The unfortunate experiments at Porton Down

The unfortunate experiments at Porton Down

DISSECTING ROOM The unfortunate experiments at Porton Down Gassed: British chemical warfare experiments on humans at Porton Down Rob Evans. London: H...

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DISSECTING ROOM

The unfortunate experiments at Porton Down Gassed: British chemical warfare experiments on humans at Porton Down Rob Evans. London: House of Stratus, 2000. Pp 468. £20·00. ISBN 1842320718. ever volunteer! This adage was either forgotten, or ignored, by the 30 000 who have turned up at the gates of Britain’s chemical warfare establishment at Porton Down since 1916, ready to be exposed to a range of chemicals that might be used in war. Some have regretted the experience, whilst others went more than once. The misgivings of numerous volunteers who believe that their health has been affected by the tests in which they took part, together with official accounts of these, are described in Gassed. Written by the investigative journalist Rob Evans, the book is the product of hundreds of interviews with the volunteers as well as the scientists who carried out the tests. Weight is added to these accounts by the extensive array of official documents that Evans quotes, and that he in large measure is responsible for bringing into the public domain. Born out of the maelstrom created by the German use of chemical warfare in World War I, Porton Down rapidly became the center of Britain’s effort to go beyond mere retaliation in kind. British forces were able to discharge chlorine gas from cylinders located in trenches a matter of months after the Germans had done the same. However, both sides recognised that this was simply the beginning of a method of warfare that would increase both in scale and the type of chemicals used. A base was needed in the UK for the experimental work to assess the efficacy of a range of candidate chemical agents and to devise suitable protective measures against any that could, or would, be used in the trenches. Situated in the midst of Salisbury plain, in the English county of Wiltshire, Porton Down provided the right combination of seclusion from the nosy, and open spaces for evaluating munitions. Almost from its inception, Porton Down sought volunteers for its testing programme. Initially, these were solely from the ranks of those doing the research. The scientific and medical staff, totally committed to their work, stepped forth time and again to offer themselves as subjects. Convinced that they could carry out tests on humans without endangering their health, there was no initial shortage of the fit and the able. Following a brief respite in the work involving human subjects at the end of

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the war, the testing programmes resumed a couple of years later. This time, however, Porton Down was looking further afield for recruits. For it would appear that repeat tests on the staff at that time were not as benign as Porton Down had anticipated. Quoting from an official War Office document, Evans reports it as stating that “repeated tests” on members of staff were ruining their health. Thus began the search for volunteers from the rest of the military services, a recruitment exercise that has, despite the complaints of difficulty from Porton, succeeded in tempting tens of thousands over the decades. Invariably with little idea of what lay before them, and sworn to secrecy, most volunteered to relieve the boredom of service life. These “human guinea pigs”, as Evans refers to them, were subsequently exposed to whatever Porton was investigating at the time. Chemicals tested have included respiratory irritants such as chlorine and the tear gases CS and CR; blistering agents of which mustard gas is the exemplar; hallucinogens in the form of LSD and the nerve synapse receptor inhibitor BZ; as well as the considerably more toxic nerve agents sarin and VX. Chemical warfare has been a consistent threat for most of this century and remains so in some areas of the world. Every British government since 1916 has relied on Porton for advice on this topic in war and during peacetime. Research at Porton has contributed to Britain’s offensive capability when use of these agents was part of its military doctrine, and to defence particularly following the disposal of the UK munitions in the late 1960s and the signing of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, now a binding international treaty that forbids use of chemical agents in war. The volunteer testing programme has been crucial to Porton’s success, as Evans is able to point out time and again by reference to official UK government papers. It is all the more disturbing, therefore, to find that many who volunteered to go to Porton now believe that their health has suffered as a result of what they were exposed to. More disquieting still has been the reaction of successive British governments to these claims. Invariably dismissive, the response is usually to claim that

there is no evidence that the volunteers were put at risk. The current government, unwilling to carry out any epidemiological studies to assess whether exposure to chemical agents at Porton Down has caused increased morbidity, has instead offered the volunteers a medical examination to assess their current state of health. Recently released government papers indicate that there have been three very limited, but separate, follow-up investigations to assess the health of volunteers exposed to nerve agents at Porton, the latest being in 1989. Clearly concerned that there might be a problem, the government will draw some comfort from the fact that none indicated health effects attributable to the chemicals. However, none of the follow-up studies assessed longer term health effects and study participants were very few in number. Tragedy has been a feature of the volunteer testing programme too, and Gassed describes the death of aircraftman Ronald Maddison on May 6, 1953 following the application of 200 mg of sarin to clothing in contact with his skin. Now the subject of a murder investigation by the Wiltshire constabulary Maddison’s death had a volcanic effect on the volunteer testing programme. An internal inquiry ruled that the death of the 20-year-old was indeed due to sarin, but attributable to a “personal idiosyncrasy”. Most of the evidence the inquiry relied on is still classified “secret”. However, the details of the experiment in which Maddison took part are now publicly available, and Evans quotes from them. They show that Porton Down was lucky to have had only one death in the experiment. Numerous other volunteers in that particular study were very severely poisoned, and a second volunteer had a cardiac arrest (as had Maddison) but survived. Rules were changed at Porton Down after this and exposures were drastically reduced. Even so, many volunteers claim that they were misled about the experiments in which they were a part. These claims, too, are part of the police enquiry. Gassed will have been required reading by the inquiry team, for Evans leaves few stones unturned in his extraordinary account of practices at a star British institution, which continues to shine, but which may yet have some atoning to do. Alastair Hay Molecular Epidemiology Unit, Thoresby Place, School of Medicine, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

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