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Recently published historical research says hungry aboriginal children and adults were once used as unwitting subjects in nutritional experiments by Canadian government bureaucrats.
“This was the hardest thing I’ve ever written,” said Ian Mosby, who has revealed new details about one of the least-known but perhaps most disturbing aspects of government policy toward aboriginals immediately after the Second World War.
Mosby – whose work at the University of Guelph focuses on the history of food in Canada – was researching the development of health policy when he ran across something strange.
“I started to find vague references to studies conducted on ‘Indians’ that piqued my interest and seemed potentially problematic, to say the least,” he said. “I went on a search to find out what was going on.”
Government documents eventually revealed a long-standing, government-run experiment that came to span the entire country and involved at least 1,300 aboriginals, most of them children.
It began with a 1942 visit by government researchers to a number of remote reserve communities in northern Manitoba, including places such as The Pas and Norway House.
They found people who were hungry, beggared by a combination of the collapsing fur trade and declining government support. They also found a demoralized population marked by, in the words of the researchers, “shiftlessness, indolence, improvidence and inertia.”
The researchers suggested those problems – “so long regarded as inherent or hereditary traits in the Indian race” – were in fact the results of malnutrition.
Instead of recommending an increase in support, the researchers decided that isolated, dependent, hungry people would be ideal subjects for tests on the effects of different diets.
“This is a period of scientific uncertainty around nutrition,” said Mosby. “Vitamins and minerals had really only been discovered during the interwar period.
“In the 1940s, there were a lot of questions about what are human requirements for vitamins. Malnourished aboriginal people became viewed as possible means of testing these theories.”
The first experiment began in 1942 on 300 Norway House Cree. Of that group, 125 were selected to receive vitamin supplements which were withheld from the rest.
At the time, researchers calculated the local people were living on less than 1,500 calories a day. Normal, healthy adults generally require at least 2,000.
“The research team was well aware that these vitamin supplements only addressed a small part of the problem,” Mosby writes. “The experiment seems to have been driven, at least in part, by the nutrition experts’ desire to test their theories on a ready-made ‘laboratory’ populated with already malnourished human experimental subjects.”
The research spread. In 1947, plans were developed for research on about 1,000 hungry aboriginal children in six residential schools in Port Alberni, B.C.; Kenora, Ont.; Schubenacadie, N.S.; and Lethbridge, Alta.
One school deliberately held milk rations for two years to less than half the recommended amount to get a ‘baseline’ reading for when the allowance was increased. At another, children were divided into one group that received vitamin, iron and iodine supplements and one that didn’t.
One school depressed levels of vitamin B1 to create another baseline before levels were boosted. A special enriched flour that couldn’t legally be sold elsewhere in Canada under food adulteration laws was used on children at another school.
And, so that all the results could be properly measured, one school was allowed none of those supplements.
Many dental services were withdrawn from participating schools during that time. Gum health was an important measuring tool for scientists and they didn’t want treatments on children’s teeth distorting results.
www.theglobeandmail.com...
I find it a bit more than coincidental that this began immediately after WW2 which is when many top level Nazis scientists among others skill sets were brought to North America. One example is Operation Paper Clip, many of these Nazis became important parts of NASA and the CIA. They came to Canada too as we were instrumental in developing technologies. This is just a side note, and speculation on my behalf but I believe it needed to be pointed out. The Nazis were heavily into eugenics, and so was the American government, and it's quite obvious that the Canadian was too regarding their treatment of our Natives.
This is just a side note, and speculation on my behalf but I believe it needed to be pointed out. The Nazis were heavily into eugenics, and so was the American government, and it's quite obvious that the Canadian was too regarding their treatment of our Natives.
Originally posted by TKDRL
You know what is really sad? Most canadians know more about black slavery in america, than they know about the treatment of my people. A whole lot of people didn't even know about those "schools", and the last one was shut down in the 90's...... So it's not like they have the excuse that it happened generations ago.
Originally posted by phishyblankwaters
reply to post by Corruption Exposed
This is just a side note, and speculation on my behalf but I believe it needed to be pointed out. The Nazis were heavily into eugenics, and so was the American government, and it's quite obvious that the Canadian was too regarding their treatment of our Natives.
Not entirely speculation, Nazi scienists working on eugenics and I believe even some types of mind control were indeed here in Canada, Quebec if I remember correctly.
Sad and disgusting the more I learn about some of the things my country has done the harder it is to be proud.
Originally posted by Unity_99
Criminal charges can still be brought and should be, against anyone living that was a part of this.