It's time to take the 'great' white men of science off their pedestals | Yarden Katz

Yes, the Oxford statue of Rhodes should fall but why not novelist HG Wells, a eugenics enthusiast, and J Marion Sim, the 'father of gynaecology' who experimented on slaves, too

Science's most elite magazine, Nature, published an editorial recently arguing that calling for monuments to figures such as J Marion Sims - often called the "father of gynaecology" - to be removed amounts to "whitewashing" history. Sims is widely praised for developing techniques in gynaecological surgery and founding a women's hospital in New York in the mid-1800s. But Sims experimented on enslaved black women and infants, operating up to 30 times on one woman to perfect his method. Last month, women wearing bloodied hospital gowns staged a protest by Sims's statue outside the New York Academy of Medicine.

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