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"A remarkable book...providing a fascinating
and disturbing insight...much of this material has never been revealed
before" - Daily Mail
Within the perimeter of Britain's top-secret chemical
and biological research establishment at Porton Down in Wiltshire and
other international centres are some of the world's best kept secrets,
to which John Parker has gained access. From thousands of documents
and many first-hand accounts, he has amassed a wealth of detail from
the controversial arena of gas and germ warfare. Parker portrays a relentless
international quest, often terrifying and brutal, for the most effective
chemical and biological weapons and defence agents. The 'live' trials
of biological agents in the London Underground and heavily populated
areas of America.
The dark humour in his account of 29 women from Unilever
factories recruited to put anthrax spores into five million cattle cakes
to be dropped over Germany. The graphic testimony from recent human
volunteers used in Porton experiments. The on-going experiments on many
thousands of animals. These truly appalling revelations are capped,
ultimately, with Britain and the United States supplying chemicals and
anthrax to Saddam Hussein who used them for an armoury of weapons of
mass destruction that he eventually turned against their own troops
-- and his own people. And Parker investigates how the cocktail of chemicals
given to American and British soldiers to protect them from Hussein's
weapons is leading thousands of soldiers, their wives and children to
the courts to claim compensation for the dreadful consequences of the
Gulf War.
The vast scale of development and manufacture is chillingly
uncovered by the author. In the United States more than 3000 scientists
are currently engaged exclusively on what it terms 'bugs and gases'
research while 20 other nations, many of them unstable and volatile,
possess huge chemical armouries. Colonel Gadaffi's brand-new killing
factory in Libya can produce 2500 tons of mustard and nerve gas each
year, courtesy of former Soviet scientists. In Britain Porton completed
its new £3.5 million gas chamber in 1996. It is classed as a defensive
measure, to test the next generation of nerve gases, and other lethal
agents, on animals and human guinea pigs. 1996 marked the anniversary
of eight decades of incredible activity at Porton Down, nurtured by
the military, protected by politicians and jealously guarded by the
intelligence community. It is at the heart of the world's chemical and
biological warfare business, defiantly proud of its global reputation
for excellence. A deadly international industry is revealed in all its
horror in The Killing Factory.
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Published in hardback by Smith Gryphon in 1996 |
