M. H. Pappworth (1910–1994)

M.H. (Maurice Henry) Pappworth, né Papperovitch, was born and raised in Liverpool, England. In 1932, he graduated from medical school at the University of Liverpool. He worked at several Liverpool hospitals in junior roles. During World War II, he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. After the war, having been unsuccessful in obtaining a senior post in any well-known London hospital, he set up a practice as an independent medical consultant and tutor.

His innovative tutoring of postgraduate students had a profound effect on improving the
"pass rate" of doctors on the examination for Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP), and gained him recognition as the best medical teacher in the UK. In the 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Pappworth became concerned from reading articles in medical journals about the ethics of the medical research then being conducted on humans. The publication of his book Human Guinea Pigs: Experimentation on Man (1968) led to a media storm and eventually to the establishment of research ethics committees to supervise medical research involving humans. However, it also led to his being ostracized by the medical establishment for the rest of his career. In 2017, his daughter Dr. Joanna Seldon published a book called The Whistle Blower: The Life of Maurice Pappworth: the Story of One Man's Battle Against the Medical Establishment.