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Porton Down

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Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Porton Down, or often known more simply as Porton Down, is a United Kingdom government facility for military research, including CBRN defence. The complex is located near Salisbury in Wiltshire, England, and is operated by the Ministry of Defence's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), an Executive Agency of the MOD.

Contents

History

Porton Down was set up to provide a proper scientific basis for the British use of chemical warfare, in response to the earlier German use of this means of war in 1915. Work at Porton started in March 1916. At the time, only a few cottages and farm buildings were scattered on the Downs at Porton and Idmiston.

Porton Down originally opened in 1916 as the Royal Engineers Experimental Station as a site for testing chemical weapons. The laboratory's remit was to conduct research and development regarding chemical weapons agents such as chlorine, phosgene and mustard gas by the British armed forces in the First World War.

By 1918 the original two huts had become a large hutted camp with 50 officers and 1,100 other ranks. Studies in the Great War mainly concerned the dissemination of chlorine and phosgene and, later, mustard gas. By May 1917 the focus for anti-gas defence and respirator development had moved from London to Porton Down.

After the Armistice, staff at Porton Down were reduced to a skeleton level. In 1919 the War Office set up the Holland Committee to consider the future of chemical warfare and defence. By 1920, the Cabinet agreed to the Committee’s recommendation that work should continue at Porton Down and from that date a slow permanent building programme began coupled with the gradual recruitment of civilian scientists. By 1922, there were 380 servicemen, 23 scientific and technical civil servants and 25 “civilian subordinates”. By 1925 the civilian staff had doubled.

By 1926 the chemical defence aspects of Air Raid Precautions (ARP) for the civilian population was added to the Station’s responsibilities. By 1938, the international situation was such that offensive chemical warfare research and development and the production of war reserve stocks of chemical warfare agents by the chemical industry was authorised by the Cabinet. Britain had ratified the 1925 Geneva Protocol in 1930 with reservations which permitted the use of chemical warfare agents only in retaliation.

The CCU is sometimes confused with the Health Protection Agency Porton Down at nearby Porton Down, with which it occasionally collaborated but was not officially connected.

Chemical warfare was not used by any nation during the Second World War but as Allied armies penetrated Germany, operational stockpiles of munitions and weapons were discovered which contained new chemical warfare agents; the highly toxic organophosphorous nerve agents, unknown to Britain and the Allies.

During the Second World War, research concentrated on chemical weapons such as nitrogen mustard, plus biological weapons including Anthrax and Botulinum toxin. In 1942, highly successful tests of an anthrax bio-weapon developed at Porton Down were held at Gruinard Island.

When the war ended, the advanced state of German technology regarding nerve agents such as Tabun, Sarin and Soman surprised the allies and they were eager to capitalise on it. Subsequent research took the newly discovered German nerve agents as a starting point, and eventually VX nerve agent was developed at Porton Down in 1952.

The late 1940s and early 1950s saw research and development at Porton Down aimed at providing Britain with the means to arm itself with a modern nerve agent based capability and to develop specific means of defence against these agents. In the end these aims came to nothing on the offensive side because of the decision to abandon any sort of British chemical warfare capability. On the defensive side there were years of difficult work to develop the means of prophylaxis, therapy, rapid detection and identification, decontamination and more effective protection of the body against nerve agents, capable of exerting effects through the skin, the eyes and respiratory tract.

Tests were carried out on servicemen to determine the effects of nerve agents on human subjects, with one recorded death due to a nerve gas experiment. There have been persistent allegations of unethical human experimentation at Porton Down, such as those relating to the death of Leading Aircraftman Ronald Maddison, aged 20, in 1953. Maddison believed that he was taking part in trials to cure the common cold. In reality he was taking part in sarin nerve agent toxicity tests. Sarin was dripped on to his arm and he died shortly afterwards as a result. All of these allegations have been denied by the Ministry of Defence.

In the 1950s the Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment became involved with the development of CS, a riot control agent, and took an increasing role in trauma and wound ballistics work. Both these facets of Porton Down’s work had become more important because of the situation in Northern Ireland.

In 1970 the Chemical Defence Establishment became the title of the senior establishment at Porton Down and remained for the next 21 years. Preoccupation with defence against the nerve agents continued but in the 1970s and 1980s the Establishment was also concerned with studying reported chemical warfare by Iraq against Iran and against its own Kurdish population.

Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the problems increased, culminating in active operational support of British Forces in the Gulf region. After the Gulf cease-fire the establishment continued to provide technical support for the United Nations Special Commission set-up to oversee the destruction of the Iraqi capability to use nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. This continued until 1999 when Iraq withdrew co-operation from the Commission.

As of 2004, Wiltshire police are carrying out an investigation, Operation Antler, into these allegations; no prosecutions have yet followed from the investigations.

Most of the work carried out at Porton Down has to date remained secret, and the UK Government have been criticised for not revealing the true extent of the research that was carried out on unwitting servicemen. It is known that amongst current research at Porton is the study of MRSA and Anthrax. The facility produces a high efficacy anthrax vaccine which is sold throughout the world.

A second inquest on Ronald Maddison commenced in May 2004, after many years of lobbying by his relatives and their supporters. It later found the death of Ronald Maddison to have been unlawful [link], however this has since been challenged by the Ministry of Defence. [link]

Until 2001 Porton Down was part of the UK government's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. DERA was spilt into QinetiQ, initially a fully government owned company, and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). Dstl incorporates all of DERA's activities deemed unsuitable for the privatisation planned for QinetiQ, particularly Porton Down.

In February 2006 three ex-servicemen were awarded compensation in an out of court settlement after claims they were given LSD without their consent during the 1950s. [link]

Use of Animals

Dstl Porton Down is also involved in animal-testing, where the "three Rs" of Reduce (the number of animals used), Refine (animal procedures) and Replace (animal tests with non-animal tests) are used as the basic code of practice.

Dstl’s Biomedical Sciences department is involved in the following activities:

The Physical Sciences department also uses animals in its ‘Armour Physics’ research.

During 2005, 21,118 procedures were undertaken which involved the use of animals [link], nearly double the number undertaken in 1997 [link]. The most commonly used animal are mice, other animals used included guinea pigs, rats, pigs, ferrets, primates and sheep.

Defence CBRN Centre

The Defence CBRN Centre is based at Winterbourne Gunner, south of Porton Down. It is a tri-service location, with the RAF being the lead service. There is also a police training presence at the site. It is responsible for all matters relating to CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons) warfare for the UK armed forces.

See also

External links

 

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