| http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,2103593%255E1702,00.html
Disabled used in Nuke tests: report From AAP and news.com.au staff 11jun01 14:55 (AEST) BRITAIN used physically and mentally handicapped people as guinea pigs during nuclear tests in Australia in the 1950s, according to allegations reported in a UK newspaper today. It is claimed the handicapped people were never seen again after the tests, and probably died after being present during nuclear explosions at Maralinga, The Independent said. The newspaper recalled that similar allegations had been investigated and rejected in 1985 by an Australian royal commission. But, it said, it had now learned of a pilot who claimed to have taken the handicapped people out of Britain. He reportedly told his story to Australian academic Robert Jackson, who is director of the Centre for Disability Research and Development at Edith Cowan University in Perth. Dr Jackson told the newspaper he gave a presentation to 300 staff in the late 1980s, during which he mentioned the allegations about radiation experiments. The Independent reports that afterwards one staff member told him: "That was true. I was one of the pilots, and we didn't fly them out again." Dr Jackson told the newspaper: "I was quite convinced." He is reportedly trying to trace the man, who left the centre several years ago. Several Australian soldiers based at Maralinga had said that two groups of seriously handicapped people had been taken to a test area shortly before one of the 12 nuclear blasts carried out by Britain, the paper said. The British government said in the European Court of Human Rights in 1997 that no humans had ever been used in experiments in nuclear weapons trials. |
