Introduction: An Inquiry into Cervical Cancer

Abstract

New Zealand’s National Women’s Hospital, situated in Auckland, was set up in 1946, a time when confidence in modern medical science soared throughout the Western world. Medical advances during the Second World War included the development of antibiotic drugs to combat serious infections, as well as blood transfusion and other improvements in surgical techniques which made major operations safer. It was confidently expected that further developments would follow. This was the golden age of medicine. Hospitals, with their modern equipment and laboratories, were associated in the public mind with heroic medical science, and medical practitioners and researchers enjoyed a higher social status than ever before.¹ National Women’s Hospital, destined to become the largest women’s hospital in Australasia, was established as a result of massive fund-raising by women’s groups who sought to extend the benefits of modern biomedical science to women. Just over 40 years later this same hospital was the site of a huge public scandal and a government inquiry.²