Meenan, Patrick Nahor

by Turlough O'Riordan

Meenan, Patrick Nahor (1917–2008), microbiologist and physician, the second of three sons of James Nahor Meenan (qv), professor of systemic medicine at UCD, and Mary Elizabeth Meenan (née Cleary), was born 30 June 1917 at 66 St Stephens Green, Dublin. Educated at Catholic University School, Dublin, and Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare (1930–35), he studied medicine at UCD, graduating MB, B.Ch. and BAO (1941). Deeply involved in college sporting and associational life, Meenan was prominent in the Catholic Action society and Catholic Writers' Guild, was captain of the lawn tennis club (1939–40), secretary of the Athletic Union Council (1939–45), a member of the student's representative council, and a director of the National Student (1939–40). As auditor of UCD's L & H debating society (1940–41), he addressed in his inaugural paper 'The future of the professions', lamenting the oversupply of capable university graduates destined to emigrate. He graduated from King's Inns and was called to the Irish bar in June 1944.

After postgraduate work in Edinburgh and London (c.1944–5), Meenan graduated DCP from the University of London (1946) and MD from UCD (1946). He joined the staff of St Vincent's Hospital, St Stephen's Green, as assistant pathologist in 1947, his research into the incidence of influenza in Ireland supported by grants from the Medical Research Council of Ireland. Establishing a virology lab there in 1948, researching flu, polio and other infectious viral diseases, he published The essentials of viral diseases (1951), a textbook for medics, students and laboratory technicians. From 1951 he published in the Lancet, the Journal of the Irish Medical Association and the Irish Journal of Medical Science. Appointed a statutory lecturer in bacteriology at UCD (October 1954), Meenan conducted polio research that saw him awarded a WHO fellowship (1955), allowing him to visit universities and research centres in the USA, before being appointed director of pathology at St Vincent's Hospital (1956). Focusing on the transmission of the polio virus, he advocated the immunisation of all Irish children under 17 and supervised the epidemiological analysis of a national programme eventually instituted in 1965. Moving his virus lab to UCD (1957) – designated a WHO regional flu lab, contributing to worldwide research and monitoring – Meenan was appointed professor of microbiology as applied to medicine (1958), a new chair based in the new department of medical microbiology.

In 1955 Meenan was appointed by Minister for Health T. F. O'Higgins (qv) (1916–2003) to serve on the advisory body on the establishment of a voluntary health insurance scheme, which reported the following year in favour of such a scheme. Meenan was prominent in subsequent negotiations between the department and the medical profession regarding remuneration of consultants and the configuration of services. He was a member of the commissioning committee of the new Elm Park campus developed by St Vincent's Hospital, and chairman of the reconstituted medical board of St Vincent's (1969–73).

From the early 1960s Meenan's research addressed viral diseases affecting maternal and child mortality, especially measles and mumps. With a UCD colleague, Dr Irene Hillary, Meenan investigated the efficacy of different combinations of polio, tetanus, measles and diphtheria vaccines, commencing research into rubella vaccines in 1968. Appointed by the UCD academic council to the UCD governing body (1973; 1975), Meenan served an unprecedented four terms as dean of the faculty of medicine (1973–88) and was elected to the NUI senate (1977). He instituted a reorganisation of the medical faculty, updating the undergraduate and postgraduate curricula, both requiring the revision of UCD statutes. Meenan led negotiations with the RCSI as it became a recognised college of the NUI, with the UCD medical faculty overseeing educational standards and the awarding of degrees. Briefly acting president of UCD (December 1985–January 1986), a distinction shared with his father, Meenan was president of the L & H Society (1973–4), and of both UCD Cricket Club (1963–4) and UCD RFC (1966–7). A stalwart of the UCD Athletic Council (1975–86), after his retirement from the university in 1987 Meenan published St Patrick's blue and saffron: a miscellany of UCD sport (1997).

Involved in the substitution (1978–9) of the Medical Council for the Medical Registration Council, Meenan was UCD's nominee to the new council and served as its president (1984–7). He was a founding member and first president (1982–4) of the UCD Medical Graduates Association, which annually awards the Patrick Meenan research medal for exceptional research undertaken by UCD medical graduates.

President of the Institute of Biology of Ireland (1967–8) and of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland (1968–71), he was a member of the Medico-Legal Society of Ireland, chairman of the Food Advisory Committee (1968–70), and president of the RDS (1980). A fellow of the RAMI, the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal College of Pathologists (1963), and a member of the RCPI, Meenan was the leading Irish viral microbiologist of his generation, publishing widely in Irish and international journals. He married (19 September 1940), Mairéad McCullough, who predeceased him, with whom he had three daughters and two sons. Meenan lived in Dublin at Palmerston Road, Rathmines, and latterly at Greenfield Crescent, Donnybrook. He died 30 June 2008.

Concerns emerged in the 1990s regarding clinical trials of vaccines undertaken in Irish children's homes in the 1960s and 1970s; Meenan observed in the press that 'in those days it was regarded as perfectly legitimate to do this' (Ir. Independent, 5 July 1997). A report (2000) by Dr James Kiely, chief medical officer of the Department of Health, examined two trials (1960–61, 1970) undertaken by Meenan and Hillary on behalf of Wellcome Laboratories, seeking to establish if the consent of parents or guardians of the children involved had been sought, observing that there were no statutory controls then in place governing clinical trials. Minister for Health Micheál Martin referred the report to the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse ('Laffoy commission'), which established a vaccines trials division in June 2001. The commission obtained a high court order in June 2003 compelling Meenan to appear before it. Meenan won a supreme court challenge (31 July 2003) which addressed the validity of the commission's compelling him to attend a public hearing (with regard to his age and ill-health, and disclosure of his medical status to a third party) on the basis that there was no evidence that the vaccine trials constituted abuse. In 2011 and 2015 it emerged that two further trials (1964–5, 1973) had taken place.