StatsCan to collect blood from Canadians?

[Guest guest]

Hmmm... House to house blood census?

 

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2004/02/28/pf-364638.html

February 28, 2004

StatsCan to collect blood from Canadians

By DEAN BEEBY

 

 

 

 

 

 

The amount of blood extracted would be between 50 ml and 80 ml, or about one-tenth of the amount taken during a blood donation. (CP/ handout)

OTTAWA (CP) - The next time a Statistics Canada pollster knocks at the door he may be out for blood.

The federal agency plans to collect blood and urine samples from volunteers beginning next year in a radical departure from its usual question-and-answer checklist approach. The $20-million project would involve a battery of lab tests on the blood and urine of up to 10,000 Canadians in search of dozens of key health indicators. Researchers would look for diabetes, cholesterol levels, lead, pesticides, SARS, HIV, herpes, West Nile virus and many other measures of the health of the general population.

The survey would also include direct measurements of weight, which people tend to underestimate when answering pollsters' questions, blood pressure, fitness, back strength and many others.

The urine and blood samples - and possibly saliva samples - may also be stored for years so other tests that have still not been developed can be performed later.

"There's enormous potential for this to inform policy at all kinds of levels," says Mark Tremblay, one of the directors of the four-year project known as the Canadian Health Measures Survey. "It's very, very important."

The last such national survey in Canada was carried out in 1978-79, but many other countries have routinely collected bodily fluids for testing, including Britain, New Zealand, Australia and some European countries.

The United States runs the most sophisticated program, which determined among other things that the American population had high blood levels of lead. The finding was instrumental in getting lead additives banned from gasoline in that country.

And in the late 1980s, Australia's national survey discovered that the number of diabetics in the general population was double previous estimates that had been based solely on questionnaires.

"For every known case of diabetes there, they had an unknown case," says Tremblay. "So their estimates based on self-reporting health questionnaires . . . were off by 100 per cent."

"And so you can imagine the importance of that in terms of projecting future health-care costs, demands for services, etc."

Such fluid-sample surveys also record statistics for healthy individuals, who frequently don't appear in existing medical records of hospitals and doctors, allowing statisticians to analyse the effect and importance of healthy habits.

Participants for the Canadian survey would be volunteers who are representative of the general population in terms of age, sex and other demographic factors. Residents of native reserves, members of the military and people residing in institutions such as prisons will be excluded.

The samples are to be gathered in clinical settings, such as a mobile clinic, and participants would not receive payment, though they will be reimbursed for any out-of-pocket expenses such as travel.

The amount of blood extracted would be between 50 ml and 80 ml, or about one-tenth of the amount taken during a blood donation. Results of the tests would be shared with each individual.

A pilot project is to be carried out next year, with full sampling expected in 2006, perhaps following the scheduled Canada-wide census that year.

Tremblay cautions that planning is still tentative.

"There are a lot of complicated features to this, and details to iron out," he said. "We're in the early design phase."

For one, the project still needs the approval of Canada's privacy commissioner, as well as privacy officials in the provinces, he said.

 

Get better spam protection with Mail