Data still have potential

Press, 24 September 1987, Page 4

Data still have potential

PA Auckland Case histories of patients treated at National Women’s Hospital since the mid-1950s still have potential for medical research, the inquiry into cervical cancer treatment at the hospital was told. Professor Denis Bonham yesterday told the inquiry that it would take a team of medical professionals to analyse the data of the 3147 patients treated at the hospital tor carcinoma in situ. The inquiry is looking into the practices of Dr Herbert Green, who was in charge of a controversial programme for the treatment of such patients. Professor Bonham was head of the committee which approved Dr Green’s conservative management programme for such carcinoma cases. During cross-examina-tion by counsel for the commission, Mr Lowell Goddard, the professor said that if he had been more aware of world literature about such cases.

when the programme was approved in 1966 he would have been more concerned. The committee had been reasonably informed about the treatment, “but perhaps not sufficiently so,” he said. Professor Bonham said the committee had been receiving optimistic reports from the hospital about the treatment. Not until some cases of missed diagnosis and invasive cancer of the cervix “crept in” did doubt about the programme arise, he said. Patients of National Women’s Hospital have shown a reluctance to. join research programmes since the inquiry began into cervical cancer treatment, said Professor Bonham. Speaking yesterday after giving evidence to the inquiry, he describedsuch an attitude as sad. It would now take longer for mothers and their babies to benefit from research being conducted at the hospital into premature labour, he said.