A Canadian military research lab is using infant foreskins to develop an antidote to chemical warfare agents.

The Defence Research Establishment at Canadian Forces Base Suffield, in southern Alberta, has received hundreds of foreskins during the past decade from babies circumcised at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital, located 600 kilometres south of Edmonton.

Scientists at the base have been investigating countermeasures to such chemical weapons as mustard gas since the Second World War. A toxicologist came up with the idea of using foreskins instead of animals in 1989.

"We have used animals in research, and we still do at some points of the process, but we explore every possibility we can to minimize the use of animals in research," said Dr. Cam Boulet, head of the base's chemical and biological defence section.

"I thought it was an important and novel idea. To me, it's just another approach to obtaining human skin cells, and the right type that are necessary for the work," he said. The Alberta lab is the only one of its kind in Canada.

Dr. Boulet said it is not unusual for foreskins to be used for research.

Parents are only told where their children's' foreskins are going if they ask, said Dr. Gerry Prince, a doctor at the Medicine Hat hospital where one or two circumcisions are performed every week. "Most people who ask don't have a problem, but only about 25% of people ask," he said.

Dr. Prince said he could not recall anyone refusing to let a foreskin be sent to the research facility. If anyone had a concern, they would not send it, he added.

"If the skins did not go to the research establishment, they would go to the incinerator."

The military lab receives about 50 to 100 foreskins a year from the hospital, free of charge. The foreskins are stored in a large test tube and are collected from the hospital about once a month by a military lab technician.

"The foreskins themselves are not used," Dr. Boulet said. Researchers scrape a few cells from the foreskin to grow a tiny layer of skin cells in a petri dish. The cell culture, only visible under a microscope, is exposed to liquid forms of mustard gas and observed by scientists.

Adult skin cells do not produce the same results, Dr. Boulet said.

The lab has developed several possible antidotes.

"We are very hopeful that one of these will become a suitable treatment for people who have been poisoned by mustard gas," said Dr. Boulet, adding any treatment would not be available to the public for at least five to 10 years.

The lab also researches countermeasures to such chemical nerve agents as Sarin, used by the Aum Shinri Kyo cult in a 1995 Tokyo subway bombing.

The use of human skin for chemical warfare testing made headlines last week in Britain. An English hospital sold skin taken from patients undergoing plastic surgery without their permission, but the local health authority has now outlawed the practice.

The skin was used to test anti-chemical-weapon barrier creams.