Hundreds of ex-military used as guinea pigs in experiments on chemical-bacteriological weapons in the  British laboratory of Porton Down will present to the Minister of Defense a request for millions in damages.

Secret structure. The news that 350 veterans, used without their knowledge from 1940 to 1980 in dangerous and at times lethal scientific research, are prepared to sue the government, has been publicized yesterday by one of the lawyers of the ex-soldiers, Martyn Day, of the firm of Leigh, Day & Co. The lawyers have threatened to have recourse to the High Court if the English Minister of Defense will not undertake to furnish within 2 months a valid—and profitable—proposal of extrajudicial negotiation. The existence of the laboratory of Porton Down, constructed during the first world war, has remained secret until the 1960s when the British government admitted its existence. From that time on it became the most controversial and contested military structure that ever existed on British soil.

Chemical Weapons. At the end of the 40s and in the first years of the 50s the objective of research was that of giving the British armed forces a modern nerve agent and to develop specific instruments of defense against such an agent. In later years the project of chemical and bacteriological weapons was abandoned and the defensive aspect was emphasized, with the study of prophylaxis, therapy, individuation and rapid identification, decontamination and effective protection against nerve agents capable of producing devastating effects on the skin, the eyes, and the respiratory airways. Tests were conducted on hundreds of military personnel to determine the effects of the gas. Because of the experiments based on sarin, a 20 year old pilot, Ronald Maddison, died after some drops of gas were spread on his arm. In the 70s and 80s the establishment was involved in the study of the effects of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war and against the Kurdish population, while in the 90s, the technicians of Porton Down furnished operative support to the British forces used in the Gulf War.

Respiratory illnesses. The center furnished technical advice to the Special Commission of the United Nations charged with ascertaining the presence of nuclear, chemical, and bacteriological weapons in Iraq and producing an effective vaccine against anthrax. More than 20,000 people have been subjected to the tests from 1945 to 1980. Of these, 25 died in unclear circumstances, and thousands have reported they have suffered pathologies that range from respiratory difficulties to renal insufficiency. In 2001 the government agreed to an independent inquest, and in 2004 a second inquest began on the death of Ronald Maddison. Still in the same year the London prosecutor has opened a dossier on the 25 military personnel mysteriously dead. Last February three veterans obtained damages for having received doses of LSD without their consent in the 1950s.