Content area
Full Text
JUST AS the nuclear accident site Windscale renamed itself Sellafield, but was unable to escape its past, the Ministry of Defence's biological warfare unit at Porton Down has never shaken off old reputations, despite changing its name to the Chemical and Biological Defence branch of the Defence and Research Agency.
It still sits among 7,000 acres of rolling Wiltshire countryside, with scientists working with the deadliest known disease agents - including bubonic plague, anthrax and even the ebola virus.
Opened in 1916 in response to Germany's use of the deadly mustard gas in the French trenches, Porton Down's history is filled with secret projects,...