Some Aboriginal children who were taken from their parents and put into institutions were used as medical guinea pigs, a Senate inquiry has been told.
A Senate inquiry has heard shocking reports of how some aboriginal kids who were institutionalized were used as medical guinea pigs for research.
Greens Senator Bob Brown said he was "shocked and alarmed" by the allegations, heard today by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee's inquiry into a Stolen Generation Compensation Bill 2008.On the first day of hearings in Darwin today, Kathleen Mills from the Stolen Generations Alliance said the public did not know the full extent of what happened to some children.
And efforts to obtain records that support the claims, such as that children were injected with serums to gauge their reaction to the medication, had been hampered, she said.
"These are the things that have not been spoken about," news.com.au quoted Mills as telling the inquiry.
Outside the inquiry, Mills said her uncle had been a medical orderly at the Kahlin Compound in Darwin, and he told her that children were used as "guinea pigs" for leprosy treatments.
Senator Brown said it was important to get to the bottom of the claims, which he called "very, very serious".
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Ex gratia payments would be set at 20,000 dollars as a common experience payment with an additional 3,000 dollars for each year of institutionalisation.
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