Author: Sandra Coney

Publisher: Viking Penguin

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13:

In 1984 the medical journal Obstetrics and Gynecology published a paper that would initiate an investigation into one of the greatest medical scandals of the late twentieth century. Titled "The Invasive Potential of Carcinoma in Situ of the Cervix", it discussed the results of an experiment that had been run at the National Women’s Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, since 1955. The experiment looked at the natural history of cervical carcinoma in situ (CIS) – in other words, what happens if no treatment is initiated in a condition suspected (when the experiment began) to lead to cervical cancer. The paper divided participants into two groups, one that had negative results after biopsy or treatment, and one smaller group that continued to test positive. This second group had a significant rate of cervical cancer; some of these women were followed for twenty-five years without treatment, and in only 5% did the disease spontaneously resolve. For the other 95%, outcomes ranged from positive but localised results to metastatic disease and death. The authors said these results were in contrast with other, earlier papers about the experiment. After much research, Sandra Coney, one-time editor of a NZ feminist magazine, and Phyllida Bunkle, a women’s studies lecturer, wrote an article about the experiment, exposing the unauthorised research performed by one prominent gynaecologist in support of his belief that CIS was not associated with cervical cancer. Professor Herbert Green, a physician of considerable influence and power throughout New Zealand, persisted in his belief despite increasingly convincing proof of a progressive connection between the two conditions, never sought permission from his patients, or even told them what he was doing.