Leading Aircraftman Ronald George Maddison (23 January 1933 – 6 May 1953) was a twenty-year-old Royal Air Force mechanic 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.

Sarin test and death

Porton Down had been testing sarin on humans since October 1951, but the first adverse reaction was not recorded until February 1953. An even more severe reaction occurred on 27 April when one of six volunteers, a man named John Patrick Kelly, was exposed to 300 milligrams of sarin and fell into a coma but subsequently recovered. This prompted a reduction in the dose used in this series of experiments to 200 mg. Sarin is extremely poisonous because it attacks the nervous system by blocking the activity of cholinesterase enzymes present in it, including acetylcholinesterase. The method was practical because red blood cell membranes contain forms of acetylcholinesterase.

The participants were wearing respirators, with woollen hats and oversize overalls but no proper protective clothing. The respirators were tested by exposing the men to tear gas in the chamber before the experiment started. After twenty minutes, Maddison began to sweat and complain that he did not feel well. On 8 and 16 May 1953, an inquest was held in secret before the Wiltshire Coroner, Harold Dale, who returned a verdict of misadventure. Maddison's father was permitted to attend the inquest but warned that he would be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act if he informed anyone, including his family, of the circumstances surrounding his son's death. A large number of samples of body parts including brain and spinal cord tissue, skin, muscle, stomach, lung, and gut were retained without his family's knowledge or permission and used over several years in other toxicology experiments.

Second inquest

Operation Antler was a police investigation from 1999 to 2004 into Maddison's death, and into allegations that other British chemical-weapons test participants between 1939 and 1989 had not been properly informed and may have been misled about the experiments and their risks.

As a result of the investigation, and campaigning by Ronald Maddison's family, Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf, sitting with Mrs Justice Hallett in the High Court quashed the original inquest verdict in November 2002. and was the longest held in England and Wales up to that time, hearing around 100 witnesses over 50 days. On 15 November 2004, the inquest jury returned the verdict that Ronald Maddison had been unlawfully killed. Ronald Maddison's relatives received a total of £100,000 in compensation from the Ministry of Defence.

The Crown Prosecution Service announced in 2003 that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone responsible for the tests, but that they would review this decision following Maddison's second inquest. In June 2006, they confirmed that there would be no prosecutions.

References

Books

  • Tucker, Jonathan B. War of Nerves: Chemical Warfare from World War I to Al-Qaeda (1st edition, 2006). Pantheon Books, New York. .