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EVERY 6 August, Japan has a bad attack of self-righteousness as it recalls
the bombing of Hiroshima. Each year, the city’s mayor reasserts his country’s
claim to victim status and calls on the world to ban nuclear weapons. Japan, we
are constantly reminded, is in a unique position to make this call because it is
the only nation ever to have suffered attack by atomic bomb.

What tends to be forgotten is that Japan is also in a unique position to work
towards the control of biological weapons—not because it came under
attack, but because it is the world’s…

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