Blood and the Second Wave of Collecting

The decline in the collecting of the skeletal remains of Indigenous people in the first half of the nineteenth century was counterposed by the emergence of a new biological collecting frenzy from the 1920s onwards. Researchers believed that blood grouping promised to be the definitive racial marker. The new interest involved the collecting of blood samples from around the world. This chapter charts three waves of scientific interest in, and collecting of, Indigenous blood groups and antigens in Australia. The first wave began in the early 1920s. The results were not as conclusive as researchers had hoped, and this early analysis petered out by the mid-1930s. The second wave occurred after World War Two and was made possible by developments in the preservation and freezing of samples. The 1960s represented the third wave of collecting, whereby researchers supported by the International Biological Program (IBP) organised a massive collection of Indigenous blood samples in Australia and other locations. Although the collecting of the 1960s did not provide the research results anthropologists and scientists hoped for, it did result in thousands of blood samples frozen and preserved to this day. These samples became legacy collections that are a potential source of DNA for future DNA-based research. The collections however are marred by many ethical problems. These problems include the questionable consent given by participants at the time of sampling and therefore the problems with retrospective consent as well as the fact that the original intent of racial research is today viewed as abhorrent.