“Sir, Further to your report (Poison Exposure Leaves Almost 40 Needing Treatment, Mar 14), may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve-agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning. Several people have attended the emergency department concerned that they may have been exposed. None had symptoms of poisoning and none has needed treatment. Any blood tests performed have shown no abnormality. No member of the public has been contaminated by the agent involved.”
Stephen Davies — Consultant in Emergency Medicine, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust (Letter to the Times)
“Never on the territory of the USSR in Soviet times or in the times of the Russian Federation on its territory have there been studies conducted under the code name Novichok. It was neither patented, nor used as a symbol or a code. Once more, as this is the key thing: the word Novichok has never been used in the USSR or in Russia as something related to chemical weapons research. This word was introduced and used for poisonous materials in the West.”
Maria Zakharova — Russia Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
“In recent years, there has been much speculation that a fourth generation of nerve agents, ‘Novichoks’ (newcomer), was developed in Russia, beginning in the 1970s as part of the ‘Foliant’ programme, with the aim of finding agents that would compromise defensive countermeasures. Information on these compounds has been sparse in the public domain, mostly originating from a dissident Russian military chemist, Vil Mirzayanov. No independent confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published.”
Dr Robin Black — Former head of the detection laboratory at Porton Down
Russian chemist Vil Mirzayanov
The report by Paul McKeigue, Jake Mason and Piers Robinson on the novichok nerve agent was lauded by Dave Collum — Professor of Organic Chemistry at Cornell University — as the most definitive work so far. Their work was initially posted on Prof. Tim Hayward’s blog. Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today Continue reading
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