The Cartwright Inquiry

The Cartwright Inquiry

The ‘Cartwright Inquiry’, published on the 5^th of August 1988, was a judicial inquiry conducted by Silvia Cartwright in response to a 1987 Metro article, titled the ‘Unfortunate Experiment’. 

The article revealed how at the National Women’s Hospital, a gynaecologist, Herbert Green, MD, had experimented on 86 women with cervical carcinoma in situ (CIS)¹ without their consent. The exposé revealed how he had either left the conditions of the women untreated to see whether CIS would progress into invasive cancer or treated them in an unconventional way causing eight women to sadly pass away. 

The findings, criticisms, and suggestions of this Inquiry will be discussed.

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Accountability

In the inquiry two main parties were held accountable: Dr Herbert Green and the Hospital’s Medical and Ethical Committees. 

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Firstly, Dr Green was rebuked for failing to communicate with his patients and put the requirements of his patients first. In the inquiry, it describes how he both failed to gain the “consent”² of the women before experimenting on them and as well as to share the possible “risks” of his “1966 trial”³ beforehand. Dr Green was, however, mainly criticised for putting his desires to obtain results above the “cultural, social, and emotional needs”⁴ of his patients. 

Overall, Dr Green was found to have neglected the autonomy and needs of his patients and thus was charged for disgraceful conduct by the Medical Council. However, by the time he was charged, Dr Green was found to be too mentally and physically unfit to serve time in prison and hence the charges against him were dropped. 

One possible reason why Dr Green could have conducted this experiment was to try to preserve the fertility of the women with CIS. This is because the ability to conceive would most likely be lost after undergoing conventional treatment for CIS. It seems that he believed that if he was able to convince the medical community that CIS was harmless, he would be able to reduce the number of women being rendered sterile by the treatment. It appears that this view stemmed from his firm belief that the fertility of a woman was a “unique possession”⁵ that should be preserved at all costs.

However, the Hospital Medical Committee and Ethical Committee were held the most accountable for this tragedy as they had allowed the experiment to continue despite being presented with “detailed and well documented statements of concern” about the trial, including evidence that many of the women were developing invasive cancer. In the inquiry, Cartwright declared that that the committees “failed” their ethical “duty to ensure that the 1966 trial was terminated”.⁶ 

One possible reason why the committees may have decided to continue the experiment was the assurance that Dr Green gave them that this experiment would pave the way for important medical discoveries. The authority and influence of Dr Green may have also swayed the decisions of the committees as he was a well-respected expert in Cervical Cancer, both within New Zealand and internationally.