Forget Wouter Basson and Project Coast! The British Ministry of Defence turned large parts of their country into a giant laboratory to conduct a series of secret germ warfare tests on the public.
Cardiologist Dr Basson faces charges of unprofessional and unethical conduct. The charges relate to his conduct as a medical doctor, when he headed the country’s chemical and biological warfare research programme for the defence force in the 1980s and early 1990s.
A British government report released in 2002 however provides insight into the comprehensive official history of Britain’s biological weapons trials between 1940 and 1979. The 60-page report reveals information about more than 100 covert experiments.
It may even have involved spreading germs for pharmaceutical companies, says a South African expert.
One chapter of the report, ‘The Fluorescent Particle Trials’, reveals how between 1955 and 1963 planes flew from north-east England to the tip of Cornwall along the south and west coasts, dropping huge amounts of zinc cadmium sulphide on the population. The chemical drifted miles inland, its fluorescence allowing the spread to be monitored. In another trial using zinc cadmium sulphide, a generator was towed along a road near Frome in Somerset where it spewed the chemical for an hour.
While the Government has insisted the chemical is safe, cadmium is recognised as a cause of lung cancer and during the Second World War was considered by the Allies as a chemical weapon.
Many of these tests involved releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms over vast swaths of the population without the public being told.
Military personnel were briefed to tell any ‘inquisitive inquirer’ that the trials were part of “research projects into weather and air pollution”.
In another chapter, ‘Large Area Coverage Trials’, the MoD describes how between 1961 and 1968 more than a million people along the south coast of England, from Torquay to the New Forest, were exposed to bacteria including e.coli and bacillus globigii , which mimics anthrax. These releases came from a military ship, the Icewhale, anchored off the Dorset coast.
The report also reveals details of the DICE trials in south Dorset between 1971 and 1975. These involved US and UK military scientists spraying into the air massive quantities of serratia marcescens bacteria, with an anthrax simulant and phenol.
Similar bacteria were released in ‘The Sabotage Trials’ between 1952 and 1964. These were tests to determine the vulnerability of large government buildings and public transport to attack. In 1956 bacteria were released on the London Underground at lunchtime along the Northern Line between Colliers Wood and Tooting Broadway. The results show that the organism dispersed about 10 miles. Similar tests were conducted in tunnels running under government buildings in Whitehall.
Experiments conducted between 1964 and 1973 involved attaching germs to the threads of spiders’ webs in boxes to test how the germs would survive in different environments, across Britain. The report also gives details of more than a dozen smaller field trials between 1968 and 1977.
A spokeswoman for Porton Down, said: ‘Independent reports by eminent scientists have shown there was no danger to public health from these releases which were carried out to protect the public.
Asked whether such tests are still being carried out, she said: ‘It is not our policy to discuss ongoing research.’
Dispersion of compounds and other microorganisms were conducted in America too without informing the public. The official rationale for these trials was that they were done to learn about germ warfare. Areas included large cities like St. Louis, Corpus Christi, Winnipeg, and Fort Wayne.
In the English study, the following admission is included:
“Cadmium accumulates in the body, especially in the kidneys and to a much lesser extent in the liver. About 5% of cadmium is absorbed through the gut. When cadmium is absorbed through the lungs or the gut it becomes bound to albumen or to the cystine-rich protein, metallothionein. In the kidneys, the lysosomes of the proximal tubules degrade the metallothionein and so release the bound cadmium. Once there, the kidneys cannot make enough metallothionein and the free cadmium will damage them. The most sensitive indication of cadmium-induced renal damage is an increased urinary excretion of low molecular weight proteins, and particularly of beta-2-microglobulin, as there is a decrease in renal tubular absorption. There is uncertainty about the fate of ZnCdS when it is breathed deep into the lungs. It is known that cadmium ions can enter the cell surface fluid and pass into cells in the lung. Like other transition metals cadmium participates in oxidation and reduction reactions.”
In a report from the National Academy of Sciences it states that “The U.S. Army released the chemical compound zinc cadmium sulfide from airplanes, rooftops, and moving vehicles in 33 urban and rural areas as part of a Cold War program to test the way biological weapons might disperse under different conditions.”
“Information on how zinc cadmium sulfide affects human health is sparse,…”
This statement was made 30 years or more after the tests were conducted.