George Herbert "Herb" Green (1916–2001) was the doctor at the centre of the Cartwright Inquiry, a commission set up to examine claims that he had been illegally experimenting on patients without their consent between 1966 and 1987. The inquiry found that he had conducted a study between 1966 and 1987 in which the cases of women with major cervical abnormalities were followed without definitive treatment, in an attempt to prove his "personal belief" that these abnormalities were "not a forerunner of invasive cancer."[1] According to Judith Macdonald, a researcher at the University of Waikato, Green was strongly opposed to abortion,[2] and his distaste for anything that reduced a woman's fertility was evident in his discussions with patients and his avoidance of the treatments available at the time (hysterectomy or cone biopsy).[2][3]
After Green retired, a paper[4] was published in 1984 discussing the outcome of Green's management of his patients. This paper came to the attention of Phillida Bunkle and Sandra Coney, who published an article entitled "An Unfortunate Experiment" in Metro Magazine in June 1987.[5] (The full phrase "an unfortunate experiment at National Women's Hospital" first appeared the year before in the New Zealand Medical Journal, in a letter from Professor David Skegg.[6]) The main media then used the term "unfortunate experiment" extensively.
Defenders of Green argue that there was no experimentation, with or without patients knowledge; that the allegations that he divided patients into two groups, one of which was treated, and one of which was not, was false (all his patients were treated the same way); that he did not withhold treatment from patients; that his methods of treatment were not substandard, and have in fact come to be regarded as the international standard; some also allege that any minor flaws in his experimental methods were common among researchers between 1950 and the mid-1970s. These flaws included ignorance of the need for a hypothesis to be falsifiable and the lack of peer-review prior to the beginning of experimentation.[5]
A 2010 study comparing patients diagnosed with cervical carcinoma in situ during Green's study period with those diagnosed beforehand and afterwards found that his patients were at substantially greater risk of cancer and were subjected to numerous extra tests that were intended to observe rather than treat their conditions. It concluded that eight women died as a result.[7][8]
Green graduated from Otago Medical School in 1945 and retired in the early 1980s, before the publication of the article in Metro. His specialities were gynaecology and obstetrics and he wrote a textbook on the subject that underwent several revisions.
He was born in Balclutha on 16 November 1916 and died in St John's Hospital, Auckland on 4 March 2001.[3][9][10]