Government knew nuke troops would have deformed infants – however didn’t warn them
The UK spent 70 years denying there was a genetic legacy from nuclear testing. New files show government scientists predicted it, but troops were never told
Nuclear veterans Brian Unthank and Terry Quinlan salute after handing a petition in to Downing Street. Despite repeated promises, Keir Starmer has yet to sit down with veterans to hear the evidence of the experiments conducted on them
Government scientists knew British troops would have deformed children as a result of nuclear bomb tests – but never warned them.
They decided there was “no cause for alarm” because only thousands of people, rather than millions, were involved, and the overall risk to humanity was “negligible”.
An official report, for a government book that was never published, noted: “This, by itself, is poor consolation to the individual or serviceman exposed.”
Those soldiers included Michael Watson, a conscript sent first to Maralinga, South Australia in 1963, where Britain conducted a series of toxic simulated nuclear accidents, and then to Christmas Island in the Pacific, for a series of thermonuclear explosions.
There he swam in the sea, and ate the fish. On his return he met and married Margaret, who suffered 9 miscarriages. One son has autism, a second is infertile, and daughter Sharon was born with S-shaped leg bones.
Sharon endured 12 miscarriages of her own, and has two children with health issues. After years of pain that confined her to a wheelchair, she underwent repeated surgery to straighten her legs. She can now walk short distances, but has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
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“The scientists all had protective clothing, but my dad didn’t. He just wore shorts,” said Sharon, now 50. “If they knew, they should have told the men, done research to help the families. The scientists could have protected us.”
An estimated 155,000 descendants of Britain’s nuclear veterans have been left with high rates of miscarriage, birth defects and child deaths, which successive governments have refused requests to investigate.
It comes after the Mirror reported last month that a new scientific study had proved genetic defects had been handed from radiation-exposed fathers to children.
Now documents have come to light written by Professor John Butterfield, who was in charge of biological observations at weapons tests in Australia in the 1950s. After one, codenamed Operation Buffalo, in which more than 170 troops were ordered to march, run, and crawl through fallout to test the effect on uniforms, he wrote a paper on “effects of external ionising radiation on personnel”.
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It was filed with Sir William Penney, the chief scientist known as Britain’s Oppenheimer, who intended it for a chapter in a Ministry of Supply book on the weapons programme. It was never published and instead was shared with top brass and other senior scientists in British atomic institutions.
Butterfield’s chapter was included in his personal papers, donated to the National Archives, and later added to a computer database about the health problems of veterans, and locked away behind national security.
In it, he writes: “It has been known for many years that gamma radiation and X-rays will affect genes… it is believed that only a small proportion of mutations can be good for the race.”
He goes on: “If only a small proportion of the population, such as a military formation in the field, is exposed… the effect on the race as a whole is negligible because any small number of bad genetic patterns generated would almost certainly be bred out. This, by itself, is poor consolation to the individual civilian or serviceman exposed.”
Butterfield says the chance of a “defective child” is about four times the norm, at eight per cent of live births, and concludes: “If the human race as a whole were exposed… the situation would become more serious… while we would have been guilty of grave irresponsibility to future generations if the genetic aspect of gamma radiation had been neglected, there is not, as yet, any known basis for alarm.”
Ever since, the government has rejected claims for compensation from families, saying there was no evidence radiation caused genetic defects.
In 2007 a peer-reviewed study by the University of Liverpool found nuclear veterans’ children reported 10 times the normal rate of birth defects, while wives had triple the expected number of miscarriages. No government has ordered its own research.
Butterfield’s work at the tests led to groundbreaking treatments for diabetes, and he was later made a life peer.
Campaigners are pushing for a meeting with the Prime Minister to show him the fresh evidence and ask for in-depth studies.
A spokesman from the Ministry of Defence claimed: “There is no definitive evidence that children of nuclear test veterans have an increased number of genetic mutations or health conditions than the general public.”
