The release of Dr Ron Jones’ book Doctors in Denial has been instrumental in getting one
of the apologies the women of ‘the unfortunate experiment’ have been seeking
for years.
On TVNZ’s Sunday programme Auckland District Health Board
chief medical officer, Margaret Wilsher, admitted they had regrets but have to
yet to issue a formal apology.
However last evening (13 February) as around 150 family,
friends and colleagues of Ron Jones and AUT joined to celebrate the launch of
the book, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and
Gynaecologists president Ian Page made a formal apology.
‘The New Zealand committee
of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and
Gynaecologists deeply regrets the events referred to by Professor Jones.’
Clare
Matheson, who Ron Jones said had ‘championed the cause of the forgotten
women’ was at the launch to
hear the apology. Her response to the crowd following Ian Page’s statement was
“after all these years, to have that official recognition was one of the most
moving moments of my life. A genuine apology is a very meaningful thing and it
can allay certain grievous emotions and things, so it must do good.’
Doctors in Denial | Ronald W Jones
Otago University Press RRP$39.95
When Dr Ron Jones joined the staff
of National Women’s Hospital in Auckland in 1973 as a junior obstetrician and
gynaecologist, Professor Herbert Green’s study into the natural history of
carcinoma in-situ of the cervix (CIS) – later called ‘the unfortunate
experiment’ – had been in progress for seven years. By the mid-1960s there was
almost universal agreement among gynaecologists and pathologists worldwide that
CIS was a precursor of cancer, requiring complete removal. Green, however,
believed otherwise, and embarked on a study of women with CIS, without their
consent, that involved merely observing, rather than definitively treating
them. Many women subsequently developed cancer and some died. In 1984 Jones and
senior colleagues Dr Bill McIndoe and Dr Jock McLean published a scientific paper
that exposed the truth, and the disastrous outcome of Green’s experiment. In a
public inquiry in 1987 Judge Sylvia Cartwright observed that an unethical
experiment had been carried out in large numbers of women for over 20 years.
Since that time there have been attempts to cast Green’s work in a more
generous light. This rewriting of history has spurred Ron Jones to set the
record straight by telling his personal story: a story of the unnecessary
suffering of countless women, a story of professional arrogance and misplaced
loyalties, and a story of doctors in denial of the truth.
RONALD W. JONES is a retired obstetrician and gynaecologist and former
clinical professor at the University of Auckland. He is a widely published
international authority on lower genital tract pre-cancer and cancer. For over
30 years he has served on a range of national and international committees
addressing the natural history, prevention and management of these cancers. He
is a past president of the International Society for the Study of Vulvovaginal
Disease and chair of the Scientific Committee of the International Federation
of Cervical Pathology and Colposcopy.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/89373585/doctors-college-apologises-decades-after-unfortunate-experiment
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/89373585/doctors-college-apologises-decades-after-unfortunate-experiment
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