AT what point does an allegation based on powerfully convincing, non government funded scientific findings progress from interesting theory to accepted fact?
Dundalk doctor Mary Grehan is accustomed to being a voice in the wilderness and is far from a typical Cassandra figure, but for more than 10 years she has been battling official inertia and lack of funding to produce her research about the possible effects of contamination from Sellafield on the population of Co Louth.
She says she is too practical and although she reckons "I have often tended to put my foot in it well before I'd opened my mouth" is shrewd rather than emotive, while her instincts are sharp and her black humour even sharper: they shape her conversation as well as the articles she has written for medical journals.
Is she angry, bitter or frustrated by the Department of Health's long term indifference to the possible health hazards of proximity to the British nuclear processing plant? "Frustrated. Yes, frustration best describes my feelings." When she says "women's health is not an issue in Ireland" she is not trying to be provocative: "It's simply the truth, how else can you explain the hepatitis scandal? There is too much lip service paid to equality and little done."
Her involvement in the campaign urging the swift closure of Sellafield has been presented less in the context of preserving the environment than in reporting findings based on the suspiciously high incidence of abnormal health problems in the Dundalk area.
"All the research I have done has been carried out in my spare time, the early hours of the morning," she explains. The work includes extensive research on the role of anticardiolipid antibodies in spontaneous' abortion. About four years ago she went into private practice in order to have more time for research. It didn't work. "There has been no government aid. If we were to get two pennies from the Department of Health, I'd have them framed. She adds. I don't accept that anyone interested in medical research or in health problems should have to worry about money.
As the National Cancer Registry was established only as recently as 1994, the lack of records has made comparative statistical research difficult.
About 10 years ago Grehan was advised that she should consider politics and she will now be contesting the next general election for the Progressive Democrats. There is no political tradition in her family, and she does not see herself as a career politician. "I'm a doctor and I will continue to be a doctor, but I see politics as a way of getting things done. I've been driven into politics as a way of getting things done. I've always been an optimist, I believe things can be done." Considering her outspoken comments attacking discriminatory attitudes prevailing against women in medical politics, it should be interesting witnessing Grehan's approach to mainstream politics.
In an article written for the Irish Medical Times in 1994 on the role of women in medical politics she reasoned: "Medical politics can leave even the bravest male feeling very lonely and exposed, so why should any woman doctor risk the criticism of her colleagues and jeopardise her future?" Now entering the national political arena, how does she assess the contribution of women candidates? "I think people like Mary Harney have been very effective on the Irish political scene. But although many women were elected the last time round, not that many of the new ones have been that effective."
In politics, as in medicine, life remains difficult for women who have to juggle a profession and a family. Grehan says medicine is a difficult profession to take a career break from: "It's hard to get back in after any absence. It is very competitive and there are always huge numbers of eager young people on the way up."
A small, stocky woman with wayward Grehan is friendly, funny and fairly formidable. Always in a hurry, she none there is not frantic, flustered or impatient and gives the impression of being well organised. Her demeanour is that of the experienced elder sister combined with the clever head girl. It would he easy to trust her, and it is no wonder she has a large practice. Her patients know they will be told the truth.
She has been married to Gabriel Grehan, an engineer and former county footballer ("he played for Offaly and Louth") for 23 years. They have three children. Interested in women's lives, she looks towards the practical as much as the emotional.
In "The Annual Holiday" a tongue in cheek, but nonetheless serious, article in 1990 for Forum, Grehan says: "It has always been the policy of our practice to offer family planning advice and I make a point of asking my patients at their postnatal check what form of family planning they wish to use, enabling the shy ones to discuss their thoughts and plans." But some patients are not interested in planning. Grehan uses as an example, a patient who "delays her postnatal check for two to three months until she knows she is pregnant again". Pregnancy appears to be the one way of reviving the wedding day hour of glory. "Once a year she takes centre stage. For a whole week she steals the limelight. Isn't this what marriage is all about - the production of this small, completely dependent person? Every year she packs her bags, leaving the thankless responsibility of the" family to others and retires to the local maternity unit. With her new born babe in her arms she is aglow with reflected glory ... for seven all too short days she gets her meals piping hot... she alone is the important person ... she comes home, relaxed rested and well fed, all the ingredients of good holiday are there. Naturally she start to plan next years." While the piece seem to attack a personal motivation which appears to have little to do with the babies born, it is primarily also a sad portrait of certain, kind of existence.
GREHAN was born Mary Rowe in Dundalk - "you needn't bother about the year" - the only child of parents who came from the area, and has lived and practised there since 1978. Her father was a civil servant. Now retired, he lives with his daughter's family in the unusual period house the Grehans bought just outside Dundalk town. The house, with its semi gothic entrance, is more than 200 years old and although close to the town - indeed, the tall stacks of the Smithwicks brewery busy against the sky make one think of Sellafield on the drive up the hill towards the house - seems to have a country setting. The various stable buildings and an old brick archway add to the effect, as does the barking, shaggy dog puppy. "I can't remember a time" Grehan says, "when I didn't want to be a doctor, there was never anything else I wanted to be."
When she speaks about her childhood, she turns the conversation on to a more general level. "I think only children tend to mature quickly, they are used to adult company." She also speaks about a selfishness that appears essential to success. Educated locally at Realt na Mara primary school and at St Vincent's in Dundalk, she went on to study medicine at University College Dublin and qualified in 1973.
Of Grehan the student she says: "I was very academic, I enjoyed research, I still do, but I was also outspoken" - and she was aware of the fact, even then, that medicine is a very conservative profession. Was she interested in debating? "Well not exactly debating, I'd say I was more involved in arguing."
Not surprisingly, she lists "talking" among her interests, which include lace making, tapestry, soft toy making and reading.
She is very Catholic, very Northern Dundalk, although not the official border, has always functioned as a political boundary of sorts, and is certainly a cultural boundary. Listen to the voices, the accents' are Northern. The attitudes are as well. The people are blunt realists, direct and friendly and even the most casual exchange can contain flashes of black humour. "We in Dundalk have always tended to look northwards, it's our culture. Our sympathies are more toward the North. Even when it comes to shopping, we'd go to Newry rather than Drogheda. And the humour of course is completely Northern. We are direct here, I like it."
The Grehans tend to holiday in Ireland. "We went to Cork last year, Kerry the year before, we like Donegal"... pause ... "it's in the North, the roads are better."
The east coast of Ireland has lived with the threat of Sellafield for a long time and the Irish Sea is the most radioactively contaminated in the world - the Dead Sea is the most radioactive, due to natural radioactivity.
Located in Cumbria, Sellafield began operating in 1951, when it was called Windscale. It is about 100 miles from the Irish coast at Louth, its closest point, and is as close to Dublin as it is to Belfast or Waterford. In fact, it is far nearer to Dublin than it is to London. In October 1957 a fire which broke out at Windscale, released huge amounts of radioactivity it was the world's worst nuclear accident until the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 finally eclipsed its unwelcome record. Details of the extent of the radioactivity were suppressed for 30 years.
After the accident British Nuclear Fuels Limited, conscious of the impact on its public image, changed the plant's name to Sellafield - but a name change did not prevent another serious accident, in 1973, when a blowback of gas during experimental reprocessing contaminated the building and affected 35 employees. The building was never used again.
But BNFL was adamant there was no problem. Ten years later an accidental discharge of material estimated to be up to 10,000 times more radioactive than normal background radiation caused a radioactive slick on the Irish Sea. BNFL was eventually fined £10,000, while the British government warned the public off the beaches of Cumbria for six months.
AS early as 1983 an Irish doctor, Patricia Sheehan, published a report based on her findings in the British Medical Journal. In that study Dr Sheehan examined findings based on six Down's syndrome babies born to women who had been pupils years earlier in a class of 26 at the St Louis Convent in Dundalk. "These women would have all been 14 year old schoolgirls in 1957 at the time of the Windscale fire," says Grehan - the number represents a phenomenally high rate of one in four compared with the usual figures of one in 600. "It is too much of a concidence."
Grehan, meanwhile, had already come across an excessively high rate of miscarriage among patients attending her practice and subsequently wrote a paper on the subject. It was initially delivered at a scientific meeting of the Irish College of General Practitioners - the profession's general academic body in 1985, by which time a national newspaper had already broken the story on hearing of Grehan's findings. It was later published in Forum.
In 1994 Dr Sheehan, then in her 60s was killed in a car accident with her died much of her research as she used a personal code when collating material based on case histories. Even the crash remains a mystery There was no medical evidence suggesting she had suffered a heart attack or a stroke at the wheel. There was no other car involved. She hit a wall in broad daylight in dry conditions and she was known to be a good driver.
Health risks or not, Grehan has no intention of leaving Dundalk she loves the town and says "I'm very interested in it. It is a very historic place, there is an intimate atmosphere here, people care." Her feelings make it easier for her to understand the apparently resigned and/or fatalistic attitudes of her neighbours. "Of course there is an awareness of the reality of the contamination, and when there is a young death from cancer, the question `is it Sellafield?' will always be asked but it is like everything else, people have learned to live with it."
"I find the most actively concerned are women with young children. Their attitude tends to be `It's too late for us, but how about our children?'"
There is another, almost sinister dimension - "it is also more difficult to deal with an invisible enemy, you can't so you forget until someone else becomes ill."
About three miles east of Dundalk is Blackrock, Co Louth, a seaside village which has become densely populated and is now flanked by select suburbs. Every night, no matter how late, Grehan and her husband walk the pier: "It is half a mile down, so it gives us our daily exercise, a one mile walk. It's pretty here," she says. Yes it is, but while she is enjoying the view, does she not find her thoughts moving towards the subject of contamination? "The whole place is radioactive, we probably glow in the dark by now.
Louth, Ireland's smallest county, possesses a long coastline; a long, polluted coastline. "This is fact - this entire area is contaminated and if someone such as BNFL wants to prove otherwise let them do the research." It is the same sad story as we stand over the lovely Cooley Peninsula, a famous local beauty spot, and look towards Carlingford. People continue to come and visit the peninsula, she says. Ideal for picnic's on a summer's day, even on a dull, damp winter's day of random sunlight, it has an appeal. A couple arrives on cue with two small children. The man takes them for a walk while the woman stays in the car. Would they be conscious of Sellafield? "No, they probably know it's out there, but like everything else, it doesn't mean anything until something happens" says Grehan. She points to the town of Warrenpoint, which rests in the valley between the Cooley and the Mourne mountains. In the national study Grehan worked on in 1987, Warrenpoint was found to have a low incidence of miscarriage and still births - possibly due to its location, buffered as it is by the Mourne mountains - whereas Kilkee, the small fishing village directly on the sea, has a high cancer rate.
A MEMBER of the Irish College of General Practitioners since 1983, Grehan founded the Association of Medical Practitioners in 1987. "It is a trade union of sorts, we founded it for a number of reasons; for working conditions, tax reasons and also for PR. Our profession has a poor public image and we know
Although she has discussed her research on Cumbria television, Mary Grehan has never visited Sellafield, nor does a visit appear likely: "I have a feeling," she says with heavy irony, "there's probably a notice on the gate saying `Keep Her Out'."
