Wed 1 September 2004 3:21pm (UK)

Porton Down Scientists 'Unethical', Inquest Told

By Simon Evans, PA News

Military scientists who carried out nerve gas tests on humans in the 1950s acted unethically, a leading expert told an inquest today.

Professor Sir Ian Kennedy said researchers were “acting on the edge of their knowledge” when they exposed volunteers to the “uncontrollable danger” of GB Sarin, a lethal chemical agent, in tests at Porton Down laboratories, on Salisbury Plain, Wilts.

The inquest at Trowbridge, Wilts, into the death of 20-year-old RAF serviceman Ronald Maddison, from Co Durham, was reopened earlier this year after a verdict of misadventure was rushed through shortly after he died on May 6 1953.

He died after having Sarin dabbed on his skin in one of the many tests carried out at Porton Down.

One such test resulted in the “near-fatal” poisoning nine days earlier of another volunteer, Army serviceman James Kelly, on April 27 1953, the court was told.

In 2001, after Maddison’s death began being re-investigated, Sir Kennedy, a world-leading professor of ethics, was commissioned by the MoD to write a chapter of the Porton Down Historical Survey.

And today this chapter was aired before the Coroner for Wiltshire and Swindon, David Masters, and the jury in his court.

The professor concluded that, even after taking into account the differing ethical climate of the 1950s, scientists had not acted properly.

“On some occasions researchers were operating at the edge of their knowledge when exposing humans

to chemicals] in their trials,” he wrote in chapter 23 of the survey.

He explained that volunteers’ surface skin fat content was critical in the effect Sarin could have on them a factor that was not fully understood at the time.

It was discovered after Maddison’s death that his skin fat was “practically absent,” the inquest was told.

This was a key factor in his death shortly after undergoing the tests, the professor concluded.

Sir Kennedy said a failure at the time to establish a thorough knowledge of what relevance skin fat had on the ability of Sarin to be absorbed into the human body and a decision, nonetheless, to continue testing amounted to “improper conduct” on the behalf of military researchers.

He said a decision to continue testing despite being sure of the importance of skin fat, had led to “Maddison and others being exposed to uncontrollable danger of serious harm or death.”

The professor, one of the world’s most eminent spokesmen in ethical health, said: “In my view there were trials that went too far.

“They were beyond the bounds of what was ethically permissible despite the imperatives of the Cold War.”

What solicitor Simon McKay, representing the Wiltshire Police, who have carried out the recent investigation, suggested might have been seen as a game of “experimental Russian Roulette,”

Sir Kennedy chose to describe to the court as “an intemperate pace in the pursuit” of scientific knowledge.

He added that if they could not answer the question of skin, fat and the absorption of Sarin into the tissue, then researchers should not have carried out the tests on humans.

Yesterday, in response to last week’s revelations that Sarin tests continued after Maddison’s death despite a Government ban on them, Dr Paul Rice, currently a researcher at Porton Down, insisted his 1950s predecessors had “acted in reasonably good faith.”

The inquest continues.