Dying for a cure: Inside the global drug trial that ended in tragedy for two Kiwi families
Sunday, 23 November 2025
When two New Zealand men volunteered to take part in a global drug trial, they believed in the promise of medical progress. Both are now dead, and their families have been left to navigate a maze of silence and bureaucracy as they fight a “David and Goliath' battle for accountability. Senior journalist Katie Ham investigates.
“My life was pretty good before the trial,” Peter Woods says in a grainy video recorded from his home in Kerikeri in July.
“I’d been cleared of cancer for a long time, a year or so. Everything was going along well. I had an active retirement. Things were happy.”
Woods’ lawyer had asked him to record a video, a statement of sorts, that could be played in court if he didn’t live to tell his story himself.
On screen he looked well enough, but beneath his bright blue-and-white floral shirt, Woods’ body was failing - his skin was mottled with dark bruises, bleeding at the slightest bump, and exhausted from the cocktail of drugs coursing through his system.
“Clothing covers a lot. Life’s a struggle,” he admitted.
Almost exactly two months later, Woods died.
While the 69-year-old retiree’s cause of death is understood to be metastatic melanoma, his family and those involved in his care believe his participation in a global experimental drug trial hastened his decline and stripped the joy from whatever life he did have left.
But Woods wasn’t alone. In August 2023, award-winning Manawatū cheesemaker Adrian Walcroft died suddenly from myocarditis shortly after receiving his fifth dose of the same experimental drug combination.
Two years and almost 650km apart, both Woods and Walcroft’s families were beginning the same daunting fight for answers and accountability.
The ‘KeyVibe-010 trial’
Both men had taken part in the same clinical study known as the “KeyVibe-010 trial” before their deaths - a late-stage commercial trial designed to test a new combination of immunotherapy drugs on people who had previously been treated for melanoma.
To be eligible, among other things, participants had to have had their melanoma surgically removed and be cancer-free at the time of their first dose but considered at high risk of recurrence, according to the US National Library of Medicine.
The trial, sponsored by US-based pharmaceutical giant Merck Sharp and Dohme (MSD), enrolled 1594 patients worldwide and began in New Zealand in February 2023.
It was halted globally in May 2024, with MSD announcing it was discontinuing the trial because it had met “pre-specified futility criteria”, citing “immune-mediated adverse experiences”. Walcroft died in August 2023, and Woods - who had his only dose in 2023 - died in September 2025.
It's only much further down, couched in dense clinical language, the media release acknowledges the “severe and fatal immune-mediated adverse reactions” experienced by participants.
“Immune-mediated adverse reactions, which may be severe or fatal, can occur in any organ system or tissue, can affect more than one body system simultaneously, and can occur at any time after starting treatment or after discontinuation of treatment,” the statement said.
In New Zealand, there has been no public reporting of the trial’s outcomes, nor clarity about how many participants here experienced adverse effects.
The Sunday Star-Times understands about 50 New Zealanders were enrolled, two of whom are now dead (Woods and Walcroft) and others claiming to have suffered adverse effects believed to be linked to their participation in the trial effects.
While Walcroft received five doses of the drug combination, Woods only received one before becoming too unwell to continue.
A life turned ‘upside down’
In many ways, Woods was the “perfect candidate” for the trial, his sister Debra Melrose told the Sunday Star-Times.
He was first diagnosed with cancer in 2018, when he had a melanoma removed from his left temple. Two more melanomas were later removed from his thighs, and in September 2023 his oncologist invited him to join the KeyVibe-010 study.
Two weeks later, he received the first dose of the combination trial drug.
At the time, Woods sailed competitively and mentored future yachties, often spending long days racing and cruising around the Bay of Islands. He loved time with his family and partner, racing in motor sports, and had a trip to Antarctica booked.
CT and MRI scans showed no sign of recurrence at the time of the first dose of the trial drug, according to documents seen by the Sunday Star-Times.
To put it simply, as Melrose said, “he had no evidence of cancer in his body”.
He was active, independent, and full of life. But just over two weeks after his first dose of the trial drug, his world shifted.
Woods was visiting Melrose in New South Wales for a “bucket list” road trip when he noticed a line developing across his vision.
“He thought his sunglasses had a fault across the lens to start with. We wondered if he was dehydrated or if it was jet lag, but the line didn’t go away,” Melrose recalled.
Not thinking too much of it, Woods waited until he was back in New Zealand to seek medical help. He was immediately admitted to Whangārei Hospital with a suspected stroke.
Further tests showed Woods was actually suffering from severe myositis - a rare disease that causes inflammation and weakness in the muscles - and he was discharged from hospital.
Woods’ muscles weakened to the point he needed help sitting up and his neck drooped. He began to struggle to swallow and lost the ability to taste.
According to a clinical report dated October 26, 2023, seen by the Sunday-Star Times, doctors believed the myositis was “likely to have been caused by the immunotherapy trial drug”.
“From there, it just got worse. His life wasn’t the same after that. It was turned upside down,” Melrose said.
After concerns about the function of his heart - also a muscle weakened by the myositis - Woods was admitted to Auckland Hospital for three and a half weeks, where he was prescribed high doses of steroids in the hopes they prevented the progression of the myositis. They didn’t.
Instead, the steroids thinned his skin, causing profuse bleeding from the slightest touch. His double vision continued, and he lost his depth perception and developed a lack of balance that caused falls, which in themselves caused more bleeding and broken ribs, medical notes document.
“He was like a walking Band-Aid. He was exhausted all the time. He ended up having to sell his yacht, which was his world. With his balance like it was, he was scared he was going to fall overboard and he kept knocking himself and bleeding everywhere anyway.
“He was on something like 16 different pills twice a day, his whole life revolved around making sure he took them. All of the thrill of his life disappeared.”
The impact was devastating financially too, Melrose said.
“As a pensioner, the cost of travelling to and from Auckland for treatments, and the constant dressings needed to stem the bleeding, mounted quickly. His partner also had to take time off work to help care for him, so the finances were a real issue.”
But the worst was yet to come. In November 2024, a CT scan showed widespread melanoma throughout Woods’ chest and abdomen.
Woods died at home on September 18, 2025, aged 69, from metastatic melanoma.
Speaking in the video before his death, Woods said he “didn’t expect a cure” from the trial, only the “potential for a reduction in the chance of the melanoma coming back”.
Instead, he said the drug trial “took away the last year and a half to two years, or whatever I’ve got left, of my life. My life basically stopped [on the date of the first dose]”.
A parallel death
Where Woods was the adventurous sailor, Adrian Walcroft was the craftsman. Quiet, methodical, and curious, he poured his energy into creating something more tangible: cheese.
Like Woods, the Pohangina Valley father and husband had been suffering from melanoma and, after successful surgery, was invited to take part in the KeyVibe-010 trial, according to a publicly available High Court judgment.
However, Walcroft died aged 54 from myocarditis in August 2023 (inflammation of the heart muscle) shortly after receiving his fifth dose of the experimental drug combination, the judgment said.
One of Walcroft’s loved ones, who asked not to be named, described him as 'a man at the top of his game, with a fair wind in a full set of sails”.
A month later, Woods received his first dose of the combination drug.
A ‘David and Goliath’ legal battle
Both Woods and Walcroft signed consent forms before receiving the trial drug combination. The form, seen by the Sunday Star-Times, contains a 29-page “participant information document”.
The possible effects are divided into “very common” (three are listed: fatigue, itchy skin, and rash), “common” (10 are listed, including decreased appetite, muscle pain and nausea), “uncommon” (just over half a page) and finally “rare” (over a page).
But for their families, those warnings now read less like hypotheticals and more like grim prophecies.
Although Walcroft’s wife, Jillian Walcroft, didn’t want to participate in this story, court documents show she remains locked in a legal battle with the sponsor of the trial: the New Zealand arm of the global conglomerate Merck Sharp and Dohme.
Although the two men had never met, Woods joined Jillian Walcroft in the legal fight, and together their case was taken all the way to the High Court.
Ultimately, legal matters between Woods and MSD were settled outside of court “with no issue as to costs”, according to a judgment by Justice Helen McQueen dated August 11. The details of that settlement aren’t publicly available.
“Pete knew he wasn’t going to see any long-term outcome because his health was declining so quickly, and he didn’t want to spend his last months in court. But he wanted drug companies - and in this case, MSD - to be held accountable for the reactions trials cause.
“We need drug trials, but if they go wrong, there needs to be respect and humanity for the people involved. At the first sign of trouble MSD were nowhere to be seen, despite all of their assurances that they’d provide years of support,” Melrose said.
The Walcroft whānau has, however, continued with their High Court application against MSD to determine what compensation they ought to be entitled to.
To do so, they sought a declaratory judgment - a court ruling that doesn’t award compensation itself but clarified their rights to seek that compensation.
It’s a battle that’s further complicated by New Zealand’s ACC laws. Under ACC, Kiwis can’t usually sue for personal injury. And that ban is fundamental to the scheme: you give up the right to sue in exchange for guaranteed, no-fault compensation.
But in rare circumstances, the ACC bar produces a legal dead zone, and Woods’ and Walcroft’s cases sit squarely inside it, according to ACC-legal expert John Miller.
“The question Woods and Walcroft were seemingly testing in the court was: what happens if you can’t get ACC support? Typically, you can’t sue in New Zealand because of the ACC system, but what happens when ACC doesn’t cover you? Then, you look at suing,' Miller said.
Jillian Walcroft sought three declarations from the High Court:
The ACC bar should not prevent trial participants from claiming compensation;
People injured or killed in commercial clinical trials are entitled to bring a claim for damages; and
Any compensation awarded should not be capped at what ACC would otherwise have offered support.
Ultimately, Justice McQueen found the declarations Walcroft sought were “appropriate and should be made”.
Walcroft’s whānau have thus far been paid just over $215,000 by MSD. The next step would be for them to file a full claim for compensation, which MSD has signalled it will “rigorously defend”.
It’s not entirely 'uncharted territory”, Miller said, and if successful could not only open the door for Walcroft’s family to seek compensation through the courts, but for any New Zealander harmed in a commercial drug trial to attempt the same.
Miller warned the journey ahead would be steep though: “A well-heeled defendant like a big pharmaceutical company will likely keep fighting, and with far more resources than the average New Zealander, you’ve got to be very brave to keep going.”
As Melrose said: “It’s a David and Goliath fight, and we’re David”.
‘No fault’ and the unanswered questions
In response to questions about the court judgment, MSD provided an unattributed statement that read:
“Pharmaceutical companies sponsoring clinical trials may agree to compensate participants to an ACC-equivalent level, if they experience adverse events, even when the company is not at fault.
“Before the declaratory judgment, MSD compensated Mrs Walcroft the ACC-equivalent sum and has no further liability. Any further claims for compensation would be defeated, as MSD bears no fault.”
MSD did not respond to further questions from the Sunday Star-Times, including if it was aware of any deaths believed to be associated with the trial, how quickly the trial was halted after the first death was reported to them, or anything in relation to Woods’ death.
In New Zealand, clinical trials need to be approved by MedSafe and the Health and Disability Ethics Committee - both of which sit under the Ministry of Health - before they can start, a Ministry of Health spokesperson said.
“All medicines can cause side effects in some people. Participating in clinical trials carries more risk than taking an approved medicine as less is known about the medicine.
“There is no legal requirement to report adverse events during clinical trials. However, companies are expected to have an independent data monitoring committee to regularly review the safety of the medicine used in all international trial sites,” the spokesperson said.
Minister of Health Simeon Brown added work was under way to “modernise” the regulation of clinical trials under the Medical Products Bill.
“These changes will protect participant safety, align with international approaches, improve efficiencies, and promote economic growth for the New Zealand clinical trials industry,” he said.
In response to further questions from the Sunday-Star Times, he added: 'I want to extend my sympathies to the families affected”.
Among the questions Brown didn’t respond to were whether he was previously aware of the deaths of Woods and Walcroft, whether he was comfortable with MSD continuing to operate in New Zealand, and whether he (or anyone on his behalf) had met with representatives from MSD to discuss what happened with the KeyVibe-010 trial.
A lasting legacy
Four months before his death, Woods wrote a letter after MSD sought to delay a hearing in relation to the declaration application.
“They seem happy to hire a [King’s Counsel lawyer] and other legal people to clobber the little guy, at what cost,” he wrote in looping blue letters.
“I am aware there is a bigger picture than me, but I really don’t care. It’s my life they have interfered with and then run away and hide.”
And for Woods and Walcroft’s families, the fight has never been just about compensation. It’s about accountability - for how New Zealand hosts drug trials, how its laws treat participants, and what happens to those left behind when the worst happens.
Melrose stills remembers sitting next to her brother when he was injected with the trial drug.
“He was so hopeful. You join a drug trial knowing it’s a trial and you’re going to be a guinea pig, but I think you always hope for a miracle, and he was.
“I think he always knew the melanoma was going to kill him, but he was hoping he would have a happier, longer retirement and he deserved that. The drug trial - and the medication he had to take to manage the side effects from it - robbed him of that.”