LSD Experiments (Hansard, 3 November 1994)

§ Mr. Soames

This is a matter for the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment, Porton Down under its framework document. I have asked the chief executive of CBDE to write to the hon. Member.

Letter from Graham Pearson to Dr. David Clark, dated 3 November 1994: 1. Your Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Defence asking him if he will make a statement on the use of LSD in experiments on British Service personnel has been passed to me to reply as Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment. 2. The role of the Chemical and Biological Establishment is to carry out research to ensure that the UK Armed Forces are provided with effective protective measures against the threat that chemical or biological weapons may be used against them. As part of that programme, evaluation is carried out of chemicals that may be utilised by an aggressor as a chemical warfare agent. 3. An appreciation of the effects of LSD on man and the knowledge that LSD could be synthesised led to research in the 1960s at the then Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment which was renamed the Chemical Defence Establishment in 1969 into whether LSD might be used by an aggressor as an incapacitating CW agent and one which might lead to the loss of will to fight. 4. The work carried out by CBDE Porton Down was solely to determine that protective measures were appropriate and were largely concerned in assessing the effects of LSD on troops in a military setting, where the behaviour of volunteers who had taken LSD was compared with that of control volunteers who had not 1238W taken LSD. All volunteers were subjected to stringent medical and psychological screening. The assessment was made that although LSD could be synthesised, it was immensely expensive and being a solid it would be difficult to disseminate further and as the effects were not highly predictable, the conclusion was reached that LSD would not present a significant battlefield hazard.