VETERAN foreign correspondent Peter Cluskey has been awarded a PhD by Dublin City University for a ground-breaking thesis on networked terrorism and information technology and has dedicated the thesis to his late Limerick wife, Adrienne Cullen.
Ms Cullen, a former Salesians student who lived in Castletroy and later on the Ennis Road, died on December 31, 2018, after medical negligence by a Dutch hospital, UMC Utrecht, left her with advanced cervical cancer.
Ms Cullen got the highest ever award for pain and suffering in a Dutch medical negligence case after she developed terminal cancer because of a missing test diagnosis.
Results of a cervical test, which would have shown that Adrienne Cullen had treatable cervical cancer in 2011, went missing at the University Medical Centre Utretcht (UMCU) and she was not diagnosed until 2014, by which time her cancer was terminal.
And when the missing test was found, the hospital offered “no apology or explanation” for the error, she said previously.
Ms Cullen sued the hospital for medical negligence and was awarded €545,000, with €350,000 of the award listed as a settlement for pain and suffering.
She recounted what happened in her book, “Deny, Dismiss, Dehumanise: When Happened When I Went to Hospital”, published in 2019.
Speaking with the Limerick Post shortly before her death and after being conferred with an honorary doctorate in laws at UCC, Ms Cullen (58) said that she was determined to have a no-gagging clause policy enshrined in EU law.
“I am determined until my last breath to make sure people understand how to treat patients and how you should treat them when something goes wrong.
“There has to be an absolute ban in the EU on using confidentiality agreements, which are gagging clauses between patients and their hospitals, because they do not belong there,” she said.
The newly minted Dr Clusky (65), who writes for The Irish Times from the Netherlands and previously worked for more than a decade with RTE News, received his PhD after a “comprehensive and engaging” two-and-a-half-hour examination by external examiner Prof Magnus Ranstorp of the Swedish Defence College and internal examiner Prof Christian Kaunert.
Prof Ranstorp, formerly director of the world-renowned Centre for the Study of Terrorism at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, is a leading expert on Hizballah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and other militant Islamist movements, and is a veteran of back-channel negotiations in the Middle East.
Dr Cluskey’s 200-page thesis, “The Co-evolution of Networked Terrorism and Information Technology”, was praised by both examiners as “a highly original contribution to knowledge in the field”.
