Cover-up over Porton Down "volunteer" sarin experiments
01 August 2003
September will see the first open inquest into the death of Ronald Maddison, a 20-year old serviceman who died an agonising death fifty years ago after an experiment that saw him exposed to 200 mg. of liquid sarin nerve agent at the Ministry of Defences Porton Down military testing centre near Salisbury, Wiltshire (see Statewatch vol. 12 no. 6). It is also the month that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) chose to announce that it "has advised that there should be no prosecution for any criminal offences arising from the evidence reviewed to date on allegations made about experiments carried out on human volunteers [sic] at Porton Down, Wiltshire, from 1939 to 1989." As recently as 2002, Severin Carrel reported in the Independent newspaper that scientists at Porton Down had developed "A potentially devastating range of genetically modified superbugs, including bubonic plague, smallpox and gangrene."
More than 3,000 human guinea pigs are thought to have been duped into taking part in the experiments which took place over four decades between the 1940s and the 1980s. The CPS’s advice not to prosecute followed an investigation by Wiltshire police, (Operation Antler, which started in 1999), after more than 400 complaints by veterans of Porton Down’s "Human Volunteer Observer Scheme". The men say that they were deceived and secretly tested with lethal nerve gasses after volunteering to participate in tests to find a cure for the common cold.
Last year the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf ordered a new inquest, saying "justice requires that these matters are properly investigated." The outcome of the new inquest - the first, in 1953, was held in secret and resulted in a verdict of misadventure - is now considered crucial to other Porton Down veterans who are calling for a public inquiry into the experiments. The veterans have also challenged the CPSs decision not to prosecute the officials behind the programme, claiming that they were deceived into taking part in the chemical agent tests. Many of the "volunteers" complain of ill-health, especially respiratory problems, and there is incontrovertible evidence that scientists were fully aware of the risks involved in the tests.
A recent article in the Observer newspaper (28.9.03) included testimony from the military ambulance driver who drove Maddison to hospital. Alfred Thornhill said:
It was like he was being electrocuted, his whole body was convulsing. I have seen somebody suffer an epileptic fit, but you have never seen anything like what happened to that lad.. the skin was vibrating and there was all this terrible stuff coming out of his mouth.. it looked like frogspawn or tapioca.
After Maddison had been taken to the hospital unit, Thornhill witnessed another scene that was to haunt him down the years:
I saw his leg raise up from the bed and his skin begin to turn blue. It started from the ankle and started spreading up his leg. It was like watching somebody pouring a blue liquid into a glass... It was like watching something from outer space and then one of the doctors produced the biggest needle I had seen. It was the size of a bicycle pump and went down into the lad's body.
The government, it would seem, is in denial concerning the investigation of their country's shameful experimentation with liquid nerve agents. The Porton Down Veterans’ Support Group is still hoping that a public inquiry will shed light on the "horror" of the experiments some 50 years after they took place.
Porton Down Veterans Support Group, PO Box 787 Maidstone, Kent ME14 1EF. For further information on the Porton Down experiments see Rob Evans book "Gassed: British Chemical Warfare Experiments on Humans at Porton Down" (House of Stratus) 2000 (ISBN 1-84232-071-8); Observer 28.9.03; Sunday Times 28.9.03; Independent 29.9.03; Crown Prosecution Service press release 11.9.03