Pappworth's teaching of postgraduate students had a profound effect on the Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) examination pass rate, and his contact with junior doctors led him to investigate the ethics of medical research on humans.
Maurice Henry Papperovitch was born on 9 January 1910,[nb 1] Pappworth was the seventh child in a family that included three sons and six daughters.
In 1936, he received his MD degree (medical doctorate) and passed the MRCP exam (Membership of the Royal College of Physicians), after which he worked in several Liverpool hospitals in junior roles—including as a registrar under Henry Cohen.
[1] Before the Second World War, Pappworth sought an (unpaid) medical consultant role only to suffer from anti-Semitic discrimination, being told that "no Jew could ever be a gentleman" when he applied for a post in 1939.
Many of these went unprinted, so in 1962 he published fourteen of the letters as Human Guinea Pigs: A Warning in a special edition of Twentieth Century magazine.
It detailed experiments on children and inmates of mental and penal institutions, and included 78 examples of research that had been carried out on patients who were at National Health Service hospitals for routine surgery.
Despite official lack of interest and professional impedance, Pappworth's and Beecher's work eventually led to the introduction of stricter codes of practice for human experimentation and the establishment of research ethics committees, which would have come much later had it not been for their exposés.
[2] His critical nature may have been partly to blame for this, as he not only continued to admonish Royal College of Physicians, but also alienated some of those in the medical establishment that were sympathetic to his cause; Pappworth's personal comments about specific consultants quickly distanced his audience when he was invited to speak to the residents at Hammersmith Hospital, whose medical school he had criticised in Human Guinea Pigs for its unethical methods.
[1] Towards the end of his life, he wrote an article in the British Medical Journal that included his view that "those who dirty the linen and not those who wash it should be criticised.
For example, election to a fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians is usually a formality awarded after passing the MRCP—which Pappworth did in 1936—and after being in practice for ten to fifteen years.
[1] His daughter Dr. Joanna Seldon published her book The Whistle Blower: The Life of Maurice Pappworth: the Story of One Man's Battle Against the Medical Establishment in 2017.