Chemical weaponsU.K. conducted chemical weapons experiments on “unconsenting participants”

In 1963 the U.K. Ministry of Defense’s Porton Down military science center carried outthe first of a series of tests to release zinc cadmium sulphide in the atmosphere overNorwich.

It was one of many examples of secret experiments conducted in the name ofmilitary research during the 1950s and 1960s, now chronicled for the first time in a new bookby University of Kent historian Professor UlfSchmidt.

The book, entitled Secret Science: A Century of Poison Warfare and Human Experiments (Oxford University Press), provides a comprehensive overview of state military scientific research on chemicaland biological weapons by Britain, the United States, and Canada since the First World War. It showsthat the history of human and animal experimentation should not be seen as a national issuebut rather in the context of an international network of expertscientists.

The University of Kent reports that the book also highlights how breaches of medical ethics have been more widespreadand systematic than previously assumed —and were carried out over a prolonged period oftime. This led Schmidt to challenge the claim that ethics violations on both civiliansand soldiers were “isolated”incidents.

Schmidt further considers how the medical ethics of experimentation haveevolved —and suggests that further changes could yet see a more ethical approach that wouldnot compromise the state’s ability to test newweapons.

Using little-publicized examples, such as the Norwich zinc cadmium sulphideexperiment, Schmidt details the ways in which chemical and biological experimentstouchedon the lives of ordinary people as well as militarypersonnel.

Although he acknowledges that Britain’s atmospheric trials may not have posedan immediate health hazard to the public, Schmidt points out that thegovernment was well aware, as the Chief Scientist warned in 1963, that “public … knowledge of themby unauthorized persons could be politicallyembarrassing.”

Schmidt highlights the historical context of such experiments. He writes: “Asan island nation, Britain was widely believed to be particularly vulnerable tolarge-scale chemical and biological attacks. During the Cold War, research and developmentactivities reached far beyond the identification and testing of ever more toxic chemical compoundsin the secure confines of Porton’s experimental landscape. With an estimated total of over750 field trials carried out by Porton between 1946 and 1976, Britain was turned into alarge-scale open-air laboratory; her people into an army of unconsentingparticipants.”

In the same period as the Norwich tests, many other people — mainly service personnel— volunteered to take part in experiments. Secret Science poses the wider question as towhy human beings participate in such experiments. In many cases, Schmidtsuggests, the scientist “takes on the role of the seemingly selfless father figure, assuring hissubjects that their joint enterprise will ultimately, in some distant future, be of benefit to thegreater good; resources and human sacrifice are an apparently inevitablenecessity.”

Schmidt identifies that in many cases secrecy impacted onmedical ethics in relation to issues of informed consent and full disclosure, but he concludes byarguing that secrecy and medical ethics do not have to be mutuallyexclusive.

Schmidt is Professor of Modern History, director of the Center for the Historyof Medicine, Ethics and Medical Humanities at the University of Kent, and principal investigator of the Porton Down Project on the history of chemical warfare research during the Cold War.