Near the end of the Cold War, the US government began receiving reports from Southeast Asia of chemical weapons being used against the democratic insurgents. After investigating, they accused the Soviets of supplying the weapons to the communist governments in the area. Matthew Meselson, a Harvard Molecular Biologist, reviewed samples of the substance, but was unconvinced that what the US government found was a weapon. Meselson travels to Thailand with Thomas Seeley, a renowned animal behaviorist from Cornell, to prove that the weapon in question is in fact a natural phenomena. When they return with their evidence they find the US government is less than receptive.