of three herbicides used by the United States to defoliate forests and kill crops in Indochina, "agent orange" was used until April 1970, according to Meselson, primarily in South Vietnam and Laos, and once in Cambodia and the Demilitarized Zone...
Although some American personnel recognized the danger of the herbicide's side-product, reports "never made it up the chain of command, as far as I know," Meselson commented. But members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, recognizing the hazards, asked Meselson to study the effects of the chemical...
MATTHEW S. MESELSON, professor of Biology. Meselson's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1969 helped bring about President Nixon's decision that year to end the stockpiling of chemical and biological weapons. Meselson later warned Senate committees that American use of tear gas in Vietnam contributed to the breakdown of taboos against employing such weapons...