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Secret Indigenous MRI Study Class Action Lawsuit Overview:
- Who: A woman from the Nova Scotia Indigenous community is suing two medical researchers.
- Why: Andrea Paul says the researchers performed a secret study on her and other Indigenous people without their consent, which involved MRI scans on false pretexts.
- Where: The case is being heard in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court.
Just over a year after a class action lawsuit was filed in Nova Scotia alleging two researchers conducted a secret study on Indigenous people, holding them for MRI scans on false pretexts, lawyers are back in court.
Attorneys for plaintiff Andrea Paul, a Mi’kmaq Chief of the Pictou Landing First Nation, and the defendant researchers, Robert Miller and Sharon Clarke, met in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court Dec. 13 to discuss next steps in the case, CBC reported.
“She felt violated and humiliated,” Chief Andrea’s lawyer Brian Herbert reportedly told the court. He added that the Indigenous community is demanding that there should be no research about them without their consent.
The class action lawsuit was originally launched in Sept. 2020, alleging Mi’kmaq people were purposely selected to receive MRI scans to covertly use their personal medical data in Miller and Clarke’s study.
Chief Andrea said that in 2017, she went to Halifax’s Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre to receive diagnostic imaging for a medical study by the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds (CAHHM).
She was allegedly left in the MRI chamber after the scans were finished and claims she was then kept in there for more scans on her body. The additional scans are alleged to be part of a secret study conducted by the defendants. The reported secret study was researching the “elastography of the liver” in Indigenous people.
Plaintiff Became Aware Of Study After Results Presented at Conference
Chief Andrea says she was not aware of the study until June 21, 2018, after the physicians showed the MRI results to a radiologist conference in Halifax.
On July 16, 2018, Chief Andrea went to a meeting with the accused physicians and allegedly learned about the full extent of the secret Indigenous study. She says the researchers initially denied that any of her MRI results were shared, but then later admitted the study was shared at the conference.
The original lawsuit named both the physicians and hospitals.
However, the lawsuit was revised earlier this year, removing the institutional defendants and leaving just Miller and Clarke, CBC reported. Paul has reached a settlement with the IWK Children’s Hospital for its role in the study with terms of that settlement remaining confidential.
The MRI scan class action lawsuit is seeking damages for negligence, unlawful imprisonment and invasion of privacy.
How would you feel if someone did extra testing on you for an undisclosed study without your consent? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Chief Andrea and potential class members are represented by Brian J. Hebert of McKiggan Hebert Law Firm.
The MRI Scan Class Action Lawsuit is Andrea Paul v. Robert Miller, et al., Case No. 498480, in the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, Canada.
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