A cancer expert is calling for Britain's Christmas Island atomic test victims to be screened for genetic damage in their battle for compensation.
Professor Julian Peto says they should undergo a battery of new medical checks to find out why they suffer from a range of deadly diseases.
Ground-breaking research in New Zealand showed test veterans there suffered worse chromosomal damage than people at Chernobyl in 1986. "This research was so surprising it has to be repeated over here," said Prof Peto.
British veterans would undergo cytogenetic testing where white blood cells, or lymphocytes, would be checked to see if DNA strands had been damaged.
It would back veterans' claims that the fallout from the blasts damaged their genes and was passed to family members.
Prof Peto will call for the tests tomorrow at a rare Parliamentary inquiry by Labour MP Dr Ian Gibson and Tory MP John Baron into the scandal.
Around 22,000 Servicemen witnessed hundreds of atomic blasts from 1952 to 1967. They had no protective clothing and today only 3,000 remain alive.
Research shows their children have 10 times the normal rate of birth deformities. Yet the Government insists there is no proof of a link.
Widow Shirley Denson, whose husband Eric flew into a nuclear cloud and committed suicide after years of ill-health, said: "These tests would prove once and for all the cause of the problems everyone has suffered."
Yet the Health Protection Agency says the new tests would be "unlikely" to produce "meaningful or medically useful results".
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