Clare Matheson says she is 'totally sick to think that the character assassination has started all over again'. Photo / Richard Robinson

Clare Matheson says she is 'totally sick to think that the character assassination has started all over again'. Photo / Richard Robinson

It was the last thing Clare Matheson needed. A new book claiming the "unfortunate experiment" begun in 1966 at National Women's Hospital was neither an experiment, nor unfortunate.

Recovering from major hip surgery which prevented her from attending the funeral of a friend of 40 years, Matheson was already feeling down.

"I'm feeling pretty ratshit anyway and then this, on top of it. I'm not a spring chicken any more." But, at 72, she is still a battler, and still able to have a laugh when she contemplates confronting the book's author, Linda Bryder. "Yes, great idea, says she, shaking in her shoes."

But she is annoyed that 21 years after the inquiry into what happened to Matheson and other women at National Women's, a revisionist history is being proposed.

"I am totally sick to think that the character assassination has started all over again. I'm tired of being accused of being a liar."

Matheson is a key figure in the saga - one who was both experimented upon and who bravely spoke out to Sandra Coney and Phillida Bunkle who lifted the lid on the unfortunate experiment in a Metro magazine article in June 1987.

Matheson's been praised, but has also taken a lot of flak for her stand. To this day a group of doctors remain incensed at what she exposed and the changes in medical practice that followed.

But what really makes her angry is Bryder's contention that Dame Silvia Cartwright, who presided over the seven-month inquiry into the treatment of cervical cancer at National Women's Hospital, got it wrong.

That Cartwright was taken in by a feminist agenda.

"What upsets me is that any time women speak up and do something for women it's called a feminist conspiracy. This was about getting justice - that is all it was."

But Matheson is not afraid to tackle Bryder head-on - especially about references in her book, A History of the 'Unfortunate Experiment' at National Women's Hospital, which are patently wrong. Bryder contends that treatment Matheson and other women received at the hands Dr Herbert Green wasn't so bad and that in the context of the times, and the outcome, she was well looked after.

Bryder blithely says, on page 65: "Matheson went on to have four children." In fact, she has three children. Two were born before she first went to National Women's in 1964 - referred there by her GP because of an abnormal smear test following a miscarriage. Her third child was born in 1966.

But that was just the beginning. Between 1964 and 1979, Matheson visited National Women's 44 times - visits involving internal examinations, smear tests and colposcopies, and six admissions involving general anaesthetics and surgery. As Bryder points out, Matheson was discharged in 1979 after a series of normal smear tests. She omits to say that there was a histology report from a curette which showed abnormalities.