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

Linda Bryder

Professor Bryder has addressed a question that has remained inadequately investigated for over a quarter of a century. What was the ‘generally accepted’, ‘conventional’ treatment for abnormal cervical cytology which women in Auckland were allegedly denied in the late 1960s and 1970s? Her thorough review of international practice at that time makes clear that there was no generally accepted treatment, a fact that reflected the haphazard way in which screening for cancer of the cervix had been introduced and evaluated. - Dr Iain Chalmers, James Lind Library, Oxford

This is an impressive book, tackling a grave and sensitive episode in the history of medicine, women and feminism. . . . Bryder reveals much about the public understanding (and misunderstanding) of science, the role of the media, and democratic practice in a world increasingly understood, managed and explained by cultures of expertise. - Professor Janet McCalman, Centre for Health & Society, University of Melbourne

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 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?




Download the introduction Bryder Introduction (77kB) .



Linda Bryder was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1956. A professor of history at the University of Auckland, she teaches 20th-century New Zealand history, with a particular focus on the history of social policy and health care. She is also 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).

Dr Bryder took first-class honours in History at The University of Auckland, where she was a Senior Scholar, won the Fowlds Memorial Prize and was awarded a New Zealand Post-graduate Scholarship with Overseas tenure (1981-4). She subsequently completed a DPhil at the University of Oxford with her doctoral thesis on the social history of tuberculosis in Britain, which became her first book, Below the Magic Mountain: A Social History of Tuberculosis in Twentieth-century Britain (OUP, 1988). She held the Clifford Norton Junior Research Fellowship in the History of Science at The Queen’s College, Oxford, 1984-7, and a British Academy Post-doctoral Fellowship at Queen’s, 1987-90 (resigning in 1988 to accept full-time lectureship at The University of Auckland).

On her return to New Zealand she edited A Healthy Country: Essays on the Social History of Medicine in New Zealand (1991) and in 2003 she published a history of infant health care in New Zealand and of the Plunket Society, A Voice for Mothers: The Plunket Society and Infant Welfare 1907-2000 (Auckland University Press).

Dr Bryder has published widely in books, journals and conference papers on the social history of medicine in Britain and New Zealand. With Derek Dow she edited a special edition of Health and History devoted to Maori health. 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, and is the Vice-president and President-elect of the Australian and NZ Society of the History of Medicine. 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 1990-2000, she was associate editor of the New Zealand Journal of History. Dr Bryder is a past-
President of the NZ Historical Association and is currently a Council Member.

Dr Bryder gives many public lectures and has been speaking in the last few years in New Zealand and internationally about her research into the treatment of carcinoma in situ at National Women’s Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand. She recently delivered the Rex Wright-St Clair Memorial Lecture, Hamilton; and has lectured at the Glasgow Caledonian University; the Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen; and the New Zealand Studies Centre, London. In 2007 she gave both the Keith Sinclair Memorial Lecture at The University of Auckland and the Margaret Avery Memorial Lecture at the University of Waikato.

August 2009, 228 x 153 mm, paperback, 264 pages, ISBN 978 1 86940 435, $45.