Thread by @LouiseRawAuthor

You can’t believe how kind the British are.

Every morning, a van pulls up outside your house in Coventry.
A friendly man brings you a freshly-baked flatbread to eat.
It’s just for you,not anyone else in your family.
Every afternoon he comes back to make sure you’ve eaten it.
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It’s to improve your health, because you went to your GP with migraines.

He said it could be anaemia, & these special chapatis will help you.

You’re grateful: you haven’t been here long, & really appreciate your new country looking after you.

Eventually another van comes. 2/

It takes you, young Punjabi mum Pritam Kour, to what you’re told is a hospital, supposedly to see if this new health food is helping.

They never tell you the strange building is actually the
Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, Oxfordshire

There they put you in
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a machine ‘like a box’. You hear a clicking noise.

Then they take you home.

You don’t speak much English but you express your gratitude again. All this just to help you. It’s wonderful.

That was in 1969.

In the 1990s, local reporter Sukhbender Singh, gets wind of a story.
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Filmmaker @JohnBrownlow can’t believe what he uncovers. It has to be exposed.

Pritam & 20 other Punjabi women had been fed RADIOACTIVE SALTS in those chapatis: never told, let alone asked.

The illegal experiment was conducted by the MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (MRC) @The_MRC
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And- it was only one!
HUNDREDS of British people, including pregnant women, have been secretly experimented on with radiation, in AT LEAST 70 separate experiments.

Some developed rare cancers.Some babies died.

When it was exposed the Government didn’t care. Nor did the MRC.
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In Brownlow’s subsequent film Deadly Experiments, the MRC representative drawls poshly that there are ‘better things to spend money on’ than FOLLOWING UP ON those experimented on, to see if they got sick.

Yes: the UK NEVER CHECKED what happened long term, even to the babies
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of women whose PLACENTAS WERE INJECTED WITH RADIOACTIVE SODIUM just before they gave birth in 1952.

Dr Alice Stewart, radiation expert: ‘I don’t understand how they could begin to have done that. NO dose is safe (for anyone); but pregnant women should be absolutely excluded
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from anything to do with radiation’

Pritam Kour said her trust was betrayed. She would NEVER have eaten the food if she’d known

The MRC man interviewed didn’t turn a hair: ‘I understand consent was given. There were Gujerati-speakers present’
Reminded the women were PUNJABI
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he remained unbothered and said ‘his understanding’ was consent was given.

After the film was shown on Channel 4, India Today covered the scandal.

The UK response was shockingly muted.
The next year, 1996, CND demanded answers from the Tory Gvt-who couldn’t care less either
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Chillingly the CND spokesman said experiments on human ‘Guinea pigs’ were ONGOING.

This is a scandal, then & now. We don’t know how many women, men & kids were effected, or how.

The film expose was no longer publicly available - but IF YOU’RE QUICK you can see it, only via
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this link: PLEASE NOTE: EXPIRES IN 4 DAYS


Thank you @JohnBrownlow for kindly making this available to me to share, and for your work on this.

@SteveBarclay your Party refused an enquiry into these illegal experiments in 1996.
WE MUST HAVE IT NOW.

12/dropbox.com/transfer/AAAAA…

Thank you also to Randeep Assi, who is conducting family and local history research, read old tweets of mine on this and got in touch- you inspired me to find @JohnBrownlow & post on this again.

Good luck with your research- let’s NEVER let this scandal be forgotten again!
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