A History of the 'Unfortunate Experiment' at National Women's Hospital

Overview

In the late 1980s, a national outcry followed the publication of Sandra Coney and Phillida Bunkle’s ‘Unfortunate Experiment’ article in Metro magazine about the treatment of carcinoma in situ at National Women’s Hospital. The article prompted a commission of inquiry led by Judge Silvia Cartwright which indicted the practices of doctors at the hospital and led to lawsuits, censure, a national screening programme and a revolution in doctor–patient relations in New Zealand. In this carefully researched book, medical historian Dr Linda Bryder provides a detailed analysis of the treatment of carcinoma in situ at National Women’s since the 1950s, an assessment of international medical practice and a history of the women’s health movement. She tackles a number of key questions. Was treatment at National Women’s an ‘unfortunate experiment’? Was it out of line with international norms? Did Herb Green and his colleagues care more for science than for their patients? Did women die as a result? And what were the sources of the scandal that erupted?

Author Biography

Medical historian Linda Bryder is associate professor of History at The University of Auckland, an honorary professor at the Centre for History in Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and was an honorary visiting professor in the School of Law & Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University (2007–2009). She is the author of A Voice for Mothers: The Plunket Society and Infant Welfare 1907–2000 (AUP, 2003) and the editor of A Healthy Country: Essays on the Social History of Medicine in New Zealand (1991). Founding editor of Social History of Medicine, she is on the editorial board of various international journals including Medical History, Hygiea Internationalis, International History Review, Health and History and Medicine Studies. From 1990 to 2000, she was associate editor of the NZ Journal of History. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the International Network for Health in Hospitals and of the Overseas Advisory Board, Oxford Brookes Centre for Health, Medicine and Society, Past and Present, Oxford. In 2009, she became President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine and is past-President and a Council Member of the NZ Historical Association.