Jeanne Guillemin

Jeanne Harley Guillemin (March 6, 1943 - November 15, 2019) was an American medical anthropologist and author, who for 25 years taught at Boston College as a professor of Sociology and for over ten years was a senior fellow in the Security Studies Program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was an authority on biological weapons and published four books on the topic.

Biography Born (March 6, 1943) Jean Elizabeth Garrigan in Brooklyn, New York City, she was raised in Rutherford, New Jersey and received a bachelor's degree (1968) in social psychology from Harvard University. In 1973, she completed a PhD in sociology and anthropology at Brandeis University. She taught at Boston College from 1972 until 2005.

While at Boston College, Guillemin did extensive research on hospital technology and medical ethics, receiving fellowships to work on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee staff and at the Hastings Center for the Study of Ethics. She was also co-head of the National Library of Medicine's HealthAware Project, a joint project with Harvard Medical School to test how the internet could be used to educate people about preventive health measures.

She married Robert Guillemin and had two sons, Robert and John. She divorced her first husband and in 1986, married Matthew Meselson.

In the 1980s, Guillemin became interested in the misuse of biomedical science by government weapons programs. She involved herself in two of her husband's investigations of alleged violations of international arms control agreements by the Soviet Union which involved germ weapons. The first was the "yellow rain" accusation by the United States against the USSR, to the effect that the Soviets enabled the Laotian army to use deadly mycotoxins to attack Hmong refugees allied with the US during the Vietnam War. This accusation had been disputed by Meselson in 1983 when he argued that the yellow material was actually bee feces mistaken for a biological weapon by those under attack and by certain US government scientists. (The issue remains disputed and the US government has not withdrawn the allegations, arguing that the controversy has not been fully resolved.)

Guillemin died on November 15, 2019, at the age of 76.

Books Guillemin, Jeanne, Urban Renegades: The Cultural Strategy of American Indians, Columbia University Press, 19?? (New edition, 1975). Guillemin, Jeanne Harley and Lynda Lytle Holmstrom, Mixed Blessings: Intensive Care for Newborns, Oxford University Press, 1986. Guillemin, Jeanne, Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999. Guillemin, Jeanne, Anthrax and Smallpox: Comparison of Two Outbreaks, National Technical Information Service, 2002. Guillemin, Jeanne, Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism, Columbia University Press, 2005. Guillemin, Jeanne, American Anthrax, Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2011. Guillemin, Jeanne, Hidden Atrocities: Japanese Germ Warfare and American Obstruction of Justice at the Tokyo Trial, Columbia University Press, 2017.

Guillemin wrote introductions to new editions of: Mead, Margaret, Kinship in the Admiralty Islands, In Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Volume 34, Issue 2 pages 181–358; American Museum of Natural History ( AMNH ), New York, 1934 [Transaction Publishers edition, 2001]. Brown, Fredric Joseph, Chemical Warfare: A Study in Restraints, Princeton University Press, 1968; [Transaction Publishers edition, 2005].

Guillemin edited: Guillemin, Jeanne (ed.), Anthropological Realities: Readings in the Science of Culture, Transaction Publishers, 1980.