We are seeking to raise £4,000
This Easter holiday Declan and I had a very lucky escape, and the weather didn't help (the worst in 25 years, according to the Met Office). We entered it on the wrong foot too. On Tuesday last week, Declan received an email from Network Rail in reply to his email of 8 January to its chief executive after he was told by an attendant in the public toilets of Liverpool Street Station that he could no longer use the facility to wash (although he continued to wash there). The basins "should be used to wash your hands/face only", this email states, effectively barring not only Declan but also me from the entrance-fee public toilets. We had of course been doing our teeth there (and Declan his shaving) ever since the Methodist Church-run Whitechapel Mission barred us back in June due to concerns about our safety. So since Wednesday last I splash some water on my hands and face and go to the train station at 5.45am to do my begging – instead of the normal 6.45am. Which brings me to the second event. On Thursday, the last day I had to get some money for the long weekend, another homeless was also there doing some begging; I kept bumping into him too.
Somehow, while in the Sisters of Mercy-run Dellow Centre, somebody mentioned another homeless centre which, unlike the Dellow, would be open over the holiday period (Friday to Monday). It turned out to be quite a walk, made harder by the horrendous weather – frost, wind, rain, snow, you pick, we had it all – but nonetheless we got some breakfast and lunch and that averted a catastrophic four days.
I won't go into the freezing temperatures overnight or the predicament of having almost nowhere to go for the afternoon (it was indeed unfortunate that on 8 March the manager of our local McDonald's at Liverpool Street Station barred us from the premises, see blog of 9 March "Home Office denies warrant to intercept communications"). Surface it is to say that during those long four days I really wished the European Court of Human Rights had written to Declan, just so I could have tossed the 1,000-page European law book I carry everywhere as part of my belongings: Declan received a letter from the Registrar turning down his request of 8 September for priority, but informing him that the Court would examine his application, also of 8 September, possibly before the end of January. (We have concluded that since we didn't convince the Court of the merits of our case for priority, the chances are we didn't put a good enough case together for the Government to be invited to set out its observations on the merits and admissibility of the case.)
Come this week there is only one thing left standing and that is the porch we have slept in since 3 November 2006 – we haven't been barred from the Dellow Centre so far and are quite mindful there (although Declan now has to further bullfight the homeless in the men's washroom). Anybody who saw the porch would know it is not used at all: the walls and floor are so dirty you wouldn't be sure of their original colour (and that despite my wiping of the floor almost every night); months ago a distributor left five Thomson phone directories by the door, which have never been collected; large rubbish bags languish at one side of the porch for days (one was actually thrown over us as we slept not long ago); and the building of offices has an attractive front glass door around the corner. Yet the signs are ominous: every single night now workers are going in and out of the building through the porch door; since the beginning of the year a cleaner has been going in and out through the porch door every weekday night between 10.00pm and 11.00pm and another cleaner has been doing the same between 5.00am and 5.30am (we get up at 4.30am); on Wednesday a worker went in at 4.15am and on Easter Sunday two workers came out as soon as we put a foot in the porch at 7.30pm (these two events are a first); and of course there is the two police officers who visited us on 22 February to tell us that they had an order to evict us.
Aside from not having another place to go to, I suspect in respect of this other place to sleep that an assault on me may well be on the cards under the pretext that we clearly chose an unsafe place to bed down (I sleep on the outside so that Declan can sleep with our well tied bags on the inside). I haven't forgotten that within two weeks of sleeping in the porch we are using, somebody sat on the right hand side of my face in the middle of the night - I have also been dragged out of the two-step porch by the ankles, and another night kicked repeatedly in the chest and shoulders by some guy as his mates stood by.
Declan's petition to the UN in support of human cloning for therapeutic purposes has been signed to date by 503 scientists and academics, including 22 Nobel laureates, despite that the majority of his emails are flagged as spam (see previous blog "SpamCop reports Declan as a spammer"). That is the reason why for example nobody signed on 20 March, and only 4 scientists did so the previous day - the Tower Hamlets Council's Idea Store Whitechapel, where we do all our emailing, imposed a 3-hour limit on free computer use on both our membership cards on 29 January, but we can still email about 350 scientists in a day.
So we have decided that it is time to try and raise £4,000. With some of the money we would rent the most basic place imaginable (all we are seeking is a fourth wall for safety); with an address we would be able to register NAC as a company so we are legal and accountable to our agreed trustees (since the NAC website was suspended on 8 March, I have listed NAC trustees and honorary associates in the blog of 9 March "Home Office denies warrant to intercept communications"); NAC as a company would also entitle us to a business account which would allow us to pay for a web hosting provider; and I would be in a position to buy a laptop, which nowadays can be done quite cheaply – I wouldn't even need a home internet connection since virtually all public libraries in London are free WiFi Hot Spots.
We are well used to getting up at 4.30am and to working hard, so I believe that within a couple of weeks of buying a laptop I would have done a 20 or so page website in support of Declan's petition to the UN – as I reported in the previous blog, the NAC website is not going to be uploaded again. The website would be loosely based on Oxfam's highly successful "Make Trade Fair" (although initially the home page would look more like "the issues" page). The objective would be to attract the endorsement of scientific organisations so that we could then be in a position to ask prominent advocates of embryo research to collaborate in the campaign.
The campaign would seek to (i) raise awareness of the challenges and benefits of therapeutic cloning and human embryonic stem cell research, and (ii) encourage political discussions in countries around the world. Declan of course would continue to seek signatories and more directly contact Nobel laureates and other distinguished scientists and academics. We believe this initiative would generate quite a bit of interest if we can get, say, two thousand scientists and academics to sign the petition, before we take it to the wider public.
There would also be a blog exclusively on therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cell research. I already have a few design models in mind and very much think we would be able to attract commentaries from scientists (even interviews through email) and from lay activists. The blog would gather important scientific news in the field, public policy developments and counterarguments to those who wish to impede embryo research.
Video: Gordon Brown seeks embryo compromise
This Easter holiday has also been quite problematic for Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, used his Easter Sunday homily to launch an attack on the Government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill – the bill, which has already passed the House of Lords, proposes to legalise the creation of hybrid embryos, make it easier for gay couples to access IVF and encourage the development of stem-cell therapies – warning Brown against imposing a three-line whip ordering Labour MPs to vote with the party line in favour of the bill. The cardinal claimed that the bill would lead to the endorsement of experiments of "Frankenstein proportions" and that it is “a monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life.”
It clearly fell on deaf ears that the Medical Research Council, the Royal Society, the Wellcome Trust and the Academy of Medical Sciences issued a briefing document (reported by the BBC on 15 January) spelling out why they see hybrid embryos as so important: “This research has massive potential to provide treatments for serious debilitating disorders ranging from developmental abnormalities in young children, to stroke, cancer, HIV/Aids, diabetes and Parkinson's disease, as well as better and safer treatment for infertile couples.” (The briefing document also called for the hybrids to be known as "human admixed" embryos to reflect the fact that they are overwhelmingly made of human tissue, with just a tiny amount of animal DNA added in.)
Scientists were not impressed. "The Catholic Bishops are using scaremongering tactics in an attempt to block important medical research aimed at understanding and developing treatments for incurable diseases," said Dr Chris Shaw, professor of neurology and neurogenetics at King's College London (and a signatory of Declan’s petition). Dr Stephen Minger, director of the stem cell biology laboratory at King's College London (and also a signatory of the petition) added: "The church should carefully review the science they are commenting on, and ensure that their official comments are accurate, before seriously misinforming their congregations." And Dr Robin Lovell-Badge, head of genetics at the National Institute For Medical Research (and another signatory of the petition): "How can a little ball of cells violate human dignity or scare anyone, especially when its purpose is to do good?"
A Department of Health spokeswoman said that the Government was proposing "strict controls" on the research. "This is not about 'creating monsters'. It is purely laboratory research, and is aimed at increasing knowledge about serious diseases and treatments for them."
The Association of Medical Research Charities and the Genetic Interest Group, which between them represent more than 200 patient charities, said the research "could greatly increase our understanding of serious medical conditions affecting millions", and have written to all MPs urging them to support the bill.
Lib Dem MP Dr Evan Harris said the bill was a "decent and civilising" measure. He said: "The use of terms like ‘monstrous’ and ‘Frankenstein’ to describe microscopic embryonic entities which contain animal and human material is preposterous scare-mongering given the millions of people who have received life-saving pig-heart valves. He [Cardinal O'Brien] is entitled to reject any treatment coming from this research on behalf of himself and his more devout followers but the millions of people hoping for medical research breakthroughs using stem cell technology would regard his attempt to veto this for them as well to be 'monstrous'."
One of those millions of people is Geraldine Peacock CBE, a former chair of the Charity Commission, who has had Parkinson's for 18 years, and had the following to say:
I wish one of these pontificators could get inside my body and see what it feels like. Parkinson's is like being locked in your own body when your mind is still there. I can become as rigid as a plank and my legs won't bend. It's as though there is a ton of cement on my chest and an army of ants crawling up and down my body with spears. It's like being buried alive.
By the age of 70, three-quarters of those in this country will have Parkinson's disease to some degree as it is a degenerative illness. Once you have it, it never goes into remission. But no one tells you how difficult it is to live with.
It makes me so angry when I hear academics, theologians or medics arguing about cloning. For me, it is like hearing any hopes we may have of returning to normality being taken away. By mixing ethics with religion and politics, which is a lethal concoction, they are not thinking about the people who have the disease. I feel like saying, 'Get off your high horse.'
I would not want to stop any process unless I knew it was categorically not going to work for those who are suffering. I don't believe cloning embryos is like taking life. Parkinson's is such a desperately painful disease. You would have thought that everyone would support anything reasonable to find a cure, and I believe what is being suggested is reasonable.
No doubt they too will fall on deaf ears; and in relation to Gordon Brown, well, responding to pressure from within his party and from senior figures in the Church, he has agreed to the unusual step of allowing Labour MPs a free vote on the most controversial sections of the bill – no wonder Declan and I were made rough sleepers.
