Murray Jonathan Sanders (April 11, 1910 – June 29, 1987) was an American physician and military officer who was involved with the U.S. Army's biological warfare program during World War II.

Sanders also received further training at Columbia University, eventually becoming a professor in bacteriology at its College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he engaged in polio research.

[4] In addition to his experiments at Detrick, Sanders was responsible for the poisoning of a German agent with staphylococcus, and proposed the use of biological weapons infused with botulism.

[4] He was awarded the Legion of Merit for his efforts in "the development, perfection and standardization of laboratory methods for detection and evaluation of actual potential biological warfare agents".

[4] In September 1945, Sanders traveled aboard the steamship Sturgess for Yokohama, where General Douglas MacArthur had summoned him to investigate Japan's biological warfare program.

[16] He also served as a consultant for the Japanese pharmaceutical company Green Cross,[citation needed] which had been founded by former members of Unit 731 after the war.

During his time working at the University of Miami, Sanders proposed a potential treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) using what he called a "Modified Neurotoxin" (MNT) derived from the zootoxins in snake venom.

Although Sanders was nominated in 1966 for a Nobel Prize in Medicine for his efforts,[4][17] his treatment would later be criticized as ineffective by a number of physicians; a 1980 study by doctors Victor Rivera, Martin Grabois, and William Deaton found that Sanders' treatment had a "lack of clinical effectiveness" and "did not demonstrate any benefit from administration of modified snake venom to patients with ALS".

[20] Sanders retired from medical research in 1983, after the Food and Drug Administration ordered him to close his clinic due to the lack of improvement shown in his patients.