Health data collected from Indigenous Peoples in Canada has a dark history. One Indigenous company is turning that around – CTV News
Sept. 20, 2024
In the 1980s, Nuu-chah-nulth people on Vancouver Island donated more than 800 vials of blood for research on rheumatic diseases prevalent in their communities. Their hope was to help find a cure.
Decades later, however, they learned the samples they supplied had led nowhere and were instead used for unapproved studies in genetic anthropology.
“Just because we’re First Nations doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want with us,” a donor told Indigenous newspaper Ha-Shilth-Sa in 2004.
But cases like this highlight a dark history of medical researchers doing just that: subjecting children in residential schools to experiments involving intentional malnutrition(opens in a new tab) and patients at Indian hospitals to treatments without their consent(opens in a new tab).
