Files reveal Britain's secret biological weapons trials in second world war

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian

Files reveal Britain's secret biological weapons trials in second world war
Porton Down scientists studied food-and-mouth, typhoid and cholera for disease attacks
Owen Bowcott and Rob Evans guardian.co.uk
Sunday 16 May 2010 18.57 BST

British scientists experimented with ways of spreading foot-and-mouth disease, and lethal infections such as dysentery, cholera and typhoid in secret biological warfare trials during the second world war.

An extensive list of the contagious agents and plagues that could be turned into weapons of mass destruction is revealed in files from a War Cabinet committee released to the National Archives.

The government was known to have produced 5m anthrax-filled cakes to infect cattle in Germany during the war, but the latest documents show research was carried out into a far larger variety of diseases, mostly in Porton Down, near Salisbury, and Pirbright in Surrey.

Experts reported to the War Cabinet's Porton experiments sub-committee, which acknowledged that "bacteriological warfare" was outlawed by the 1925 Geneva protocol. The minutes, only now released, are labelled "secret" and "to be kept under lock and key". One session on "Toxin X" – thought to be botulinum – was so sensitive the minute records: "Not circulated."


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/may/16/britain-secret-biological-warfare-testing

[DavidDvorkin]

1. A dangerous kind of research in a small, densely populated country

No matter how desperate the situation was at the time.

[defendandprotect]

2. This is the insanity of patriarchy . . .

obviously, America did much the same --

creating cancer, Manchurian candidates -- probably even HIV --

PLUS many other disgusting programs vs humanity -- and we criticized Nazis???

We took over the whole Nazi agenda as far as I can see!!

[Javaman]

3. You know about Operation Paperclip, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

[DavidDvorkin]

4. Patriarchy?

What does that have to do with this story?