In 1953, in an innocuous-looking building in the rolling green fields of Wiltshire, Ronald Maddison, a 20-year-old serviceman, was exposed to sarin as part of a chemical weapons experiment. He died almost instantly.

The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was informed of the death within 24 hours. Since Porton Down, where Ronald Maddison died, was a secret government establishment, the government acted quickly to prevent the incident from becoming public knowledge. The then Home Secretary Maxwell-Fyfe asked the Coroner to hold the inquest ‘in camera’ (in secret) “on grounds of national security”. The head of the Ministry of Supply, Duncan Sandys, took a close interest in the proceedings; the coroner recorded a verdict of “misadventure”.

Nearly 50 years later, in November 2002, Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf quashed the original verdict and ordered a fresh inquest into the death of Ronald Maddison. This time HM Coroner for Wiltshire and Swindon, David Masters, was empowered to leave no stone unturned. “It’s in the public interest to understand why Ronald Maddison died, how Porton Down was operated, and by whom,” says Dr Ulf Schmidt, a historical expert who gave evidence at the inquest in July 2004.

Dr Schmidt was recently awarded a Wellcome Trust grant to investigate how military medical research was carried out in the UK throughout the Cold War period. In particular, he hopes to shed light on what ethics guidelines were in force at that time and how effective they were in regulating research.

Servicemen were recruited as ‘volunteers’ to take part in the experiments at Porton Down. A crucial question for Dr Schmidt is what these men thought they were volunteering for. “I am trying to ascertain whether they were informed that it was nerve gas that was being tested on them, or were they just invited to take part in some experiments. Some volunteers who gave evidence at the Maddison inquest say they were told they were being tested for a cure for the common cold. This is now called ‘the common cold issue’. Obviously, if that was the case, they didn’t give informed consent.”

This leads to another important question: what did informed consent actually mean at the time? The MoD argues that the UK had no written guidelines (and therefore no law was broken). But Dr Schmidt points out that informed consent was a key principle of the Nuremberg Code, a set of detailed ethical guidelines rooted in international law, which were formulated during the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial after World War II.

Moreover, Ronald Maddison died in collaborative research commissioned by the Tripartite Conference of the USA, the UK and Canada. “American scientists were collaborating with scientists at Porton Down,” says Dr Schmidt. “They were an international community of cutting-edge researchers, who were constantly talking to each other and exchanging ideas.”

Dr Schmidt wants to establish to what extent the USA and the UK shared guidelines and cooperated in their medical practices and ethical understandings. “It’s difficult to establish this because most of the scientists are now dead,” says Dr Schmidt. However, evidence given at the inquest seems to suggest that some Porton Down scientists did know about the issue of informed consent and the Nuremberg Code, and may perhaps have been less ignorant than has been suggested.

Dr Schmidt is also aiming to shed light on the processes by which ethics are disseminated – potentially problematic in a secret military environment. A crucial consideration is the chain of command: how were these experiments, including the one that killed Ronald Maddison, commissioned? “It’s not a straightforward process,” he points out. Although the Tripartite Conference might have recommended use of Porton Down, key national governmental, scientific and military figures would have to have been involved in the decision-making.

Moreover, research scientists sometimes make their own decisions. “Were scientists pushing the boundaries and going too far – perhaps gambling with the lives of servicemen and subjecting them to dangerous experiments?”

His study of military medical research has a broader relevance, given the current international situation. “There are parallels with today. Again, the government is trying to protect itself from an external threat. The question is, whatever external threat there is, to what extent can you restrict people’s freedom, and bend international law to protect the nation? What matters more, individual human rights, or national interest and security? Opinions vary, but I believe that even in very difficult circumstances, the rights of the individual in medical experiments must be protected.”

Results from his research will be fed directly to policy makers through the London Seminar of the Harvard– Sussex Programme on Chemical and Biological Warfare, of which he has just been made a member. Held twice a year at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, with key government officials in attendance, the seminar brings together military and academic experts, to share information and brainstorm ideas.

See also

• Biomedical ethics grants schemes