When I first heard the words ‘Porton Down,’ I thought it was a new Netflix Show in set in 18th century Britain with uncomfortably attractive courtiers having sex in rooms with fancy drapery.
To be fair, it is in Britain, and a lot of people got royally fucked.
Today’s Moment of Science… Porton Down’s cure for the common cold.
It’s not every day I write about a lab with such a history that I have to leave out the time they made an island uninhabitable for two generations by bombing it with anthrax. And the time they used the London underground to do some biowarfare experiments. If a place has a name like ‘Porton Down,’ somewhere deep down you know it’s because they’re scrubbing a dark seedy past. A more accurate name would be “Porton Down: we killed so many bunnies it got weird.”
The lab opened during World War I to counter Germany’s advanced chemical warfare program. WWI was also known as ‘the chemists’ war,’ as an estimated combined 1.8 million people died under the maelstrom of half of Europe salting the earth with lethal chemical agents.
Towards the end of WWII, British scientists got word of new German nerve agents. The effects sounded unbelievable. Of all the monstrosities Hitler deployed, for some reason still unknown to this day, the biggest asshole in history didn’t unleash a simply terrifying supply of sarin and tabun. There are theories, but still no definite answer. And it left a lot of sarin for British soldiers to find.
In 1946, in the wake of WWII atrocities, the Nuremberg Code unofficially outlined what seems today like a pretty “no shit” set of do’s and don’ts for conducting experimentation on humans ethically. It’s one of the first sets of standards that provided a framework for protections like Institutional Review Boards (IRBs).
But what were they supposed to do at Porton Down, just not play with their new chemical weapon? Now that the fascists were taken care of, the Brits had their eye on new enemies: those goddamn commies. The British government was sure the USSR was stockpiling nerve gas. There was no time to think about ethics before conducting experiments to make sure they could stop those unethical people.
So they told servicemen they were looking for a cure for the common cold.
First, they exposed a small test group to low doses of sarin. As you do with nerve agent. People got pretty sick. Some lost their eyesight for about a week. I assume the follow-up meeting went something like “but did anyone die? No? So what’s the problem?” right before they started plans to up the dose.
By April 27th 1952, they hit a dosage of 300mg with an army serviceman named John Kelly. This was the first time a volunteer had what they recorded as a “serious” reaction, going comatose, and damn near dying.
The institute changed their rules and 15mg became the new cap for dosage.
Which they obviously ignored. Because pffft, when did regulations ever help anybody?
On May 6, 1953, Ronald Maddison stepped into the gas chamber. He was looking forward to using the pay from volunteering to buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend. At 10:17, 200mg of sarin was applied to his arm.
With ⅓ less nerve agent than what almost killed John Kelly, what did they have to worry about?
He lost his pulse by 11am, and was declared dead by 1:30pm.
The ambulance driver was made to sign a “don’t you fucking dare talk about this” form, and Maddison’s death was recorded as a “whoopsiedaisy,” conveniently leaving out the “we intentionally dumped nerve agent on this guy and lied to him about it” part. Sarin experiments continued.
20,000 British servicemen and women were dosed with nerve agents under the guise of a test cure for the common cold.
The UK government admitted its wrongdoing at Porton Down in 2008. The apology is a tad overdue; Queen Elizabeth was crowned a month after Maddison’s death.
The UK’s official website for Porton Down helpfully clarifies that they do not cultivate cannabis there, nor have aliens, “dead or alive,” been taken to the site.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, asking how bad is your workplace, really?
I wonder if you would rate the Vipeholm trials as better or worse from an ethical standpoint. On the one hand, no one died. On the other hand, the people involved were mentally retarded and so could definitely not give consent, informed or not.
So, the UK peer of Dugway Proving Grounds.
Interestingly, Dugway remains in use today, unlike Porton Downs, which is now a combined public area and privatized chemical weapons lab.
I’ll up the ante though, with Bari, an Italian port where a ship laden with mustard gas was docked and dutifully bombed by the Nazis. Exposing tens of thousands of people and service members to the blister agent.
And thus came the medical records for one of our still current chemotherapy agents against cancer. Interestingly an agent ill understood at the time, which had temporarily blinded no less than Hitler during WWI. Would that he’d experienced soman poisoning, with its two minute aging, history would’ve been significantly happier….
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/bombing-and-breakthrough-180975505/
https://fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/doctrine/army/mmcch/NervAgnt.htm
“new Netflix Show in set in 18th century Britain with uncomfortably attractive courtiers having sex in rooms with fancy drapery” and I am now desperately looking on the Netflix ‘coming soon’ page hoping to see this show.
Bridgerton. You’re welcome.