Atom test damage probe running out of veterans
A STUDY aiming to prove Britain damaged the DNA of servicemen made to watch Cold War nuclear weapons tests is in crisis – as too few survivors have been found.
Fifty veterans and their wives and children are needed for blood tests to help scientifically establish the conse- quences of the 1950s experiments in Australia and Christmas Island – but so far just two have been found.
Dr Rhona Anderson of Brunel University in West London said: “We need to have 50 family trios to make it statistically sound.
“We hope to trace genetic damage from father to child and to prove it hasn’t come from the mother.”
Around 22,000 men took part in the experiments starting in 1952, and are now in their late 70s or older.
Their wives suffer three times the usual rate of miscarriage and their children 10 times the usual rate of birth defects. Jeff Liddiatt of the Nuclear Community Charity Fund, paying for the £1million study, said: “The Ministry of Defence has spent decades kicking this into the long grass in the hope we’d all be dead before long. We hope it’s not too late.”
A possible 1,500 participants were narrowed down to 395, of which 256 could be found. Just 16 responded to invitations to have blood tests, and so far only two trios have had them.
Mr Liddiatt urged more to respond, saying: “This matters, not just for us but our children and grandchildren.”