Doctors in Denial

When Dr Ron Jones joined the staff of National Women's Hospital in Auckland in 1973 as a junior obstetrician and gynecologist, Professor Herbert Green's study into the natural history of carcinoma in-situ of the cervix (CIS) – later called 'the unfortunate experiment' – had been in progress for seven years. By the mid-1960s there was almost universal agreement among gynecologists and pathologists worldwide that CIS was a precursor of cancer, requiring complete removal. Green, however, believed o