ABSTRACT
The motives for poisoning changed from getting rid of unwanted family members, personal gain or malice and became more political when governments started carrying out research into the possibility of using poisons as weapons. Grigory Moisevich Mairanovsky was appointed head of the chemical facility which was known as Laboratory No 1. Laboratory No 1 was officially closed down and then reinstated as Laboratory No 12. Unit 731 was originally started to promote public health by conducting research that would benefit Japanese soldiers, such as understanding the ways in which the human body could endure hunger and thirst and fight diseases. After the Second World War the US military obtained information on a number of substances from the Japanese and the formulas of nerve gases developed by the Nazis, notably tabun, soman and sarin. From 1948 the army conducted classified experiments on human subjects at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland.
