Inside Porton Down: what I learned during three years at the UK’s most secretive chemical weapons laboratory

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Inside Porton Down: what I learned during three years at the UK’s most secretive chemical weapons laboratory

When I first arrived at the top secret Porton Down laboratory, I was aware of very little about its activities. I knew it was the UK’s chemical defence research centre and that over the years it had conducted tests with chemical agents on humans. But what really happened there was shrouded in mystery. This made it a place which was by turns fascinating and scary. Its association with the cold war, reinforced by images of gas mask-wearing soldier…