You could be correct.
Whether you are or not, I think you have too much faith in government. The British state has a long history of conducting undeclared experiments on its citizenry. I don't doubt some of them detailed in the articles below were dismissed as outlandish conspiracy theories when they were perfectly true.
Millions were in germ war tests -
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...medicalscience
How British government carried out secret biological warfare tests on London Tube passengers in 1960s during Cold War -
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-Cold-War.html