Secret police and why we should love them

The Age has its collective panties in a bunch about emerging details regarding covert police activities.

This particular story is about a secret policeman who was infiltrating anti-nuke groups before being exposed in mid 2001.

But here's what happened - but was scarcely reported anywhere - later that year when Greenpeace staged a protest at the Lucas Heights research reactor (see mid article).

"Patrick Corbett...spent last Christmas in agony because a Greenpeace protest at Lucas Heights in mid-December delayed vital pain relief reaching him.

As a result of that protest, the reactor's production of radio-isotopes was disrupted and Mr Corbett, a bone-cancer patient, was informed he would have to go without. Mr Corbett, 79, was in an ambulance outside his home and about to go for treatment when the hospital called, telling him not to come.

His wife, Margaret, said he spent Christmas in a morphine haze without the radio-isotope Quadramet, which can give patients with serious cancer four weeks of pain relief in one dose. "We know there's no cure, but he's only got some sort of life when the pain stops," Mrs Corbett said.

A senior physicist said the Greenpeace protest shut down the reactor, delaying shipments of nuclear medicine. By the time it arrived, it was past its useful life."