A government report covered by the Guardian in 2002 indicates that between 1940 and 1979, the Ministry of Defence "turned large parts of the country into a giant laboratory to conduct a series of secret germ warfare tests on the public" and many of these tests "involved releasing potentially dangerous chemicals and micro-organisms over vast swaths of the population without the public being told. What was the purpose of Porton Down releasing germs on the public unknowingly