Word: poisonous
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...ends Ian Fleming's delightful spy novel, From Russia with Love, with James Bond's fate left hanging. Agent 007, of course, survives to brave new dangers in Doctor No, in which it is revealed that he had been dealt a near fatal dose of fugu poison. "It comes from the sex organs of the Japanese globe-fish," an eminent neurologist tells Bond's boss. "It's terrible stuff and very quick...
...kill an adult, often within an hour, by blocking the transmission of impulses in the nervous system-just as in Fleming's account. Saxitoxin is produced by a single-cell sea creature that flourishes during the warmest months. Oysters, clams and mussels that eat the organism are poisonous to humans, which is why in some areas such seafood is not harvested in summer. By contrast, fugu poison, which has almost the same effect, is always present in the sex organs and liver of Japanese puffer fish. Hence in Japan chefs who prepare puffers are required to learn...
...1950s the CIA began experimenting with saxitoxin at Fort Detrick, Md., where it also carried out the notorious LSD experiments that led to, among other things, the long hushed-up death of Biochemist Frank Olson (TIME, July 21). Researchers took contaminated butter clams and distilled the poison from them through a costly process. According to sources close to Church's panel, the CIA used saxitoxin in suicide pills for its own agents (U2 Pilot Francis Gary Powers had one, but chose to pass it up) and had it on hand to eliminate troublesome guard dogs when breaking into embassies...
...decides to sell it to the Pentagon, he turns the research on himself and destroys the project. The project: invisibility. You might think its a big breakthrough for television to be dealing with such a controversial issue. But, when the students of the real issues are napalm-makers and poison gas developers aren't working on invisibility, they're working on laser-beam weapons and accurate nuclear weapons. But those aren't good for the story line, and after all, now the invisible man can infiltrate foreign embassies and exact his own form of foreign policy in a neitschian sort...
...such clinical experimentation. He said that the same experimentation that a hospital's human studies committee approves may face opposition from basic scientists. "The trouble comes from the basic scientists," he said, "from the people who have never been involved in the treatment of anything more risky that poison...