The Strange & Terrible Saga Of Brendan Woolhead

EIGHT HURT AS BLAST RIPS BUS APART IN CENTRE OF LONDON
(Irish Times headline, February 19th, 1996)
TWO HELD BY POLICE FOLLOWING BUS BLAST
(Irish Times headline, February 20th, 1996)
ANGER AT PORTRAYAL OF BOMBING VICTIM AS WANTED MAN
(Irish Times headline, February 21st, 1996)
WITH OUR HELP YOU CAN STOP USING HEROIN IN 24 HOURS!
(Medetox advertisement, Evening Herald, April 3rd, 1997)

So what s the connection here, you re asking? Three newspaper headlines concerning a botched IRA bus bombing in London early last year and one small and seemingly unrelated medical advertisement peddling what appears to be some kind of rapid miracle cure for heroin addiction? What could they possibly have to do with each other?
In truth, the only thing connecting them is a cruel coincidence. They re both linked by the impossibly tragic tale of one young Irishman s bad fortune, an unsuspecting victim of circumstance who emerged battered and bruised from the centre of one media storm and, soon afterwards, fell headlong into the beginnings of another free-falling from an accidental terrorist explosion straight into the heart of an ongoing medical ethics controversy. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Confused? Allow me to explain.
The individual in question was Brendan Woolhead, a 33-year-old from Clancy Road in Finglas, on Dublin s northside. Chances are you may already be familiar with his name. Fifteen months ago he was a reluctant media sensation who, for three days in February 1996, received almost blanket press coverage in Britain and Ireland. The reason? Simply that he made the mistake of being (Irish) in the wrong place at the wrong time and suddenly found himself all tangled up in a simple twist of hate. Here s how it happened.
Shortly after 10.30pm on Sunday, February 18th of last year, Brendan Woolhead boarded the 171 bus at London s Covent Garden, a double-decker bound for King s Cross. The bus was practically empty but, even so, Woolhead probably wasn t paying much attention to his fellow passengers as he took his seat on the upper deck. He had a lot on his mind at the time and chances are he barely even noticed the sweating red-haired youth sitting towards the front, nervously clutching a small black briefcase to his chest.
Woolhead had just returned from a brief visit home in search of work in Dublin, where his girlfriend Gillian and five-year-old son Alex were living. He had been resident in London for the previous six years, working for British Telecom, but had been let go shortly before Christmas. Gillian had returned home to Ireland to care for her sick mother some months previously and, although her mother had since died, the couple were now planning on settling there. Unfortunately, no suitable jobs were forthcoming in Dublin and so he had accepted an offer of contract work from his former employer. Leaving his partner and child behind, he reluctantly returned to London on Saturday the 17th. He was probably already quite dejected at having to go back to the English capital but, by the time this particular evening was out, he was really going to wish that he d stayed at home in Dublin.
The nervous red-haired youth sitting at the front of the bus was a 21-year-old Irish terrorist called Ed O Brien and the reason he was sweating so profusely was because there was a small but powerful bomb in the briefcase he was carrying so carefully. Ten days previously, the always fragile IRA ceasefire had finally ended spectacularly with a massive explosion at Canary Wharf in the Docklands which killed two people and, as a member of an active service unit operating in London, O Brien and his comrades were now busily back in the bombing business. The device he was carrying was intended for detonation at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, just a few hundred yards from Waterloo Bridge. He was using public transport to avoid the very real possibility of being stopped at a police roadblock or security checkpoint.
At 10.38pm, the bus had just crossed Waterloo Bridge and turned onto Wellington Street, when something went wrong and the device in O Brien s briefcase exploded. Eye-witnesses said the bus was split half way torn apart really, and expressed disbelief that anyone travelling on it could have survived. The television pictures showed a crumpled mess of red metal that more closely resembled a massive crushed Coke can than the remains of a double-decker bus. The roof had been completely torn off and shards of broken glass and metal had showered the street below.
Fortunately, despite the severity of the blast, casualties were not as extensive as they might have been. Eight people were immediately rushed to the nearby St. Thomas s Hospital, O Brien and Woolhead amongst them. Ironically, given that it was an IRA bomb, the Irishmen s injuries were the most severe.
Word of the explosion spread quickly with newsflashes interrupting television programmes on most Irish and British channels, immediately prompting massive public outrage. Political reaction was swift with all the usual suspects issuing all the standard condemnations. The following day the IRA admitted responsibility, prompting Paddy Ashdown to comment that the bomb had put the final nail in the coffin of the ceasefire. And so it had done.
Ed O Brien died from his injuries in hospital the following day, the architect of his own destruction. Meanwhile, the police announced that they were keeping another Irish man under armed police guard in a private room on the 12th floor at St. Thomas , a floor usually reserved for treating foreign diplomats (and therefore fully secured).
That man was Brendan Woolhead, though the armed police guard was hardly necessary. He had sustained serious head, leg and shoulder injuries in the explosion and, although his condition was stable, he wouldn t be going anywhere for a while yet. He d no reason to flee anyway, because he was entirely innocent. Despite this, there were two armed officers stationed in his room around the clock and eight more standing outside the door. Gillian and some members of his family had flown over to be at his bedside but initially the police wouldn t let them near him.
In the meantime the media were having a field day with Woolhead, portraying him as a cold-blooded IRA terrorist and naming him as Britain s most hated man. The tabloids, in particular, were typically vicious and racist in their misguided condemnation of him. It was the start of a nightmare for us, his sister-in-law told RTE later. It was very frightening. The family appreciate that the police in England had to do everything in their power to investigate any leads they might have. But it was very frightening for everyone involved.
By Tuesday lunchtime the police had fully satisfied themselves that Woolhead had had nothing to do with the bombing and, 48 hours after the explosion, the armed guard was lifted from his hospital room. Most newspapers carried short reports on Wednesday stating that he was no longer a suspect and, by Thursday, Brendan Woolhead was already forgotten about. Having had his character and reputation totally destroyed by the media, they simply moved on to the next story and promptly forgot about his existence.
Although the family issued a statement saying that they felt the police had acted fairly under the circumstances, they were less forgiving about the media. Brendan Woolhead, understandably, shared their sense of injustice and as soon as he had recovered and was well enough to leave hospital, he took legal action against a number British tabloids for libel, reputedly receiving a total of four separate out-of-court settlements for undisclosed amounts. Hot Press also understands that he received the sum of #55,000 from a leading Irish newspaper that had run a story implying that he was a member of the IRA.
And there the tale should have ended. Brendan s experience had been shattering but at least he had come out of the whole ordeal with enough money to help him recover and start putting his fractured life back together. Unfortunately, it didn t work out that way. The hand of fate was still gearing up for the sucker punch.
The following October Brendan Woolhead was back in yet another London hospital bed but this time it wasn t a bomb that put him there it was heroin. And he was there by choice. He had gone in for a rapid detoxification treatment for opiate addiction, a controversial new technique which costs up to #4,700 and takes just 36 hours to complete (making it quite popular with socially-integrated users, i.e. addicts with day jobs). The treatment is given under a light general anaesthetic so the patient is spared the demanding ordeal of going cold turkey. Following the medically supervised procedure, the patient is given a six month course of Naltrexone, a non-addictive drug which blocks the uptake of opiates in the body. Although a 100% success rate is claimed for the treatment, it can only work if the user really wants to give up.
At the time of writing it is unknown whether or not Woolhead had been a long-term heroin user (it s quite possible that he only began using the drug after the trauma of the bus bombing). What is known is that he died in the Welbeck Hospital in mid-October while recovering from the anaesthetic.
Brendan Woolhead s death received scant press attention but, depending on the results of an inquest into his death which was held last Monday at the Westminster Coroner s Court on Horseferry Road the result coming too late for this issue s deadline his name may well be back in the headlines again before long.
Brendan Woolhead s rapid detoxification treatment was marketed by a company called CITA UK, now trading as Medetox Ltd. Medetox have recently been advertising heavily in Dublin s Evening Herald, their prominent small ad promising a cure for heroin addiction within 24 hours.
A number of leading European academics, addiction psychologists and anaesthetists have expressed concern about CITA/Medetox and the Brendan Woolhead case in particular, and will be awaiting the outcome of the inquest with interest.
The CITA home page on the Internet claims that its detoxification procedure is unique in four major points: (1) 100% success in completion of detoxification, with no drop out. (2) No conscious suffering is experienced by patients undergoing the physical withdrawal process. (3) Immediate induction of opiate antagonist treatment Naltrexone optimising the efficiency of the rehabilitation process. (4) Rapid transition from addiction to an opiate-free life.
More than 4,000 people worldwide have been treated using this technique and CITA claim that of these about 60-70% are still clean after six months. It all sounds too good to be true you pay your money, go to sleep a junkie and wake up several hours later totally free of your habit and indeed, many specialists in the field of opiate detoxification believe that CITA s claims are wildly exaggerated.
At a symposium on anaesthesia and pain relief held in Berlin last November, Dr. Moshe Zerzion, CITA International s medical director, admitted publicly that their claims to have invented the technique or to have any unique methods of their own, were false. He also admitted that claims that patients experienced no withdrawal symptoms on waking were unfounded and that some patients suffered from prolonged abstinence symptoms. Ultimately that admission led to a number of high-profile clinics and research centres publicly disassociating themselves from an organisation that has been described as a disgrace to medical and academic ethics (the quote is taken from a confidential letter from Dr. Norbert Loimer, the actual inventor of the technique CITA have tried to patent, to Professor J. Strang, the head of London s National Addiction Centre).
Dr. Colin Brewer, medical director of The Stapleford Centre in London and a leading British psychiatrist specialising in addiction treatments, was at that symposium (in fact, he was the one who publicly challenged Dr. Zerzion on CITA s policies). In April 1995, he had received a letter from some Spanish lawyers representing CITA telling him to stop detoxifying opiate addicts under general anaesthesia or they would sue him. They claimed an international patent application for the treatment he was using. Brewer was shocked at this and immediately began investigating the company. To his amazement, he discovered that CITA were forcing all of their employees to sign a document swearing them to secrecy about the technique they were falsely claiming to have developed. They were also openly operating a franchise agreement with doctors who wished to practice the technique.
Basically their contract is completely unethical, Dr Brewer fumes. What it says is they ll teach you how to do the method, you have to spend #30,000 on PR for the treatment and if you haven t treated 240 patients within the first six months then they ll pull the contract and give it to someone more enterprising. That is grossly unethical and it puts pressure on doctors to recommend the treatment, regardless of their patients needs!
Hot Press has obtained a copy of the CITA UK contract which must be signed by any doctor wishing to buy into their medical franchise.The following extracts give some idea of the enormous pressure CITA exerts on its doctors to use and promote their method.
SECTION 3.1: LICENSEE shall use its best efforts to exploit, market and promote the Method within the Territory during the Term. During the first six calendar months after the reference date of this Agreement LICENSEE shall perform no less than two hundred forty (240) detoxifications using the Method. During each six month period thereafter LICENSEE shall do no less than three hundred (300) detoxifications using the Method. In the event that LICENSEE performs less than the required detoxification then we may terminate this License upon five (5) day written notice and LICENSEE s rights to use the method shall terminate.
SECTION 3.3: During the initial twelve months of this Agreement LICENSEE shall spend no less than Fifty Thousand U.S. Dollars (US$50,000) exclusive of compensation expense for LICENSEE and LICENSEE s Agents, developing and producing promotional material and advertising and marketing the Method to the public within the Territory.
SECTION 6.1.1: LICENSEE shall continue to aggressively market and will not delay treatment of any patients during the first four months of 1998.
SECTION 10.6: LICENSEE shall, to the extent feasible, not grant any interviews to any media, without our written consent, and we reserve the right to be present at any media interviews or stories, and to participate therein.
What s that word you have in Ireland? asks Dr. Brewer. GUBU or something? Yes grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented that was it! That s probably the best way to sum up this entire organisation and its activities. Completely bloody GUBU!!!
Anaesthetist Dr Jonathan Williams shares Dr Brewer s misgivings about CITA/Medetox. A former employee of the company, he left because, he says, he found their business policies unacceptable.
They were doing dreadful things before I left them, he claims. I went when I found them taking money from addicts when they had nowhere to detox them, no arrangements with any hospitals. I remember once they wanted to put an addict on television to push the treatment. They asked me Is that alright? And I said, No, it s not if you put him on, he ll relapse under the strain . And they put him on anyway and now he has actually relapsed. You can t do those things. They don t give a toss. It s money they re after, that s all.
Dr Colin Brewer also takes issue with CITA s claims to have pioneered the radical detox technique, insisting that Dr Norbert Loimer, a researcher at Vienna University invented rapid opiate detoxification under anaesthesia in 1988 four years before CITA s founder, Spanish psychologist Juan Legarda, published his first paper on the subject in 1994.
More critically, Dr Brewer dismisses the company s claims that their treatment is entirely safe. Nothing in medicine is entirely safe, he points out.
However, Dr Brewer goes on to suggest that, properly administered, the treatment can prove very effective.
The actual procedure is not unduly hazardous, he states, and undoubtedly several thousand patients worldwide have been treated with similar methods. There have been a handful of deaths but some of these were clearly due to inexperience. For example, there was one in the States where an anaesthetist thought he d do a friend of his a favour he had heard about the technique and thought he could easily detoxify his friend. Unfortunately, things went wrong and the chap didn t wake up. I don t think that discredits the technique, though. It just suggests that a little training is a good idea.
All of which means that at the inquest into the death of Brendan Woolhead the role of the Welbeck Centre, as well as that of CITA/Medetox, will have come under close scrutiny.
Hot Press made several attempts to contact Dr Gajnadian, the Director of the Welbeck Centre, but he declined to return our calls. The offices of Medetox remain closed until after the inquest, but the company s anaesthetist, Dr Gerson, told Hot Press that he would be making a statement on May 1st.
The family of Brendan Woolhead who are being represented at the inquest by the renowned solicitor Gareth Pearce also declined to comment.
By our next issue, we hope to have fuller answers to some of the many questions which hang over the company which so aggressively promotes its 100% success rate for heroin detoxification in Irish newspapers. n