Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - July 28, 2013, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A4 H ISTORICAL research reveals government officials tested tuberculosis vaccines on impoverished aboriginal people during the 1930s instead of fixing poor living conditions that spread the disease. It's another example of how officials felt they could use aboriginal people as test subjects and looked for cheap solutions instead of fixing underlying problems, says Maureen Lux, a Brock University medical historian whose research is to be released in a book early next year. " If ( a vaccine) could provide resistance to TB, then we didn't need to deal with the economic situation that was causing the problem," said Lux, who first exposed the TB tests in a 1998 paper. Last week, it was revealed nutritional experiments were done on unwitting aboriginals in similar straits during the 1940s. The news has provoked widespread outrage and rallies across the country. Lux, who specializes in the history of aboriginal people and the medical system, looked at conditions on reserves in the Qu'Appelle region of southern Saskatchewan in the early part of the 20th century. " People lived in log huts," she said. " They didn't have the cash for windows or doors. Living conditions were fairly crude." Tuberculosis was rampant. In 1921, officials found 92.5 per cent of aboriginal children tested positive for exposure to the infectious respiratory disease - almost twice the percentage of non- aboriginal children. Overall health was so poor the childmortality rate surpassed the birth rate. Lux, whose research resurfaced in a report by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network earlier this week, found officials understood the link between health and living conditions. In 1930, a showpiece settlement was built at the File Hills Farm Colony. Log huts were swapped for frame houses, new wells were dug, families were given chickens and garden seed and extra nutrition was provided to children and expectant mothers. Tuberculosis death rates were halved. But the File Hills model wasn't followed. " It was clear that with slightly better living conditions, tuberculosis could be dealt with," Lux said. " But that's a fairly expensive proposition. The vaccine was a much cheaper alternative. This provided great hope for the Department of Indian Affairs and the National Research Council." The vaccine had been previously tested on working- class children in Montreal, but researchers found it difficult to keep track of their test subjects. The Qu'Appelle aboriginals, who couldn't leave their reserves without a permit and who had high rates of infection, were thought to be just right for the job. Between October 1933 and 1945, a total of 609 infants were involved in the tests - half given the vaccine, half not. Results were clear: Nearly five times as many cases of TB among the non- vaccinated children. But the real lesson from the tests was the connection between dire living conditions and overall health. Of the 609 children in the tests, 77 were dead before their first birthday, only four of them from TB. Both vaccinated and unvaccinated groups had at least twice the non- tuberculosis death rate as the general population. " The most obvious result of the... vaccine trials was that poverty, not tuberculosis, was the greatest threat to native infants." The vaccine was judged safe and remains in use in many places today. Living conditions on reserves remained unaddressed. " The trial was a success, but unfortunately the patients died." - The Canadian Press TB vaccines tested on natives Latest example of guinea- pig treatment By Bob Weber LLOYDMINSTER, Sask. - Six people died in a collision involving a semi and another vehicle, RCMP said Saturday. Police were called early Saturday to the scene of what they thought was a semi rollover about six kilometres southeast of the city straddles the Saskatchewan- Alberta border. When officers arrived, they determined a car had also been involved in the crash, said Cpl. Rob King. " Once they arrived on scene, they determined that it wasn't a simple rollover of a semi truck as was first initially reported, but it had been a collision between a semi- tanker truck that was hauling crude oil and a fourdoor small passenger car," he said. " The semi had flipped over onto its top, onto its roof, into a slough, and the four- door passenger car was completely submerged." RCMP say the victims were all from the car - three males and three females ranging in age from 13 to 17. RCMP say the collision happened at an intersection while the car had been heading east along a rural township road. Five of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene. One was rushed to hospital but died a short time later. " Somehow he had been able to free himself from the vehicle when our members got there," King said. Police have not released the names of any of the victims, but King said they were from the " rural area." The driver of the semi was taken to hospital with undetermined injuries. - The Canadian Press Six die in horrid Sask. highway crash Car, semi collide near Alberta border OTTAWA - A senior federal minister warmly thanked Liberal MP Marc Garneau for helping to get the Canadarm displayed in a national museum - just three weeks before Garneau was snubbed at the official unveiling. Industry Minister Christian Paradis' April 10 letter to Canada's first astronaut was full of praise for Garneau's efforts to persuade officials to install the space arm at Ottawa's aviation museum. The missive, in French and hand- addressed to " Marc," was also copied to James Moore, then heritage minister and responsible for the museum. Three weeks later, on May 2, Moore spoke at a splashy event showing off the Canadarm display to journalists and 62 invited VIPs. But Garneau, the first Canadian in space and a key voice in creating the display, was not among them. He tweeted even as the ceremony unfolded: " Would really have appreciated invitation from Gov't to attend. No such luck," later accusing the Conservatives of petty partisanship. As the snub was reported online and over broadcast outlets, an unapologetic Moore stood up in the House of Commons that afternoon and dismissed Liberal MPs' heckling about the incident. " Members opposite can obsess about their caucus and maybe we will obsess about Canadian history," he said. Six months earlier, on Nov. 22, Moore had himself written to Garneau thanking him for a letter - hand- addressed to " James" almost four months earlier - urging the display of the Canadarm at the museum. The letters and other material related to the incident were obtained under the Access to Information Act. A spokeswoman for Moore said on the day of the snub that the museum - not the minister - was responsible for the guest list, distancing the politicians from the public servants who helped organize the event. The letters and other previously released records, however, indicate close oversight of the media event by both ministers' offices and by the Privy Council Office, the prime minister's own department. For more than three months, officials in the ministers' offices and PCO vetted all the planning documents and news releases for the May 2 unveiling. Garneau received a telephone apology days later from a museum official, who took the blame for the " oversight." Garneau says the woman " took the fall." " I believe my status as a Liberal MP played a role given the highly partisan nature of the current Conservative government," he said. Four former Canadian astronauts were on the guest list, though they did not attend. Dozens of emails from ordinary citizens to Moore, also obtained under access to information, show a similar - and universal - contempt for the government's behaviour, even from Conservative party supporters. " Regardless of whomever made up the guest list, YOU should have had the courage and thoughtfulness to make sure that Marc Garneau was there," wrote one person the evening of the snub. That was echoed in another email: " You might not have been responsible for the guest list but you are in charge of the department, so the responsibility falls on your shoulders." - The Canadian Press Garneau thanked and then snubbed Praised by minister; not invited to event By Dean Beeby NEWS CANADA I WORLD A4 SUNDAY, JULY 28, 2013 RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Pope Francis drew an estimated two million flag- waving faithful to Rio's Copacabana beach on Saturday for the final evening of World Youth Day, hours after he chastised the Brazilian church for failing to stem the " exodus" of Catholics to evangelical congregations. Francis headed into the final hours of his first international trip riding a remarkable wave of popularity. By the time his open- sided car reached the stage for the vigil service Saturday night, the back seat was piled high with soccer jerseys, flags and flowers tossed to him by adoring pilgrims lining the beachfront route. " I'm trembling, look how good you can see him!" gushed Fiorella Dias, a 16- year- old Brazilian who jumped for joy as she reviewed the video she shot as the Pope passed by. " I have got to call my mother!" The vigil capped a busy day for the Pope in which he drove home a message he has emphasized throughout the week in speeches, homilies and off- the- cuff remarks: the need for Catholics, lay and religious, to shake up the status quo, get out of their stuffy sacristies and reach the faithful on the margins of society or risk losing them to rival churches. In the longest and most important speech of his four- month pontificate, Francis took a direct swipe at the " intellectual" message of the church that so characterized the pontificate of his predecessor, Benedict XVI. Speaking to Brazil's bishops, he said ordinary Catholics simply don't understand such lofty ideas and need to hear the simpler message of love, forgiveness and mercy that is at the core of the Catholic faith. " At times we lose people because they don't understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our people," he said. " Without the grammar of simplicity, the church loses the very conditions which make it possible to fish for God in the deep waters of his mystery." In a speech outlining the kind of church he wants, Francis asked bishops to reflect on why hundreds of thousands of Catholics have left the church for Protestant and Pentecostal congregations that have grown exponentially in recent decades, particularly in Brazil's slums or favelas , where the poor welcome their charismatic message and nuts- and- bolts advice. - The Associated Press Two million say farewell to Francis in Brazil JASON FRANSON / THE CANADIAN PRESS Crews work to pull a submerged semi out of a slough after it was involved in a collision that killed six teens in a car Saturday. FELIPE DANA / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS An estimated two million gather on Copacabana beach to see Pope Francis Saturday. A_ 04_ Jul- 28- 13_ FP_ 01. indd A4 7/ 27/ 13 10: 59: 44 PM ;