Aboriginal Australian Tests
Nation Involved: Australia
Time Period: 1920s to 1930s
Many government experiments have sadly involved taking advantage of a vulnerable group of people. They are also conducted on people who the government does not care much or as much about. This became a common practice in Australia, as aborigines were forced into several medical experiments. This was most common from the 1920s through the 1930s. Some of the experiments resulted in severe pain. On top of that, forced bodily measurements and blood samples were taken.
Most of the experiments were conducted by the University of Adelaide but were completely sanctioned by the Australian government. In fact, a lot of the experiments conducted were government-sponsored. To the university’s credit, in 2002 the Vice-Chancellor came out to say the experiments were “degrading and sometimes barbarous.” They would then issue a formal apology to the entire Aboriginal and Torress Strait Islander groups. Yet that does not change what the school did.