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Nerve agents, sometimes also called nerve gases, are a class of organic chemicals that disrupt the mechanisms by which nerves transfer messages to organs. The disruption is caused by the blocking of acetylcholinesterase (AChE), an enzyme that catalyzes the breakdown of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter. Nerve agents are acetylcholinesterase inhibitors used as poison.
Sarin is an extremely toxic synthetic organophosphorus compound. A colourless, odourless liquid, it is used as a chemical weapon due to its extreme potency as a nerve agent. Exposure is lethal even at very low concentrations, where death can occur within one to ten minutes after direct inhalation of a lethal dose, due to suffocation from respiratory paralysis, unless antidotes are quickly administered. People who absorb a non-lethal dose and do not receive immediate medical treatment may suffer permanent neurological damage.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is the principal public agency for conducting criminal prosecutions in England and Wales. It is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Operation Antler may refer to:
Porton Down is a science park in Wiltshire, England, just northeast of the village of Porton, near Salisbury. It is home to two British government facilities: a site of the Ministry of Defence's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) – known for over 100 years as one of the UK's most secretive and controversial military research facilities, occupying 7,000 acres (2,800 ha) – and a site of the UK Health Security Agency. It is also home to other private and commercial science organisations, and is expanding to attract other companies.
The United Kingdom possesses, or has possessed, a variety of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. The United Kingdom is one of the five official nuclear weapon states under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The UK renounced the use of chemical and biological weapons in 1956 and subsequently destroyed its general stocks.
Leading Aircraftman Ronald George Maddison was a twenty-year-old Royal Air Force engineer who was unlawfully killed as the result of exposure to nerve agents while acting as a voluntary test subject at Porton Down, in Wiltshire, England. After substantial controversy, his death was the subject of an inquest 51 years after the event.
Operation Cauldron was a series of secret biological warfare trials undertaken by the British government in 1952. Scientists from Porton Down and the Royal Navy were involved in releasing biological agents, including pneumonic and bubonic plague, brucellosis and tularaemia and testing the effects of the agents on caged monkeys and guinea pigs.
Clifford Earl was an English actor who appeared in numerous television programmes and films.
From 1948 to 1975, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps conducted classified human subject research at the Edgewood Arsenal facility in Maryland. The purpose was to evaluate the impact of low-dose chemical warfare agents on military personnel and to test protective clothing, pharmaceuticals, and vaccines. A small portion of these studies were directed at psychochemical warfare and grouped under the prosaic title of the "Medical Research Volunteer Program" (1956–1975). The MRVP was also driven by intelligence requirements and the need for new and more effective interrogation techniques.
Project 112 was a biological and chemical weapon experimentation project conducted by the United States Department of Defense from 1962 to 1973.
The Rawalpindi experiments were experiments involving use of mustard gas carried out by British scientists from Porton Down on hundreds of soldiers from the British Indian Army. These experiments were carried out before and during the Second World War in a military installation at Rawalpindi, in modern-day Pakistan. These experiments began in the early 1930s and lasted more than 10 years. Since the publication of the story in The Guardian on 1 September 2007, the experiments have been referred to as the Rawalpindi experiments or Rawalpindi mustard gas experiments in the media and elsewhere.
Operation Top Hat was a "local field exercise" conducted by the United States Army Chemical Corps in 1953. The exercise involved the use of Chemical Corps personnel to test biological and chemical warfare decontamination methods. These personnel were deliberately exposed to these contaminants, so as to test decontamination.
Ian Tomlinson was a newspaper vendor who collapsed and died in the City of London after being struck by a police officer during the 2009 G-20 summit protests. After an inquest jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing, the officer, Simon Harwood, was prosecuted for manslaughter. He was found not guilty but was dismissed from the police service for gross misconduct. Following civil proceedings, the Metropolitan Police Service paid Tomlinson's family an undisclosed sum and acknowledged that Harwood's actions had caused Tomlinson's death.
Oluwashijibomi "Shiji" Lapite was a 34-year-old Nigerian asylum seeker who died in the back of a police van shortly after being detained by two officers from Stoke Newington police station in London.
Chemical weapons were widely used by the United Kingdom in World War I. The use of poison gas was suggested by Winston Churchill and others in Mesopotamia during the interwar period, and also considered in World War II, although it appears that they were not actually used in these conflicts. While the UK was a signatory of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 which outlawed the use of poison gas shells, the conventions omitted mention of deployment from cylinders.
Anthony Grainger was shot and killed by an armed Greater Manchester Police officer in Culcheth, Cheshire, England, on 3 March 2012. At the time, Grainger was unarmed.
Unethical human experimentation is human experimentation that violates the principles of medical ethics. Such practices have included denying patients the right to informed consent, using pseudoscientific frameworks such as race science, and torturing people under the guise of research. Around World War II, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany carried out brutal experiments on prisoners and civilians through groups like Unit 731 or individuals like Josef Mengele; the Nuremberg Code was developed after the war in response to the Nazi experiments. Countries have carried out brutal experiments on marginalized populations. Examples include American abuses during Project MKUltra and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, and the mistreatment of indigenous populations in Canada and Australia. The Declaration of Helsinki, developed by the World Medical Association (WMA), is widely regarded as the cornerstone document on human research ethics.
The Dorset Biological Warfare Experiments were a series of experiments conducted between 1953 and 1975 to determine the extent to which a single ship or aircraft could dispense biological warfare agents over the United Kingdom. The tests between 1971–1975 were known as the DICE trials. The tests were conducted by scientists from Porton Down, initially using zinc cadmium sulfide (ZnCds) as a simulated agent. Early results clearly showed that one aircraft flying along the coast while spraying its agent could contaminate a target over 100 miles away, over an area of 10,000 square miles. This method of biological warfare attack and the test program to study it was known as the Large Area Coverage (LAC) concept.
On 30 June 2018, in Amesbury, two British nationals, Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, were admitted to Salisbury District Hospital in Wiltshire, England. Police determined that they were poisoned by a Novichok nerve agent of the same kind used in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, 8 miles (13 km) away, almost four months prior. Sturgess died on 8 July, and Rowley regained consciousness two days later.
References
- ↑ "Operation Antler". Wiltshire Police. May 2004. Archived from the original on 19 February 2007 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ "Poison gas scientists won't be charged". The Northern Echo . 13 June 2006.