A new
book Doctors in Denial: The forgotten women in the ‘unfortunate experiment’
by Ronald W. Jones is being launched at the Auckland
University of Technology on Monday 13 February 2017.
Published
by Otago University Press, Doctors in Denial is a gripping inside
account of professional arrogance and denial written by one of
the doctors who exposed the truth about ‘the unfortunate experiment’ at
National Women’s Hospital.
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) 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. Since that time there have been attempts to cast Green’s work in a more generous light.
Author Dr
Ron Jones says he believes he had a moral duty to record his personal journey,
extending over more than 40 years, and his
role in exposing ‘the unfortunate experiment' and its appalling outcomes.
AUT Pro
Vice-Chancellor and Dean, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences,
Professor Max Abbott, says AUT is pleased to co-host the launch
for Dr Jones, whom he describes as a medical professional of high standing and
credibility in the New Zealand medical community.
University
of Otago Deputy Vice Chancellor Professor Richard Blaikie, who is attending the
launch on behalf of the University of Otago, says he
welcomes the publication of Doctors in Denial as a valuable account on a
major episode in New Zealand’s social and medical history.
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