Porton Down - History, Use of Animals, Defence CBRN Centre

A research centre established by the Ministry of Defence in Wiltshire, S England, UK, for the investigation of biological and chemical warfare.

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.

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.

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.

After the Armistice, staff at Porton Down were reduced to a skeleton level.

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.

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;

During the Second World War, research concentrated on chemical weapons such as nitrogen mustard, plus biological weapons including Anthrax and Botulinum toxin.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 servicemen.

A second inquest on Ronald Maddison commenced in May 2004, after many years of lobbying by his relatives and their supporters.

Until 2001 Porton Down was part of the UK government's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency.

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.

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:

Drug evaluation and efficacy testing - toxicology, pharmacology, physiology, behavioural science, human science.

During 2005, 21,118 procedures were undertaken which involved the use of animals , nearly double the number undertaken in 1997 .

Defence CBRN Centre

The Defence CBRN Centre is based at Winterbourne Gunner, south of Porton Down.