Return of blood samples to Brazilian tribes
June 11, 2010
Following the news earlier this year that blood samples used for genetic research were to be returned to the indigenous Havasupai Indians in the US by Arizona State University comes a new report that a similar repatriation will take place to the Yanomamö Indians of Brazil. Originally collected for biomedical research by anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon from the 1960s, who studied the Yanomami tribe in their Amazonian rainforest homes between Brazil and southern Venezuela, the samples have been stored in various US laboratories ever since. (PHG Foundation)
