1News presenter Melissa Stokes speaks to Sandra Coney, one of the journalists who broke the story on an experiment in the 1960s and '70s involving women with untreated cervical abnormalities at National Women's Hospital. The watershed inquiry that followed forever changed how women's health would be treated in New Zealand.
Sometimes, the stories that make the news go on to have huge ramifications, not just for the individuals involved. This is one of those stories.
In 1987, after following a tip-off and working on a story for several years, journalists Sandra Coney and Philida Bunkle published The Unfortunate Experiment.
Sandra Coney remembers how the story would go on to influence medical practices in this country started.
"We had a whisper from a friend who was at the Auckland medical school about a study that was going to come out that showed that women had not been properly treated with abnormal smears. We knew it was serious right from the beginning – it was just putting together how it had happened.
"One of our big worries was that no one would want to publish it, that they would be scared to put it out there."
But once "out there", it became a huge story in New Zealand history.
The story alleged that women were being used as guinea pigs in an experiment at National Women's Hospital.
A professor, Herbert Green, ran a research programme in the 1960s and 1970s. He believed what was called carcinoma in situ would, in most cases, rarely progress to invasive cancer if left untreated. To test this, he followed women with cervical carcinoma without definitively treating them.
The article alleged the hospital knew about the research, but patients were never told.
"The key thing was that the women were never asked if they wanted to be in a trial, they were never given options about treatment now or delaying it, they were never given options about the type of treatment," Coney said.
"They were just brought back repeatedly over the years to watch what the lesion was doing on their cervix but they weren't in control of their own health."
The response to the article was swift, with a commission of inquiry called within weeks.
Chief District Court Judge Silvia Cartwright was named as the person who would preside over what became known as the Cartwright Inquiry.
The name may sound familiar to many of you. Dame Silvia, as she became in 1989, went on to an illustrious and storied career.
She was our Governor-General for five years from 2001 and was one of of only two international judges at the Cambodian War Crimes Tribunal.
She was charged with finding out if there had been a failure to treat women adequately for early signs of cancer.
For five months, questions about medical ethics and patients' rights were considered, and more than 140 witnesses were called.
Coney was named in the terms of reference in the inquiry, turning up every day.
"It was really heartbreaking reading some of these because you could see the gap between what the doctors were doing and what the women and their families thought was happening," she said.
"They thought they were in the best of hands. They thought their best interests were being looked after. They were in the top hospital with the top doctors and they would be cared for."
Sandra Coney was among two journalists who broke the story on an experiment involving women with cervical abnormalities. (Source: 1News)
Looking at the footage TVNZ has from around this time, I can tell it was a story that hit big.
There's footage from inside the Minister of Health Michael Bassett’s office when just days after the article was published, he called an inquiry. Newsgathering has changed since then – journalists wouldn’t all be crowded into his space like that.
There’s footage from days and days of the inquiry as key players took the stand. We see Green being questioned, and Coney carrying piles of notes into the hearing.
The inquiry findings were announced in the Beehive where so many important government announcements are made. You'll recognise it in our report from all the 1pm Covid-19 briefings.
Judge Silvia found there had been a failure to adequately treat a number of women with carcinoma and for a minority of women, that resulted in the development of invasive cancer.
The Cartwright Inquiry and the recommendations it made contributed to sweeping changes in the medical industry, leading to a code of patients' rights, a Health Commissioner, and what became the national cervical screening programme.
The article Coney worried would never be published ending in unprecedented change.
"Women still come up to me and tell me their stories and say 'thank you for what you did, it saved my mother's life', or aunty's life' so that's what really counts."
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