Nerve agent poisoning ain’t pretty: think convulsions, diarrhea and difficulty breathing. Those dangers prompted the Pentagon’s far-out research arm to come up with a stellar new plan to combat the nasty chem threats. A plan that involves harvesting human liver enzymes. And uh, growing them inside tobacco plants.

For years, the agency’s been trying to come up with better antidotes for all kinds of chemical threats and other weapons of mass destruction. Recently, it’s thrown money into a project that’d stave off widespread outbreaks by culling an infected person’s antibodies. It’s even trying to...