Aboriginal children used in medical tests, commissioner
says
Truth and Reconciliation Commission seeks further documentation on tests
CBC News Jul 31, 2013
Aboriginal Canadians were not only subjected to nutritional experiments by the federal government in the 1940s and 1950s but were also used as medical test subjects, says the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission seeks further documentation on tests
CBC News Jul 31, 2013
Aboriginal Canadians were not only subjected to nutritional experiments by the federal government in the 1940s and 1950s but were also used as medical test subjects, says the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
In an interview with CBC Radio's All Points West on Tuesday,
Justice Murray Sinclair told host Jo-Ann Roberts that commission staff has "seen
the documents that relate to the experiments that were conducted in residential
schools."
Other documents related to experimentation in aboriginal
communities outside of residential schools have not yet been obtained, Sinclair
said.
"We do know that there were research initiatives that were
conducted with regard to medicines that were used ultimately to treat the
Canadian population. Some of those medicines were tested in aboriginal
communities and residential schools before they were utilized
publicly."
Sinclair said some of those medicines developed were then
withheld from the same aboriginal children they were originally tested
on....
The residential schools system, which ran from the 1870s until
the 1990s, removed about 150,000 aboriginal children from their families and
sent them to church-run schools under a deliberate policy of "civilizing" First
Nations.
Many students were physically, mentally and sexually abused.
Some committed suicide. Mortality rates reached 50 per cent at some
schools....
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