‘A good code for barbarians but unnecessary for ordinary physician-scientists,’ quipped Jonny with a degree of journalistic scepticism.
‘Maybe, Jonny, maybe. But I have an open mind on the subject. The BMC have always been committed to upholding the highest moral and ethical standards, as good as if not better than those recognised internationally.’
‘But what about Porton Down, was that establishment committed to the Nuremberg Code?’
‘Of course, they were ordered by the Government to adhere to the principles.’
‘That’s interesting, Sir, because I wonder whether what you said about Informed Consent applies to those in the services, Army, Navy or Air Force in the same way as it would to you or me. I’d worry now with National Service for all fit young men for several years.’
‘You may have a point. It is a huge reservoir of potential volunteers.’
‘Do you think these young kids in uniform would be able to resist the pressure from senior officers?’
‘Possibly not, although our Government made it quite clear publicly, last year, that what you’re suggesting would be unacceptable.’
‘Did you know that most of the volunteers at Porton Down are conscript servicemen.’
Roger Gainsforth nodded in agreement, so Jonny continued. ‘Does that mean, in your opinion, there were changes in procedures in obtaining Informed Consent, Sir?’
‘Jonny, all I can say to you, is that times are difficult internationally. There needs to be an equilibrium between East and West. You must come across it all the time, reading newspapers from all over, as you do. I would imagine that sometimes the normal strictures of the Nuremberg Code may become blurred. That’s my guess after sixty years of living and observing the human condition when the pressure is on, as it is at the moment, but I have no evidence.’
‘When you say ‘blurred’, are we back to Informed Consent.’
‘Yes, I suppose we are.’
‘So, what we may see is that volunteers may be told exactly or in general terms what the experiment procedure is, thus complying with the Code but from then on, it was up to the volunteer to ask for information thus shifting the responsibility from scientists and that is a breach of the Code, is it not?’
‘Roger Gainsforth MP, nodding said, ‘you may believe that, but you cannot expect me to comment, Jonny.’
‘I take that as a ’yes’, said Jonny smiling.
Chapter 7
Southampton 1957
Jonny Wightman returned home that night after his meeting with Roger Gainsforth and opened Mrs Osborne’s file he’d collected from the office safe. The details of his first meeting with Mrs Osborne and the family background would be added later. He set the typewriter in front of him and started writing.
In early 1953, scientists at the Biochemical Warfare establishment at Porton Down in Wiltshire had been working on a nerve agent called Sarin for some years after they had discovered that the Germans had been developing various nerve agents before and during World War Two.
Leading Able Seaman Osborne, a National Service conscript, together with several other volunteers were given respirators and entered an experiment chamber at 10 am with cloth tied to his forearm impregnated with pure Sarin at a dose over ten times that previously recommended. The experiment was meant to last thirty minutes. After twenty minutes, Osborne had said he felt pretty queer. The observers took him from the chamber and walked him to a bench nearby. He was sweating profusely. Within two minutes he was put in an ambulance complaining that he couldn’t hear and then became unconscious. Two injections of atropine sulphate intravenously and intramuscularly were administered. In the medical centre, he was given oxygen but started gasping for breath. By eleven o’clock he was dead.
Mrs Osborne has asked that her son’s death be the subject of a full and urgent open enquiry. We, at the Northfield Times, ask whether the Ministry of Defence and the Government to state precisely why it was necessary to use the level of dosage in this experiment, whether he did truly ‘volunteer’ to take part in the experiment that killed him and were the international terms of the Nuremberg Code complied with and produce evidence in support.
‘Sam! Surprised to see you. I was just about to ring you. Here, I’ll be back soon. Some case in the Magistrates Court about a series of house breaks. Probably drug money wanted. Keeps the readers informed. Whilst I’m gone, Sam, read this. Easy first day, there’s tea in the pot. I’ll get Rosa to pour some.’
With that, Jonny put his story in front of Sam and closed the door.
‘Rosa. Leave him in peace for a while. He’s got some reading to do.’
‘You’ve given him the Osborne story. What’s he going to say, Jonny? It will frighten the life out of him. It did me when I copy typed it for you.’
‘Just keep him quiet. OK.’
The revelations published in the Northfield Times propelled Jonny Wightman from provincial obscurity to national recognition as the story was syndicated nationally and then internationally. He was a fearful opponent in the eyes of some and a sought after commodity in eyes of others. Within a year he’d accepted a post in Fleet Street with a national newspaper and said goodbye to Sam. He was 21 years old.
Chapter 8
Offices of the Metropolitan Journal Fleet Street London
Jonny had been head of a team of investigative journalists at the “Journal” as it was known in Fleet Street for several years. His motto ‘check the facts twice and check again’. As Sam had suspected, the years had filled Jonny out a little. Long gone was the two-piece dark grey suit and tie. For years, he’d dressed in casual trousers and open neck shirt. Winter saw the addition of various monochrome waistcoats. To gain a little age he’d grown a beard when he first joined the Fleet Street mob but now all that was left was a greying moustache and goatee underneath. He thought it made him a little more authoritative especially as his hair was what June called ‘heather brindle’.
June shouted through to his office, ‘there’s a large parcel here for you. The delivery lady will not hand it over until she can ID you personally. I have had it scanned. Paper only. Shall I send her in.’
‘No, I will come over.’
Mrs Wendy Green took out a photo and glanced at it. She nodded her head, looking at Jonny.
‘You need to sign here, please, sir.’
Jonny took the pen and signed his more legible signature. Mrs Green, as promised followed Solomon’s instructions to the letter, still clinging to the parcel, checked the photocopy signature that Solomon has somehow obtained and again nodded. She handed over the package and left.
‘Never seen that before’, Jonny echoed the thoughts of his colleagues.
Jonny took the parcel into his office and closed the door. He examined the outside of the parcel band and extracted the address letter from the parcel’s outside pocket.
My dear Jonny Wightman,
Please do not share the contents of his parcel with anyone and make sure you lock it away in your safe. I do not trust anyone but you, Jonny. If anyone else has the combination, please reset it for your eyes only. I want you to read what I have written as soon as you can. Maybe you’ll know a lot of what I have written already particularly the historical events so please forgive my reiteration of them. I know you will need some time to check the facts and verify what I have written. I know you are the right man to bring my story to everyone's attention. I will contact you again soon, of course allowing you enough time.
Yours truly, ‘Solomon Isaacs'
P.S Remember Private Osborne?
Chapter 9
London
Jonny now couldn’t help himself, remembering the papers Mrs Osborne had brought him years ago, and locked the door to his office and ripped open the parcel. There on the table was a full typed manuscript, pages of text, the occasional crossings out, hand written legible additional notes. Did Solomon want him to ghost the book or write it as a memoire. He began to read what was in essence an autobiography.
I was born into a Jewish family in Munich Germany after the First World War. My father was one of the lucky ones who had survived the horrors of the trenches with only an infected wound from his own sides’ barbed wire that he ran into whilst his regiment was in retreat. He had been sent home before the Armistice and took several months to recover. In his absence, my mother had had to help sustain the family tailoring business with my grandfather despite his failing health.
The financial chaos that the Versailles Peace Treaty wrought on Germany soon felt itself in my family. It seemed to us that it was impossible to keep pace with monumental inflation, but we managed to survive and start to prosper again.
Our beloved city of Munich saw the birth of the Nazi Party. To begin with it was just another section of our society that was rebelling against central government but then in 1923, an ex-Corporal from the 1914-18 War tried overthrow the Weimar Republic. His name was Adolf Hitler. History has a funny way of turning bad events into even worse events. That failure crippled the Nazi Party and Hitler was arrested and imprisoned. For us, we hoped that everything would settle to normality. It was a vain hope.
It was there in that prison that he wrote his book Mein Kampf, setting out the world as he perceived it should be.
Soloman Isaacs had been right, Jonny already knew a lot of C20th history and the events that he was writing about, but this was different, it was personal.
I have never read Mein Kampf, only extracts trying to understand later what really happened to Germany. It describes the process by which Hitler became anti-semitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germany. What I never knew until I came to England was that the book was edited by Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, who was far better educated than the Corporal.
My family heaved a sigh of relief when the Nazi’s suffered the 1923 humiliating defeat. My father had succeeded my grandfather when he died in the 1919 the worldwide influenza pandemic. The family tailoring business continued to prosper as a very successful, respected and profitable enterprise. My mother was allowed to return to teaching general science at the local secondary school. We lived well, but were always aware that full emancipation for Jews that had begun before 1914 would remain a contentious issue. There were some days when I heard my parents discussing one Jewish family or another who had sold their business and fled Germany for America or elsewhere and wondered whether that was what we were going to do one day, but we remained despite the changing in the political landscape.
The profitability of Isaacs Tailoring allowed me to receive the best education available in Munich. I began to take an avid interest in science and in particular that branch that was in its infancy, genetics. Soon, I was spending much of my time, when I wasn’t helping my father cutting cloth and running errands around Munich’s more affluent neighbourhoods, making notes with my head buried in the science section of the central library. What I began to realise is that I, Solomon Isaacs, had a remarkable gift. I didn’t need pen and paper, I could photograph the pages in my head and reference them for later use. This was one gift that I was never going to share but just hone it more and more, pushing each day the boundaries of my capability. Other kids thought I was an oddball. I took no interested in kicking a ball around in the park or chasing after girls.
One day, I told my mother that I was going to become a research scientist and asked her if she could introduce me to someone in the hospital laboratory where I could work in my spare time. My next vacation job was not helping in the business but dressed in a white laboratory coat. I was sixteen years old. I was introduced to my first real microscope far more powerful that my previous Christmas present from Mum and Dad. I could see cells reproduce themselves. I could see them being manipulated artificially.
I had never had any interest in girls, but to my amazement I kept thinking about the sparkling brown eyes of the older girl who introduced me to the wonderful world under the microscope. Some days during those weeks, we would talk together but that would be all. I was a Jew and she was not. I would think of Fraulein Roberta Bron and her long brown hair and beautiful eyes, when I was not buried in some experimental medical book.
It was a forgone conclusion that I would enter university a good year before my contemporaries. In 1933 I celebrated my seventeenth birthday. That year was etched on my mind for two reasons, firstly, I gained my University place and secondly, it was the year that the Nazi Party took power in Germany and again Munich became the Hauptsadt der Bewegung (the Capital of the Movement). Within that first year of power, during at was later called the Night of the Long Knives, Hitler started to eliminate some of his most powerful rivals thus consolidating his supreme power.
More significantly, the first concentration camp was opened just outside Munich at Dachau. Whilst I went about my studies, our family discussions at the supper table were about our future and whether it was still safe to remain in Germany. It was now obvious to all Jews and to us that the political tide had changed dramatically and that we were gradually becoming a sub-class within German society. For the moment, my parents decided to sit it out and wait and see.
The government – or rather, the party – controlled everything: the news media, police, the armed forces, the judiciary system, communications, travel, all levels of education from kindergarten to universities, all cultural and religious institutions. Political indoctrination started at a very early age and continued by means of the Hitler Youth with the ultimate goal of complete mind control. Children were exhorted in school to denounce even their own parents for derogatory remarks about Hitler or Nazi ideology. My mother was very afraid by now seeing what was happening to her children at school.
It was behind this façade that I hid myself and worked as hard as I could whilst I could. My general degree in medical science was achieved with the highest marks ever seen at the university. On graduation day, my parents sat in the auditorium near the front and heard the Head of the Medical School say that in all his experience he had never come across a student with such dedication and sharpness of intellect. He went on to say that the Board of Governors of the School had offered me a four-year research grant and he was pleased so say that I had accepted the offer and that my mentor in his first year would be Doctor Josef Mengele, himself a post graduate researcher. He was unable to say what the research would involve but assured his audience that the benefits to the German people could be immense. For once, in this fleeting moment my Jewish birth seemed to be forgotten.
I remember the clapping and cheering echoing throughout the auditorium as I, very self-consciously, walked forward head bowed to accept the university’s top achievement award for 1935. I glanced around and saw Roberta Bron standing clapping unreservedly but well hidden in the mass of adoration surrounding my achievement.
In those first few months I felt no fear within the walls of the University but in the streets of Munich, it was very different. I was secure behind closed doors, but I couldn’t ever forget who I was. It was with this feeling that unless I did something, body and soul, I would have failed my mother and father. I suppose that is why the urge to rebel quietly and unnoticed took hold of me in my spare time.
I couldn’t just watch the ranks of marching youth with banners waving, eyes fixed straight ahead, keeping time to drumbeat and song. It was an overpowering sense of helplessness.
A group was formed that was motivated by ethical and moral considerations and came from various religious backgrounds. I knew I couldn’t wield a gun or make a bomb, but I could write and analyse the situation. Despite my parents’ reluctance to support me, in my walk-in cupboard hideaway at home, constructed behind the wardrobe, I planned the content of leaflets for two of my University contemporaries, Hans and Sophie Scholl. From these small beginnings arose White Rose movement that would spark an underground resistance against the Nazi regime that slowly spread throughout Germany. I would later learn th
at Hans and Sophie were executed by the regime. I was proud to have known them.
As Hitler’s grip on power got stronger and stronger, I soon became aware that my own life’s dream was about to end and with it my tenure of research at the Universitygoing to see to that, albeit not directly.
Life for me and my family was now changing rapidly. Fear had spread throughout Munich. Hitler’s deputy in Munich, Rohm and his army of loyal and sadistic brown shirts controlled the streets. My family and I were forced to acknowledge that we were Jews by having the Star of David visible on our clothes if we ventured outside. Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) had sent shivers through every Jewish family as synagogues were torched, books burned, and shops looted.
I remember that night. It started like any other night. My mother had lighted the fire and we sat around watching the flames rise up the chimney, flickering golden shadows around the front room. My father stood to draw the curtains when he heard shouting outside in the street. We all crept over, not daring to be seen through the windows. Opposite, our friend, Walter Sliemann braced across the door of his shop, was arguing with one of brown shirts. Two other brown shirts arrived and with their rifle butts clubbed him to the ground. They continued to kick him then one of them raised his gun and shot the defenceless body of Walter Sliemann deliberately aiming at the Jewish Star of David. The bullet ripped through his body. The shop window was smashed, and they looted the contents. They walked on down the street laughing shouting “Don’t buy from Jews”. It was the 9 November 1938, decision time for us all. Reports the next day filtering through the Jewish community suggested as many as several hundred were killed trying to protect their businesses and more than 300,000 men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
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