Porton Down's Ideological Cloud
The Toxic Secret Experiments on Millions of British People
Porton Down is the HQ for Britain’s chemical & biological weapons programs, & it has a hundred-year history of maiming & murdering innocents. The experiments which the Ministry of Defence has conducted on the British were akin to those committed in the death camps of Nazi Germany. Now, as the Fourth Industrial Revolution begins to take hold, we should all consider the state’s past actions and demand a different, more positive future.
I’m going to tell you a lot of information that you should already know. However, as soon as anyone begins researching the subject of this investigation—Porton Down’s chemical and biological weapons programs—they soon realise that so much of the information has been carefully managed by entities in the employ of the UK Ministry of Defence. Porton Down scientists were directly responsible for the premeditated murder of UK citizens.
Porton Down is the epicentre of an agenda of mass human experimentation with toxic materials. Their scientists have been responsible for causing miscarriages, premature deaths, birth defects, and ill health of almost every description. The organisation has ignored chemical weapons conventions, worked on offensive chemical weapons in secret, and has launched widespread chemical attacks on the British people from aircraft, automobiles, and ships.
The Ministry of Defence publicised a mission at one point: to see if they could spray the entire country with toxic chemicals in just a few hours.
This out-of-control facility has never been truly reigned in or held to account for their past actions, with the survivors of their blatant human experimentation left to die in secret, with no support, no compensation for their injuries, and no acknowledgement of the injuries they suffered.
The history of Porton Down is truly shocking. In this article, I will explore the events the facility would rather you not know about, rather than issues like Anthrax Island, and some other, more stage-managed attempts to change their reputation through gimmicky trickery and positive photo ops.
This is the story of how the UK’s chemical and biological weapons organisation, Porton Down, organised the systematic, repeated, and long-term poisoning of tens of millions of British people with a toxic carcinogen with terrifying and wide-reaching health implications.
This is the history of Porton Down’s reckless use of chemical and biological weapons to indiscriminately murder those they were meant to protect.
The Early History of Porton Down’s Chemical Weapons Use
The first modern example of the use of chemical weapons on the battlefields of Europe was by French forces during the opening campaigns of World War I. On that occasion, they launched hand and rifle grenades which contained the tear gases ethyl bromoacetate and chloroacetone on the opposing forces, an event which arguably opened up the use of, and legitimised the growing trend of using, chemical gases in open warfare as an offensive weapon.
Germany’s earliest recorded use of chemical weapons during World War I happened on 27 October 1914, when the German forces dropped shells containing the irritant dianisidine chlorosulfonate on British troops entrenched near Neuve-Chapelle, France. In January 1915, German artillery shells containing the irritant, xylyl bromide, were fired at Russian troops in what is now Poland.
The first full-scale deployment of chemical warfare agents during World War I, was the attack during the Second Battle of Ypres, on 22 April 1915. German forces gassed French, Canadian and Algerian troops with chlorine gas released from canisters, using the wind to completely cover the Allied trenches in clouds of the concentrated agents. Chemical weapons were fast becoming a default part of the modern arsenal for every major country involved in World War I.
Even though the deployment of chemical and biological weapons was becoming normalised, most of the guilty parties were ignorant of the potential consequences that could be. The chemical and biological arms race was forced upon all sides during World War 1. Each major nation gathered together its most notable scientists in the field and began its own research into the chemical and biological agents with the potential to be weaponised.
In an effort to win the chemical and biological arms race, the British purchased some land just outside Salisbury, Wiltshire. With just a few cottages and a couple of farmhouses, Porton Down was born. Porton Down began operating in 1916 under the name the War Department Experimental Station, and was soon after renamed the Royal Engineers Experimental Station.
The initial Porton Down site had been set up under the simple understanding that they needed to test chemical weapons in response to German use of gases on the battlefields of World War I. The newly formed laboratories soon began researching and developing chemical weapons agents which had already been used by the British armed forces, agents such as chlorine gas, phosgene, and mustard gas.
During the first half of 1917, the site focused on anti-gas defence, with the British respirator development moving its research and production from London to Porton Down. By 1918, the site had become a large hutted camp with 50 officers and over 1000 other ranks. Once World War I had ended, the site was only lightly staffed until 1919, when the War Office set up the Holland Committee to examine the future of chemical warfare and defence.
By the turn of the twenties, the UK Cabinet agreed to the Committee’s recommendation that work should continue at Porton Down. In 1922, there were 380 servicemen, 23 scientific and technical civil servants, and 25 “civilian subordinates” employed at the growing Porton Down facility. In 1930, Britain ratified the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which permitted the use of chemical warfare agents only in retaliation. By the time 1938 arrived, the Third Reich was rolling towards international conflict, so the Cabinet authorised offensive chemical warfare research and development, along with the production of war reserve stocks of chemical warfare agents by the British chemical industry.
It is known that Porton Down was experimenting on humans at their Wiltshire headquarters from their primordial beginnings in 1916, but the first known occasion that scientists from Porton Down began mass experimentation on British troops only happened a year before World War II, in 1938. Those tests, now commonly referred to as the “Rawalpindi experiments”, were where Porton Down scientists tested mustard gas on hundreds of soldiers to monitor the effects on these unsuspecting human subjects.
As you will easily note throughout this article, Porton Down employs a straightforward yet effective technique to avoid accountability for its actions: it simply refuses to conduct follow-up research on the individuals it has used in these tests. By doing this, they are then able to say, “there is no evidence that our actions caused injury or death”. For instance, when people mention the Rawalpindi experiments, Porton Down has always been quick to point out that there is “zero evidence” that any health effects experienced by the candidates were caused by the trials they were involved in, simply because they chose not to report any adverse health effects.
The War Time Chemical and Biological Human Experimentation
During World War II, the Americans and British were desperate to compete with their Nazi counterparts. Both the Axis and Allied forces were developing chemical and biological agents with offensive military uses on the battlefields of World War II. Many on the Allied side were concerned that, as the war progressed and the armies got more desperate and entrenched, the Germans would again resort to using chemical weapons at levels similar to World War I.
The Americans and British began to test mustard gas on their own soldiers. The troops involved in these experiments were told that they’d experience no serious lasting injuries. However, not only did mustard gas exposure cause terrible immediate pain, but the human participants also carried some of their injuries with them for the rest of their lives.
Harry Hog was one of the troops sent to Porton Down during World War II. He had been told that he was to be trained in chemical weapons, but soon he discovered that he was to be a “volunteer” in experiments that he didn’t fully understand. He was never warned of the potential consequences of being exposed to the agents that Porton Down scientists were planning to test on him. The troops who were selected alongside Harry all had a similar experience.
The men were led quickly into a gas chamber with no windows, no ventilation. and a thick door which had a peephole, mirroring gas chambers in use in Nazi Germany at that time. Once the men were all in the chamber, a canister of mustard gas was placed on the floor in front of them, and they were told that none of them would be let out until all of them were on their hands and knees. In an emotive interview given by Harry Hog, after keeping silent for 50 years under the fear of punishment under the Official Secrets Act, the grey-haired Scotsman explains what happened once the canister was opened and the door had been closed:
”Of course, we were choking, our lungs were bursting, our heads were bursting, and it was horrendous, and we were scrambling about with our heads at the door, trying to get air from the door, and they still wouldn’t open the door, it seemed like an eternity. Eventually they opened the door and we tumbled out, tumbled out, just tumbled out, tumbled out,… (tears well up in Harry’s eye’s as he stutters whilst attempting to recount the tale) …One man in particular was eating the grass, just like an animal, he was just out of his mind.”
Harry Hog’s silence lasted for five decades, and his life was marked by ill health. Eventually, he found the courage to tell his tale, and he was one of many who survived. Other victims of Porton Down and the Ministry of Defence’s human experimentation eventually died of their injuries before they had an opportunity to tell anyone of their traumatic experiences.
America was also committed to experimenting with these toxic agents on its own soldiers, and the Allied powers were collaborating with their strategic partners on efforts to create better weapons for mass murder. In similar experiments to what occurred at Porton Down, in the United States, US soldiers were exposed to smaller amounts of mustard gas for more extended periods over consecutive days.
The people enacting the experiments were completely aware of the harm they were committing on the innocent human subjects. They knew about the effects of mustard gas after the experiences during World War I. They would have been fully aware that they were disabling some of these men for life. In the future, the subjects of these experiments suffered from cancers, a range of other consequential illnesses. They had lifelong breathing difficulties mainly due to their lungs being irreversibly damaged from exposure to the gas.
The Americans, with all the secret military medical skeletons in their closet, were not guilty of committing the most disturbing of the Allied experiments during this period, whereas the British were becoming almost as bad as their National Socialist foes.
Scientists from Porton Down used young Australian volunteers in some of the worst Allied experimentation committed against human beings during this period. The Australian experiments were to evaluate the effects of mustard gas on troops, specifically in hotter climates. Hundreds of men were herded into gas chambers by the Porton Down scientists and gassed with concentrated mustard gas, leading to truly terrifying results.
The men suffered burns and sores all over their bodies; they were barely able to breathe. Yet, directly after the experiments, they were forced to run a military assault course to see how effective they could be in combat after exposure to large amounts of mustard gas. This process was to become known as “Manbreaking”, a sickening experimental routine which left almost all the participants disabled in one way or another. One of the areas noted in the Porton Down documentation as being most affected by the procedure was the penis, scrotum and popliteal fossae, which became filled with fluid after exposure. This left the subject with severe pain and made them unable to walk, which physically stopped the soldiers from fighting effectively.
The Germans were doing much worse experiments on the other side of the front line. They had developed nerve gas, and this invention became preciously sought-after knowledge by the Allied powers. As the war reached its end, the advancing Allied armies were discovering concentration camps and laboratories where the bulk of the Nazi experimentation had been happening during the horrific reign of Hitler’s Third Reich. While the shocked soldiers liberated these hellish appendages of the Nazi atrocity machine, one British military scientist, Major D. C. Evans, was sent to gain as much technical data about the chemical agent which powered the extermination of humans by the Germans, Zyklon-B.
The British were eager to know the concentrations of Zyklon-B it took to kill a human, only to discover that the use of the chemical was not recorded like a typical experiment. The amount of Zyklon-B agent used was strictly to exterminate the subjects rather than to experiment upon them. Major Evans had a second, more important, mission: he was tasked by the Ministry of Defence with gathering as much information as possible about the development of nerve gas by Porton Down researchers.
Nerve gas was the most lethal chemical agent developed so far, and the British were desperate to add the specifications of the Nazi VX agent to their own data and to create an arsenal of chemical weapons which was more sophisticated than any of its rivals. Evans’ intelligence report at the time also indicates that the British were confident they would be able to find the necessary information to meet their objectives.
The major battlefields of Europe soon fell silent, but the Japanese were still fanatically charged to fight until the end, and the chief of Porton Down, E. E. Haddon, was on the hunt for a live testing ground packed with human meat for their proverbial chemical grinder. Tokyo soon became a major potential target for Porton Down and its collaborators. In letters written whilst Haddon was secretary of the UK’s Chemical Board, the Establishment stalwart states:
“In his report on his discussions in America … Major General Goldnoy suggested that it might be worthwhile attempting to assess the probable effects of a C.W. (chemical weapons) bombing attack on Tokyo. Particulars of the population and layout and photographs of typical buildings and areas in Tokyo were kindly provided by the Director of Military Intelligence, War Office and those have now been studied by Professor Brunt.”
The initial bombardments were being planned to take place in areas which were densely packed with highly flammable buildings, with the document defining the goal of using enough incendiaries “to set the large areas involved on fire.” This burning of Tokyo was to be followed by a chemical gas attack on the “modern type of streets” which were more difficult to reduce into ash quickly with simple incendiary devices. The document also suggested using “a very large number of small bombs” in densely populated parts of the city. The United States instead eventually dropped nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945.
Post War Porton
Cold War-era Britain was awash with propaganda. The world had just witnessed the emergence of some of the most significant breakthroughs in technology and science to date. This was only achieved at such a quick pace because of the ever-present fear of impending doom, and Britain, along with its American partners, was in no mood to discuss the ethics concerning some of these new and devastating technologies.
World War II justified the Western defence agencies in researching the most evil and murderous chemical and biological weapons. Post-World War II, they continued to create these weapons under the rationale of having them ready “just in case they were ever required to be used”. But we all know what happens when you give the blood thirsty and power hungry warmongers of the world a little droplet of your life-blood, they’ll soon want it all.
After the Nuremberg Trials, human experimentation appeared to be out of the question for any nation-state, to the great relief of a worried public. However, the people in charge of the United Kingdom’s premier chemical warfare and bio-defence research facility, Porton Down, were encouraged to see their research exempt from international regulations, treaties, or pacts that protect human life. The reckless Porton Down scientists were allowed to continue causing countless deaths, and that death was only “countless” because Porton Down, the Ministry of Defence, and consecutive UK governments all chose not to bother to count the dead or injured.
The UK Government, in an article audaciously entitled “The Truth About Porton Down!”, erroneously states:
“The UK’s chemical and biological weapons programme was closed down in the 1950s. Since then Porton Down has been active in developing effective countermeasures to the constantly evolving threat posed by chemical and biological weapons. To help develop effective medical countermeasures and to test systems, we produce very small quantities of chemical and biological agents which are stored securely and disposed of safely when they are no longer required.”
The claim that the UK’s offensive chemical and biological weapons programs run from the laboratories at Porton Down were “closed down in the 1950s” is provably false. This was “fake news” coming directly from the heart of an Establishment elite who think they’ve succeeded in hoodwinking an entire generation and any future generations.
It should be the job of the free press to hold the government to account when such claims are made, but the Mainstream Media has again been found missing in action. In fact, there wasn’t only offensive chemical and biological weapons development and research happening at Porton throughout the fifties, sixties and seventies, but they were targeting tens of millions, that’s right, TENS OF MILLIONS, of unknowing British residents. These crimes are akin to some of the war crimes committed by the Axis powers during WWII, and are still having repercussions on people’s health to this very day. So far, no person or organisation has been held accountable or admitted to any issue.
Through post-war projects like Operation Paperclip, the scientists who were at the heart of the most major Nazi advances in technology, and some who were guilty of the most inhumane experimentation, were spared the gallows at Nuremberg and, instead, were smuggled over to the US and Britain. Some of the most famous German scientists who were working on the nerve agent programs disappeared from the list of defendants in Nuremberg and were never heard of again. Soon, Porton Down were developing nerve gas in a newly constructed secret facility in Cornwall. The top secret, state-of-the-art facility in Nancekuke was fitted with identical lab equipment to the equipment that had been used in the Nazi experimentation, as well as using parts from the German chemical plants. The British had picked up almost exactly where the Nazi scientists had left off, of course, in collaboration with their American allies.
It isn’t hard for us to imagine a man in a lab coat reassuring a waiting human guinea pig that the experimental trial they’ve signed up for is not dangerous at all. It was the infamous Milgram experiments that demonstrated to the world the true coercive power of a man in a reassuring tone and a lab coat. In some of the Porton Down experiments, candidates were sat down and told that they were to be exposed to a small amount of nerve gas, such a small amount that it couldn’t even harm a mouse. Many of the survivors would be left impotent, with enlarged hearts, emphysema, general nerve damage, high blood pressure, as well as many other permanent injuries. In 1953, a twenty-year-old man named Ronald Maddison, from County Durham, was enticed by the propaganda to participate in the experiments. It was believed that Ronald died in horrific pain, convulsing out of control, until the asphyxiation would end his life. But, when an inquest was finally allowed to hear the details over five decades later, we learn the truth of how Maddison died is truly beyond imagining.
Maddison would have been promised at least a shilling for volunteering and was told he would be going to a holiday camp where they would be testing a harmless common cold drug. In reality, the scientists of Porton Down murdered him, one of seven cases of severe nerve gas poisoning which happened in Porton Down during that time. Alfred Thornhill, a 19-year-old Mancunian who had enlisted in national service, recounted the immediate aftermath of the incident in great detail. Thornhill, described as a young ambulance driver at the time of the incident, had been told to carry Maddison over to a hospital bed. The young boy would not be able to avoid becoming mentally scarred from what he saw next, he stated:
“I saw his leg rise up from the bed and I saw his skin begin turning blue. It started from the ankle and started spreading up his leg. It was like watching somebody pouring a blue liquid into a glass, it just began filling up. I was standing by the bed gawping. It was like watching something from outer space and then one of the doctors produced the biggest needle I had ever seen. It was the size of a bicycle pump and went down onto the lad’s body. The sister saw me gawping and told me to get out.”
Porton Down would proactively cover up the manner and details of Ronald’s Death for half a century.
By 1956, Porton Down were trying to repair any potential damage which may have been done to their reputation by stating that they had permanently stopped researching chemical and biological weapons to use for offensive purposes and claimed they would only be working on these agents for the protection of human life. However, as with everything Porton Down says, the reality was far removed from the image they projected to the public. Over the next 20 years, Porton Down would commit to some of the most brazen acts of mass human experimentation ever seen in history, which would lead to tens of millions being targeted by this unaccountable arm of the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
In 1957, a top-secret report from a joint defence conference on chemical and biological warfare, titled the Offensive Evaluation Committee, held between the US, UK, and Australia, showed that Britain’s claims to only commit to defensive research were already outdated. The document states:
“V agent spray shows considerable promise in the attack of personnel in the open, or in open trenches, and for ground contamination.” with documents going on to state, “Research and development efforts in all three countries should be expedited… with a view to their incorporation into the weapons systems.”
In the 15 years up until 1959, it can be established that at least 7000 “volunteers” were involved in Porton Down’s human experimentation, with around 2500 of those being exposed to nerve gas.
Mass Contamination
In 1963, the Offensive Evaluation Committee were still active, with one of the British representatives, E. E. Haddon, who was the then head of Porton Down, commenting on the US decision to concentrate on VX nerve gas as their “standard agent”. He also discussed the UK, which was examining other agents during this period and would likely be under pressure from its allies to accept the use of VX.
In 1993, the then-head of Porton Down, in a “formal written reply” to the UK parliament, claimed that they had never tested or studied any other VX-like nerve agents at the facility. However, he soon submitted a letter to the Commons library admitting that his original statement was incorrect. Porton Down continued to maintain a public image of peaceful research, advertising widely that it had ceased any offensive research in 1956. However, behind the scenes, the facility was more deeply involved in offensive research than it had ever been before.
Throughout the years, Porton Down, in all its forms, has refused to be honest about what happened during the 1960s and onward, despite some of the operations committed by the facility being infamous.
On 30 November 1964, Porton Down scientists took control of troops from the 41st Royal Marine Commando, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Carter. They took part in a trial of what was described at the time as an “incapacitating agent”. The incapacitating agent in question was LSD 25, and troops spent three days taking part in exercises meant to study the effects of the compound on soldiers in the battlefield.
The operations, referred to as Operation Moneybags, were based on the “internal security problems” which the Royal Air Force had previously encountered during a campaign in Cyprus. The volunteers spent the first day sober, and they were asked to complete the exercise as instructed by the scientists. On the second day, the troops were unknowingly dosed with LSD at 11:15 am, with the solution being administered by nurses who dropped the psychedelic in the soldiers’ water, after which, they were then driven directly to the exercise.
The commander of the troop was told that half a dozen terrorists were thought to be in the square mile where the exercise took place. By 11:40 am, troops began to be reprimanded for insubordination, and one of the soldiers was completely incapacitated soon after. The man on the rocket launcher was unable to stop swaying, and by midday, the troops had become largely incapable of performing their actions, responding only when immediate action stimulated them to do so. These seemingly innocuous and promoted displays of Porton Down’s experimentation hid a more sinister agenda from the general public.
As early as 1959, three years after promising to only commit to defensive research, Porton Down began to dump large amounts of zinc cadmium sulfide from aircraft over populated areas in human experimentation that targeted the entire population of the UK. Porton Down was supposedly testing out how vulnerable Britain was to a germ warfare attack by attacking its own population. Zinc cadmium sulfide was known to be highly toxic, with the Cadmium causing birth defects, a consequence which has been well-noted in laboratory experiments on rats, as well as being heavily carcinogenic, although officials often play this down.
In August 1959, a Royal Air Force aircraft flew above the North Sea before changing course to fly along the English Channel, spraying the compound as it flew. The MoD were, what many refer to today as, “chemtrailing” the south coast of England. The records of readings taken during the experiments show that the majority of the chemicals released were taken by the wind in a north-easterly direction. The general population were unknowingly being sprayed with a relatively low dose of the agent. However, when the plane reached the end of its flight path, the remaining chemicals were released in concentrations 1,000 times greater than anywhere else in the country.
The people of Dorchester and the nearby town of East Lulworth were surreptitiously under chemical attack from their own government. These coastal Dorset tourist hot spots were packed with visitors during the peak of summer. If we study the evident consequences of the Porton Down and MoD human experimentation on the residents of East Lulworth, the facts could break even the hardest heart. Although the folks at Porton Down won’t look at the evidence, the residents of East Lulworth suffered miscarriages, birth defects, and an array of other health issues affecting them and their children, with at least 21 families affected.
Thanks to the work of researchers like Mike Kenner, we know that, between 1953 and 1964, the East of England alone was sprayed with the cadmium-based compound on over 75 different occasions. Mike Kenner, an activist researcher, discovered documents detailing the Norwich and Bedford Porton Down-led mass human experimentation trials. Kenner’s investigation initially revealed that 12 large-scale experiments were conducted by Porton Down during these trials. Upon further investigation, the number increased to 70 large-scale experiments, and by 2006, there were almost 100 different experiments noted, covering a significant portion of the UK. He also gathered other important evidence, uncovering Porton Technical Paper No. 794, which, as Kenner writes:
“…detailed a number of experiments where radioactive gas and zinc cadmium sulfide particles were released from AERE Harwell and were tracked for at least 60 kilometres downwind.”
Another top-secret document from Porton Down that Kenner uncovered was Porton Technical Paper 885, which detailed around 36 operations involving zinc cadmium sulfide in Bedfordshire during 1963. The paper revealed that the Porton Down scientists were not limited to dropping concentrated Zinc Cadmium Sulfide from planes and dispersing the chemical over a wide area; in these trials, they were also spraying the chemical compound at ground level. The vehicle drove around communities all across the United Kingdom, spraying chemicals over the general population. This incredibly reckless display of complacent and murderous scientific exploitation would also have meant that the residents of Cardington in Bedford received a higher dosage of inhaled zinc cadmium sulfide than if sprayed from a plane.
We know that Porton Down didn’t only spray the unwitting population of the UK with toxic chemicals from aircraft and vehicles, it was also spraying the populations of multiple British counties by boat.
Zinc cadmium sulfide was not the only agent dispersed on large swathes of the British population, negatively affecting the health of many British citizens. Porton Down also sprayed lab-grown E.coli over the land from ships and used the wind to spread the germs as far as possible. Initially, it was believed that E. coli was only sprayed from a ship in Lyme Bay, off Lyme Regis in Dorset, on a single occasion. However, it was soon discovered that the Porton Down scientists sprayed these germs over Dorset, Somerset, and Devon, on numerous different occasions. Porton Down claimed that the strain of E. coli used was entirely harmless, but further tests revealed that a different strain of E. coli had actually been used in several of these experiments by Porton Down.
Porton Down publicly hinted at its activities at the time in a propaganda reel released on 28 October 1968, entitled “Defence Against Germ Warfare!” Halfway through the short look inside Porton Down facilities, the presenter states:
“..More importantly, is how a couple of aircraft spraying germs from the air could blanket the whole of Britain in a matter of hours…”
This video has never been noted before as evidence, and the reel revealed images of flight paths over a map of the UK. The pictures of the promotional video include some of the exact flight paths we know the aircraft took while dropping zinc cadmium sulfide from the air. In fact, this video is blatant proof that the intention of the experiments was not only to spray these chemicals over small parts of Britain, but the entirety of the island. This will have led to birth defects, miscarriages and all sorts of adverse health consequences across the entire UK.
All over the United Kingdom, people have unknowingly suffered the negative consequences of these outrageous and illegal mass human experiments enacted by the scientists at Porton Down. Still, Porton Down continues to evade accountability and justice, and they continue to get away with using an outdated and incredulous “see no evil” approach to taking responsibility. As long as they don’t note down the actual consequences of their evil Nazi-like experimentation on the people of the United Kingdom, Porton Down can continue to deny those affected proper compensation, support, and recognition for the injustice and suffering they’ve endured.
The Rebranding of Porton Down
By the mid-1990s, Porton Down had a serious image problem. Many negative stories had leaked out, and Porton Down’s approach to PR was seriously lacking. There were growing calls and threats of official inquiries, judicial reviews, inquests on a range of subjects, as well as many small local journalists probing for regional stories.
There had been numerous attempts to rename and, in doing so, rebrand Porton Down’s operations to help them avoid being held accountable for any of the facility’s previous actions. Survivors were almost completely forgotten, and many of the facilities’ darker endeavours became sealed into the annals of history as recorded fact. The Porton Down monster has murdered many people, they have cut many lives short with their reckless actions, and they’ve contemptuously waited patiently for most of the victims to die.
By the time Tony Blair was in power, the defence Establishment was growing, not only in power, but also in its serious lack of accountability. Under the Blair government, the future in almost every public sector was characterised by public/private partnerships. This model soon allowed the MoD to contract off certain parts of the more controversial research, which was taking place at the facility. This creates ample room to escape actual legal accountability.
On 2 July 2001, the facilities at Porton Down were rebranded “The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl)” and began to regularly reach out to entrepreneurs and private defence contractors. Dstl was initially formed during a split of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), with Dstl being established to handle the science and technology work considered best done within government, and Qinetiq—a government-owned company later floated on the stock exchange—is contracted to handle industry-based enterprises.
But, even with over twenty years of rebranding under their belt, the facilities at Porton Down continue to be viewed with suspicion and with their atrocious history of crimes against humanity, is it any surprise? As we approach the high-tech biological solutions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the issue of Porton Down’s accountability for its actions and creations is more important than ever.
The Dstl facility at Porton Down is no longer just the home for the Ministry of Defence, which in 2016/17 funded 91% of the laboratory’s activities. It is also a facility which is home to secret projects involving chemical weapons, nerve agents, biological weapons such as live lab-made viruses and Anthrax. Porton Down is also becoming involved in sectors which a facility with this history of murder should leave well alone.
In March 2020, scientists from Dstl began assisting Public Health England with projects involving COVID-19, and by January 2021, around 300 scientists were reportedly engaged in COVID-19 research at the Dstl Porton Down facility. This combination may sit well with the majority of the UK’s general population, but most citizens are unaware of the facility’s true 100-year history.
They do not know that Dstl has been guilty of:
Breaking a huge array of national and international laws
Ignoring basic human rights
The mass contamination of the UK with carcinogens
Causing deformations in children
Causing miscarriages
Mass murder
Illegal human experimentation
Lying to parliament
Ignoring and hiding the consequences of the human experimentation
And inflicting severe damage on the health and lives of an unwitting public
Additionally, it’s essential to recognise that what we are permitted to know is likely only the tip of the iceberg. In reality, the true history of this famous institution of the UK Ministry of Defence is expected to be even more horrific than we can imagine. As one of Dtsl’s recent promotional videos says, they are there: “to create the unthinkable,” and that they do.
The Consequences of Our Inaction
In reviewing the over a hundred-year history of the development of the Porton Down facilities, it’s clear that there are many events for which no one will ever be held responsible. For many of the criminal actions which representatives of Porton Down have indulged in, too much time has passed. Some argue that extenuating circumstances made the activities of Porton Down necessary. Indeed, not everything is black and white. A few of the facility’s early achievements were fairly laudable, with the mass production of gas masks being the most notable.
However, once we build a fuller picture of the mass human experimentation programs, it’s clear that the actions have had much wider consequences on almost every British citizen in varying ways. They have not only negatively impacted the population in the UK physically, psychologically, but they have also set the standard societal practices and norms. We have accepted a certain amount of manipulation. We have accepted a certain amount of abuse. We have received the news that our bodily autonomy is no more.
If we listen to Porton Down, every chemical and biological agent used in the mass experimentation operations was harmless to human health. However, if we examine the evidence, we can see that the cadmium in the zinc cadmium sulfide agent, which was sprayed over every part of Britain, is toxic to living organisms. It is known to cause cancer and birth defects; this has been comprehensively studied in rats under laboratory conditions. Porton Down says the E. coli they sprayed over South West England was harmless to human health. However, further analysis of the E. coli samples revealed that some different strains were also used, which have the potential to cause harm to humans.
We know that Porton Down and the Ministry of Defence have avoided taking significant responsibility for their illegal human experimentation. They have been able to cause death and injury to UK citizens with no accountability for the harm they’ve created.
This abstract relationship we are having with a secretive, authoritarian branch of our government is blatantly rife with contradictions. They experiment on us in secret, and we’re meant to believe that they make no record of the damage they do to human lives. They tell us that these experiments were for the protection of British citizens, but we have never been a subject of a significant chemical weapons attack, and the only state who are in any way guilty of attacking the British people with large-scale chemical weapons use on UK territory is actually Britain itself via the state-sanctioned actions of Porton Down and the Ministry of Defence.
We are intelligent enough to gather evidence that proves that our own leaders have systematically poisoned us and our families for decades, yet we allow Porton Down to get away with everything. We seem to acquiesce automatically to the promise of protection against a horrifying biological and chemical terror, which they themselves are busy creating and developing in their shadowy laboratories.
When large parts of the general population continue to support a system which can be repurposed and, at the drop of a hat, can be used to aid in the mass extermination of life, we should question our own values, ethics and morals.
Porton Down is the continuation of the Nazi death camp ideology, with the difference that there is no notable persecuted minority being targeted by the research. Instead, humanity itself becomes the target.
Once Porton Down began its experiments, the entirety of Great Britain became a Nazi-like death camp in the making. The Nazi’s put people in gas chambers, so Porton Down did the same, the Nazi’s created nerve gas, so Porton Down did the same, the Nazi’s murdered millions…
I argue that Porton Down is, in essence, an extension of the most perverted scientific experiments of the 20th century. It has continued a trend which started long before Nazism ever even existed. However, the Nazi’s embrace of perverted sciences set societal standards in modern industry and government that we can also see manifest in the behaviour of some of the largest pharmaceutical companies on Earth.
When the experimental mRNA Pfizer BioNTech vaccine began its global rollout, the decision was made that Pfizer would only keep a record of what it termed “spontaneous” reports of adverse side effects that people experienced after being injected with the Pfizer products. These reports were made by individuals who had experienced vaccine side effects, which they reported to Pfizer voluntarily. There was no system in place to monitor the mid or long-term effects of the vaccine, and by doing this, Pfizer could avoid accountability for the majority of any future health issues experienced as a result of the mRNA drug. After all, like with Porton Down, if you don’t count the injuries and deaths you cause, then there’s no evidence your organisation was responsible for anything. Negative statistics can’t be used against you. Don’t count, don’t tell.
This kind of tactic is one frequently used by intelligence and defence agencies, and should not be the first resort of pharmaceutical companies. However, the irresponsible actions of government-led organisations, such as Porton Down, have normalised such behaviour.
I’ll leave you with this thought: Are you naïve, or are you paranoid?
Are you so paranoid that you believe everyone is trying to harm you? Or, are you so naïve that you think nobody is trying to harm you? The truth can be found where it is always located, somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. But, in understanding and accepting that, you must also accept that while some people intend to protect other living creatures, others are out to do you harm.
The people who enter the defence sector do not tend to be compassionate and emotive humans. They can rationalise the murder of people they’ll never meet. They see casualties as statistics. They have used rigid collectivist ideology to detach themselves from life itself. During a time of mass formation, you can be sure that the people pushing the buttons will be completely clouded by their chosen ideology, not wrapped in a blanket of love for humanity.
That same cloud patrolled the gulags of Russia and the death camps of Germany. It committed horrific psychological experiments in America and Canada. It broke the necks of Black people for the colour of their skin, and it chopped the tall trees in Rwanda. That cloud was the same cloud that slaughtered the Native American tribes; it was there for every pogrom, every massacre, every genocide. It’s killed presidents and paupers, it’s raped, beaten and abused human beings for the entirety of recorded history. Throughout time immemorial, that cloud of ideological hate has killed billions, if not trillions, and was also responsible for the death of a young Scottish man named Ronald Maddison, as well as many others who shall remain unknown, unnamed, and purposely uncounted.
This is the cloud that murdered all the miscarried babies who were sentenced to death inside their mothers’ wombs before they had a chance to experience a meaningful existence.
That cloud isn’t made up of chemicals; that cloud is made up of humans, humans like you and me.
That was a tough read. Too sickening.