Fighting for the Right to Clone

We have decided that as soon as we raise £450 I am buying a laptop to build a website for an international campaign in support of Declan's petition to the UN on research cloning of embryos and stem cells, which will be uploaded in free space. For the past few weeks, half the computers in our local council's Idea Store Whitechapel library have been turned off as result of faults (last Saturday I even had difficulty booking a computer for Sunday) and things don't look good for September when everybody is back from their break. We don't believe we can rely on the library computers to do our emailing and work, and so we are switching to the campaign instead of waiting until we are off the street – we are giving ourselves two weeks to have the campaign on the internet (although we won't go public to patients' rights organisations until we have a sufficient number of distinguished signatories, and hopefully the endorsement of scientific organisations). Central to the campaign are applications of embryonic stem cell technology: for example, the growth of human blood for transfusion (see previous blog) and the generation of retinal pigment epithelium cells to treat human blindness (see below). The campaign will also expose that an egg-payment ban is hindering therapeutic cloning research (San Francisco Chronicle "Scientists: Egg shortage hurts stem cell research").

Robert Lanza

On 19 August, Discover magazine published an interview with Robert Lanza, Chief Scientific Officer of the biotech company Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts (who is an early signatory of Declan's petition), under the title "Fighting for the Right to Clone", with the subtitle "Stem cell and cloning guru Robert Lanza has battled the Catholic Church, the White House, and violent protesters". As mentioned in the previous blog, last week Lanza announced that his research team had devised a way to grow large quantities of blood in the lab using embryonic stem cells, potentially making blood drives a thing of the past. The Discover introduction reveals that Lanza is close to delivering cellular therapies that might reseed the immune system, heal damaged hearts, even save limbs. "Yet for almost 20 years government policy has kept his innovations literally on ice. He has been called a murderer for tampering with embryos, and personal threats were so common at one point that he believed he would be killed."

It is no wonder, Discover says, that Lanza "would lead the charge into medicine's most controversial turf: the creation of cloned embryos for therapy and the engineering of spare human parts". The value of therapeutic cloning has long been clear to Lanza, who did his early work with South African heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard. Starting from those early days, Lanza understood that the barrier to tissue transfer was rejection by the recipient. From an entire organ to a dose of embryonic stem cells, if the tissue's DNA came from anyone else, the transplant would be rejected without the aid of harsh immunosuppressive drugs. "The treatment could be worse than the problem," Lanza found.

Around 1990, when Lanza was still at UCLA, he was approached by BioHybrid Technologies in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, and it was while working for BioHybrid that he learnt about Dolly, the sheep cloned by Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell (both signatories of Declan's petition) and colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland. "Aha! That's it," he says he said, adding that if you can create an embryo genetically identical to the adult - that is, a clone - you can harvest immune-compatible cells to replace any tissue you might want without fear of rejection. "My idea was to clone the sick individual, not for reproduction but for therapy," he says. "The stem cells produced through this therapeutic cloning would, like other embryonic stem cells, be capable of developing into many cell types and serve as a repair system for whatever part of the body required replenishment at the time. You solve the rejection problem, and you have unlimited amounts of tissue."

In 1998 Lanza learnt that there was a cloning company right up the street from BioHybrid that was "the top in the world", called Advanced Cell Technologies, or ACT. But before they would hire him they gave him a task "that was like bringing back the witch's broom". There was a question about whether the National Institutes of Health would allow the work, Lanza says. "Even though this was for therapy and not reproduction, it still involved cloning embryos, and the public was totally against it. Many considered it murder. So I was asked to get all the Nobel laureates in the country to sign a letter to support embryonic stem cell research, addressed to Harold Varmus, the head of the NIH [National Institutes of Health]." The effort was published in Science, and a few months later, many college presidents also signed on. (The letter published in Science on 19 March 1999 can be read here; and another letter, co-authored by Lanza, published by the Washington Post on 21 February 2001, and signed by 80 Nobel laureates, can be read here.)

At the time, Lanza recounts, ACT was a subsidiary of a poultry genetics company, doing work in agriculture. "When I joined they made the move from animal cloning to human therapy, and we knew we would get hit, big-time. I may be the only person who's had the [Catholic] Church, the pope, and a couple of presidents condemn my work. At one point we had bodyguards here. There was a bombing up the street; then a doctor at a local in vitro fertilization clinic was targeted. I didn't think I would be alive for more than a few years."

Lanza describes the original groundbreaking work at ACT: "We injected human DNA from an adult cell into an egg from which the nucleus had been removed. We managed to clone early-stage embryos that grew to four or six cells in size. This was obviously far short of getting stem cells, which require a blastocyst [an embryo with a larger cluster of cells]. In fact, even to this day, a decade after the cloning of Dolly, scientists still have not cloned human embryos developed enough to generate patient-specific cells."

Lanza has been exploring other ways of producing patient-specific cells. "We recently published a paper on a cell we created called a hemangioblast, which exists only transiently in the embryo but not in the adult. I think of them like unicorns, these elusive cells that we had hypothesized and sought for years. With the ability to become all of the blood cells--including your immune cells, red blood cells, all of your blood system, as well as vasculature--hemangioblasts have been biology's holy grail. What we discovered is that we can create literally millions or billions of these from human embryonic stem cells. Now that we have them, we are harnessing, for the first time, one of nature's early, most profoundly powerful cellular building blocks. The point is, we can use transient, intermediate cells like hemangioblasts as a toolbox to fix the adult so you don't have to have limbs amputated, so you may not have to go blind, to prevent heart attacks. We can direct their development into different cell types by adding certain molecules to them as they divide."

Lanza recounts that a police officer visited him four years ago because he had a 16-year-old who would go totally blind in two years; Lanza had just published a paper showing that they could create human retinal pigment epithelial cells capable of restoring visual function in animals. "By the time he finished his story, I was almost in tears because we had these cells and they had been frozen at that point for nine months," Lanza says. "We didn't have $20,000, which is what we needed to do the preclinical studies required for working with people. At that point, our phones had been turned off. We didn't have a fax machine. I couldn't even afford bottled water for my pipettes. The point is, there is just no funding because basic research is generally funded by the government and the government will not fund stem cell work." (An article dated 23 September 2004 titled "Successful Generation of Retinal Pigment Epithelium Cells to Treat Blindness Reported in Cloning and Stem Cells" can be read here; Lanza's Cloning and Stem Cells paper here.)

So what does Lanza think these technologies portend for human longevity? "It turns out that the human life span plateaus as it approaches a roof of about 120. By eliminating infectious diseases, some chronic diseases, and cancer, we can get the life span past 100. I think with tissue engineering we can patch you together like a bicycle tire, replacing a kidney with a kidney and a heart with a heart, to about 120 years. That was always my thinking: That was the limit. But with these hemangioblasts, I now have questioned my own rules. These cells can go in and fix the damaged tissue inside, almost like nanoparticles. We may be able to do the same thing with similar cell lines for neurons, where we can repair the damage in the brain itself. So if it continues the way it's going, we may break that ceiling, like breaking the sound barrier. I'd be very hesitant to put a lid as to where longevity is going to go."

"Rather than curing disease, we're trying to get around theological problems," Lanza says. "It's not what I signed up for in medical school. I can't tell you how many times I've thrown my hands up and said, 'Enough, I can't take it anymore,' but then I'm back the next day. We're crippled, but they can't stop us forever." He says that it's just a shame that the research has been held up so long. "We're living through a paradigm shift. People are going to look back at us and say, 'They used to cut people's legs off.' Then they'll just give an injection and the blood flow will be restored and the limb saved. If I were a patient and I knew I was going to have my leg cut off and something could be done, I would be demanding it. But most people, even most scientists, don't realize what we're capable of. I realize it because I'm doing the work and I can see what's possible before my eyes."

Scientists grow blood from embryonic stem cells

Declan didn’t stop at all yesterday: he visited the local Bishopsgate police station three times; wrote to The Big Issue head office (The Big Issue is a magazine sold by homeless people on registered street pitches); wrote to the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights (see below); and, finally, at 10.15pm, he stopped a guy from probably causing us some nasty injury in the porch we have been sleeping since 3 November 2006. This guy clearly had no intention of causing injury to himself, because as he was taking his final running steps – Declan doesn’t know if he intended to come down on us both, or if it was just on me (I sleep on the outside so that Declan can sleep with our well-tied bags on the inside) – he and his two giggling mates ran off when Declan sat up.

The majority of emails I am sending to scientists and academics inviting them to sign Declan’s petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning are still being delivered to spam (see previous blog). On Wednesday I sent a total of 142 emails and only received 19 out-of-office autoreplies: 88 emails to The School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol (13 autoreplies); 37 emails to the Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University (0 autoreplies); and 17 emails to the MRC Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases (6 autoreplies).

Yesterday I went for the US, and since the University of Wisconsin Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine Center is a host to the 2008 World Stem Cell Summit next month, I didn’t look any further. I sent 55 emails followed by 63 emails to the University of Wisconsin Institute of Aging. Out of the total of 118 emails I received 5 autoreplies (from 20th, 66th, 79th, 86th, and 107th emails). The names and email addresses of 105 scientists from the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley have already been added to Declan’s database and they will be sent tomorrow.

Scientists grow blood from embryonic stem cells

On Wednesday an article in The Times, titled "Transfusion breakthrough as human blood grown from stem cells", reported that vials of human blood have been grown from embryonic stem cells for the first time during research that promises to provide an almost limitless supply suitable for transfusion into any patient. Stem-cell-derived blood would also eliminate the risk of transmitting the pathogens that cause hepatitis, HIV and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) through transfusions. Scientists behind the advance said that it has huge therapeutic potential and could easily become the first application of embryonic stem-cell research to enter widespread clinical use. Robert Lanza, of Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts, who led the experiments (and is an early signatory of Declan’s petition to the UN), said: “Embryonic stem cells represent a new source of cells that can be propagated and expanded indefinitely, providing a potentially inexhaustible source of red blood cells for human therapy. The identification of a stem cell line with O negative blood type would permit the production of compatible ‘universal donor’ blood.” A spokeswoman from the American Red Cross says the breakthrough is "an important step towards the possibility of growing transfusible red blood cells in the laboratory".

The cells were produced from four embryonic lines, one supplied by the government, two made by Advanced Cell, and one from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. To create the red blood cells, Lanza and his collaborators at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and at the University of Illinois in Chicago exposed cultures of human ESCs to a sequence of nutrients and growth factors. This turned them first into hemangioblasts, which are precursors to blood cells, and then into mature red blood cells. While a few red blood cells have been created from embryonic stem cells before, the team is the first to mass-produce them on the scale required for medical use. They also showed that the red cells were capable of carrying oxygen, and that they responded to biological cues in similar fashion to the real thing. Independent scientists welcomed the work. Alex Medvinsky, a blood stem cell expert at the University of Edinburgh, said: “The problem with relying on donated blood is that there are always shortages. The ability to generate red blood cells in very large numbers would be a very big thing.”

At least 546 elective surgeries in the US were delayed in 2004 because of short blood supplies, reported Bloomberg.com on Tuesday. New York issued an urgent appeal for blood donors in 2006 when supplies fell dangerously low, and last year the American Red Cross issued a similar alert for New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania. The US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, the Defense Department's research and development office, is encouraging new ways to generate blood for use on the battlefield. At a workshop last year, defense scientists described their desire to develop an “in-theater culture system” to produce fresh red blood cells to treat injured soldiers. Using embryonic stem cells for this purpose has been hampered by President George W Bush's policy, which restricts government funding for research to designated existing lines of cells, Lanza said. None of the Bush-approved colonies of stem cells are from embryos with O-negative blood, the universal donor blood type, which is ideal for civilian and military applications, he said.

An alternative source of safe, fresh blood would be good news for patients and hospitals, said Louis Katz, past president of America's Blood Centers, a Washington-based group of private collection companies. “A robust supply of red blood cells is a great thing,” Katz told Bloomberg.com in a telephone interview. “I don't care if it comes out of a vat or a donor.” Surely stopping scientists and academics from signing Declan’s petition to the UN can only contribute to the slowing down of progress toward the day when stem cells will lead to cures.

For the record, this is the email letter Declan sent yesterday afternoon to the Registrar of the European Court, Erik Fribergh (the previous email letter of 16 August to Fribergh can be found here):

Subject: Heavey v. the United Kingdom (Application no. 22541/07)

Dear Mr Fribergh

I refer further to my second request for priority of 4 July 2008 under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court, for consideration as supplementary to my initial application of 8 September 2007. Under "Necessity of Expedition", this request for priority states as follows:

An urgent expedition is necessary in this instance because of the violations of the applicant's human rights already existing and are likely to be even greater. The right that has been violated is the right to private and family life as established under Article 8 by the applicant being assaulted in the porch he shares with his wife, having been robbed of all their money and documents, and his concern that his wife may be forced into begging.

In respect of my wife being "forced into begging", please find enclosed copy of my email letter of today's date to The Big Issue Outreach Manager, Mr Paul Joseph.

As explained in previous applications, my wife and I survive on the streets of London by selling The Big Issue, a magazine sold by homeless people on registered street pitches, and I have lodged numerous written complaints with The Big Issue Head Office in respect of my wife and myself being walked off our respective pitch by other street traders, including, inter alia, Big Issue vendors. The Court will note from my email and attachments of 16 August that not only may my wife be forced into begging (a criminal offence in England), but debadged by The Big Issue for so doing.

I can confirm that this afternoon a copy of the attached correspondence was filed as part of a City of London Police Intelligence Report on Big Issue vendor 4012 (on 14 August, Mr Joseph wrote: "This vendor now has an out of date badge, and he will not be issued with another one, therefore technically he is debadged"), who has been consistently harassing my wife since Wednesday of last week as she has been attempting to sell The Big Issue on her pitch.

I respectfully request that the Chamber or its President decide to give priority to my application.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

And this is the attachment, Declan’s letter yesterday morning to the Big Issue outreach manager:

Subject: The Big Issue

Dear Mr Paul Joseph

On 13 August you stated the following regarding Big Issue vendor 4012 and his harassment of my wife on her Big Issue pitch at the George pub on Liverpool Street:

I am sorry to hear about this situation. We have already received a complaint about the same vendor begging. He has a trainee badge but will not be issued a permanent badge or supplied with magazines. I will also endeavour to speak to local police so that if they catch him they can confiscate his badge.

I can confirm that this morning at 8.10am this vendor was questioned by PC 840C of Bishopsgate police station while selling this week's edition of The Big Issue on my wife's pitch (for 45 minutes, before he stepped into my wife's pitch, he had been selling his Big Issues about her as she was attempting to sell hers). PC 840C informed my wife that he could not confiscate the vendor's badge because the Big Issue head office was closed and he had no access to the Intel Report containing a copy of the aforementioned email from you of 13 August.

Please would you acknowledge receipt.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

cc Intel Report

An exercise in damage limitation

World Health Organization

Yesterday evening I emailed "full members" of the European Network of Cancer Registries – the ENCR was established in 1989 within the framework of the Europe Against Cancer programme of the European Commission. And because the ENCR Secretariat is hosted at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is part of the World Health Organization, I reckoned that perhaps there might be some chance that my emails to scientists and academics inviting them to sign Declan's petition to the UN would arrive in their proper place: in inbox and not in spam (see previous blog). But I was wrong: of the 80 emails I sent, I only received four out-of-office autoreplies (from 2nd, 26th, 68th and 79th emails).

Also yesterday, I kept emailing the University of Oxford Medical Sciences Division: 47 emails to the Department of Paediatrics (from where we have a very distinguished signatory) – it was when I was checking the email address of one of the group directors that I discovered the pdf containing the names and email addresses of the full members of the ENCR. But no luck either: of the 47 emails I sent, all I received were two autoreplies (31st and 39th emails). On Sunday, the computers in our local council's Idea Store Whitechapel library were down for the day (as they were on Saturday), so virtually no emailing: only 20 investigators from the Jenner Institute. I received six autoreplies; three in each batch of ten emails. And there was a bit of coincidence: four of the autoreplies came from the 1st and 2nd emails of each batch.

Surely what Declan and I are dealing with can only be described as an exercise in damage limitation: sending Declan’s emails into spam (or even cyberspace) rather than have scientists and academics sign his petition to the UN, which would take us off the street. An exercise in damage limitation is what British MPs were accused of only last weekend. The Mail of Sunday reveals in an article dated 17 August (“The great expenses cover-up: Now MPs quietly change the FOI act to keep details secret”) that MPs have been accused of mounting a shameless cover-up operation to prevent voters from discovering the full truth about their lavish expenses. Following a series of legal battles by Freedom of Information campaigners, MPs will this autumn be forced to disclose expenses claims dating back five years. But in a little-spotted move before the summer recess, Parliament passed a clause meaning the location of MPs’ taxpayer-funded second homes will be deleted, along with details of regular travel expenses and suppliers of goods and services, saving them from potential embarrassment.

Letter to the European Court of Human Rights

This afternoon Declan wrote to the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights following his receipt of an email from The Big Issue Head Office - The Big Issue is a magazine sold by homeless people on registered street pitches - threatening that I will be debadged should I be forced into begging, a criminal offence in England. Of course, I have been forced to beg before (see, for example, blog of 20 January "Begging for over a week"), and it sure looks like that is where I am heading now: since Wednesday, as I have been attempting to sell Big Issues on my pitch, a rough sleeper has been harassing me and selling Big Issues close by (see previous blog for Declan’s formal complaint to The Big Issue). This guy seems so motivated that yesterday Declan went to the police, although he was informed that no crime had been committed.

On my part, I have kept busy emailing scientists and academics inviting them to sign Declan’s petition to the UN supporting therapeutic cloning and the use of stem cells for research and for the treatment of disease. On Wednesday some emails didn’t end up in spam: out of 57 emails, I received 11 out-of-office autoreplies (as I explained in the blog of 2 August "I am urinated on in the porch", the number of out-of-office autoreplies is my best indication as to whether Declan's emails are going to inboxes or spam: two or three autoreplies within a batch of 10 would be a good indicator of the former). Eight autoreplies came within 16 emails and clearly something got through because we got one signature. On Thursday I wasn’t so fortunate: 121 emails and only 11 autoreplies – of course, no one signed. All these emails went to scientists in Newcastle University: 46 to the School of Biology; 43 to the School of Chemical Engineering and Advanced Materials; and 32 to the School of Chemistry – I was going to get names and email addresses in Biomedicine today but computers in our local council's Idea Store Whitechapel library are once again down for the day. Incidentally, we now have 11 signatories from Newcastle University; in total 522 signatories, including 23 Nobel laureates.

University of Oxford

On Friday, I tried my luck with the University of Oxford’s Medical Sciences Division – ranked by The Times third in the world for Biomedicine in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. I sent 87 emails and again only got 11 autoreplies; emails that I sent to the University’s Sir William Dunn School of Pathology yielded no autoreplies at all.

Everything indicates that things in the near future will be as austere as they are now - and we will just have to ride them out. The Guardian carried a report on 13 August on the conflict over South Ossetia titled "Plaything of the gods". Journalist Tim Judah, who covers the Balkans for the Economist and wrote "The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, and Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know", recounts that in 2002, on a trip to Iraqi Kurdistan, few Kurds he met made any secret of their desire not just to achieve independence from Iraq but also to act as a vanguard that would eventually rally Kurds from Iran, Syria, and Turkey into one large Kurdish state. Musa Ali Bakr, the man who was then in charge of refugees in the Kurdish region of Dahuk, explained that if the Iraqi Kurds moved too quickly their neighbours would strangle them by closing the borders. He then summed up with what for Judah then was the Kurdish dilemma, but he now realises is really the dictum of all successful separatists: "If you are sick, you visit the doctor. He prescribes the medicine. You take a spoonful three times a day and eventually you are better, you are free. However, if you drank the whole bottle all at once, it would kill you."

For the record, this is the email letter Declan sent this afternoon to Registrar Erik Fribergh of the European Court (Erik.Fribergh@echr.coe.int)

Subject: Heavey v. the United Kingdom (Application no. 22541/07)

Dear Mr Fribergh

I refer to my second request for priority of 4 July 2008 under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court, which, under "Necessity of Expedition", states as follows:

An urgent expedition is necessary in this instance because of the violations of the applicant's human rights already existing and are likely to be even greater. The right that has been violated is the right to private and family life as established under Article 8 by the applicant being assaulted in the porch he shares with his wife, having been robbed of all their money and documents, and his concern that his wife may be forced into begging.

In respect of my wife being forced into begging, please find enclosed copy of my email letter and attachment of 15 August to The Big Issue Outreach Manager for London, Mr Paul Joseph.

As explained in previous applications, my wife and I survive on the streets of London by selling The Big Issue, a magazine sold by homeless people on registered street pitches, and I have lodged numerous written complaints with The Big Issue Head Office in respect of my wife and myself being walked off our respective pitch by other street traders, including, inter alia, Big Issue vendors. The Court will note from the attached correspondence that not only may my wife be forced into begging (a criminal offence in England), but she has been threatened by The Big Issue with debadging for so doing.

I can confirm that on 15 August a copy of the attached correspondence was filed as part of a City of London Police intelligence report on Big Issue vendor 4012 (on 14 August, Mr Joseph wrote: "This vendor now has an out of date badge, and he will not be issued with another one, therefore technically he is debadged"), who has been consistently harassing my wife for the past three days as she has been attempting to sell The Big Issue on her pitch.

In the event of error in transmission, please note that the order of attachments is as follows:

Big Issue 15.8.doc 24kb
Big Issue 13.8 & 14.8.doc 31kb

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

Declan’s emails are censored

This morning Declan had to lodge yet another complaint with The Big Issue head office (see blog of 25 July “Letter to the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Big Issue”); this time on my behalf – the Big Issue is a magazine sold by homeless people on registered street pitches. It is 7.20am when this rough sleeper drops his travel bag and rucksack a few feet from me and tries to bully me into leaving my pitch, which I have had since December 2006. When I don’t leave – the guy is so pushy I have to tell him to leave me alone – he sits on his travel bag, keeps talking to me (no, better, shouts at me), and finally begins to try and sell his Big Issues.

The vast majority of the emails that I am sending to scientists and academics inviting them to sign Declan’s petition to the UN, in support of therapeutic cloning and the use of stem cells for research and for the treatment of disease, are still being unceremoniously dumped into spam: last Saturday I sent 201 emails and all I got was 14 out-of-office autoreplies (see the previous blog “Sex, Science and Stem Cells”); and yesterday afternoon I sent 190 emails and got six out-of-office autoreplies. As I explained in the blog of 2 August “I am urinated on in the porch”, the number of out-of-office autoreplies is my best indication as to whether Declan's emails are going to inboxes or spam: two or three autoreplies within a batch of 10 would be a good indicator of the former.

My six Out-Of-Office AutoReplies

Over 30 emails were sent to scientists in Newcastle University, from which we have several distinguished signatories, but I only received one autoreply – we have an eye on Newcastle and Durham Universities because the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has granted the North-East England Stem Cell Institute, a collaboration between the two universities, permission to recruit human egg donors (see blog of 16 July “Therapeutic cloning: Researchers back bid to pay egg donors”). I then tried my luck elsewhere and went for New York State, and emailed, among others: Columbia University, State University of New York, New York Medical College, Sloan-Kettering Institute, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (from where the first Nobel laureate to sign Declan’s petition comes), The Rockefeller University, and Yeshiva University. Still no luck – of 160 or so emails all I got was five autoreplies. Clearly the American Dream – the belief in the freedom that allows people to achieve their goals in life through hard work – doesn’t apply to us. Oh well.

On 10 August, the Catholic News Agency reported that at their 126th Supreme Convention in Quebec City, the Knights of Columbus approved resolutions calling for the legal protection of marriage and asking Catholics holding elected office to “be true” to their faith by acting “bravely and publicly in defense of life” – the Knights of Columbus, headquartered in Connecticut, is the world's largest organisation of Catholic laymen with more than 1.75 million members, and is often referred to as the "strong right arm of the Church". In one resolution, the Knights advocate building a “culture of life” and opposing “any governmental action or policy that promotes abortion, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, euthanasia, assisted suicide and other offenses against life”. Knights of Columbus delegates also exhorted “our fellow Catholics who are elected officials to be true to the faith they claim to profess by acting bravely and publicly in defense of life”. Such officials, the resolution advised, should affirm with Pope Benedict XVI that “there can be no room for purely private religion”.

Diana DeGette, six-term Democrat Congresswoman from Colorado, and a chief architect of the stem cell research bill that was twice vetoed by President George W Bush, is the author of the new book "Sex, Science and Stem Cells: Inside the Right Wing Assault on Reason", which exposes the politization of science by the right wing in the US Congress and the heavy influence of the religious right. On 5 August, she told the Scientific American: “I think they want to have a society where it’s really God’s will whatever happens. That’s all well and good within their own families: they can structure their family that way. But, when you're talking about public policy, it's a very big waste of money and it's very dangerous to public health. Teen pregnancy went up last year.” I doubt any Knights of Columbus will read her book; but then, on 8 August, DeGette herself told DailyCamera.com: “The book is not targeted at opponents, because frankly I don't think I will ever convince them. I wrote it for the 87 percent of Americans who think public health policy should be based on sound science."

For the record, this is the email Declan sent this afternoon to the Big Issue outreach manager further to the formal complaint he lodged this morning:

Subject: The Big Issue

Dear Mr Paul Joseph

In your email to me this afternoon you state the following in respect of my formal complaint in writing against Big Issue vendor 4012:

I am sorry to hear about this situation. We have already received a complaint about the same vendor begging. He has a trainee badge but will not be issued a permanent badge or supplied with magazines. I will also endeavour to speak to local police so that if they catch him they can confiscate his badge.

You do not state in this email whether the same vendor will be debadged for begging or because he did so with a Big Issue badge.

As you are aware, my wife spent several weeks at the beginning of this year begging in Liverpool Street Station, and for which she received several police tickets. On 18 June, I wrote the following to you:

Previous correspondence refers. I wish to confirm that my wife (badge no. 1170) and I are unable to buy any Big Issues today, at the very least. My wife will in fact be begging tomorrow morning to earn enough money to post my second Request for Priority to the European Court of Human Rights under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court. This morning all our money and documents were robbed in the Dellow Centre (fortunately we each retain copies of all our documents on memory sticks and CDs), crime reference number 4215697/08. We hope to get back to selling the Big Issue as soon as we are in a position to buy your stipulated "minimum" of two magazines.

This afternoon I only had the money to buy two Big Issues for resale. I would, therefore, be much obliged if you would please clarify.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey
Badge no. 1163

Sex, Science and Stem Cells

Declan and I had a bit of a challenging weekend: on Friday night at 11.00pm, a homeless decided to nap in the porch in which we have been sleeping since 3 November 2006 despite us being there – a first; on Saturday morning, a half an hour after the Catholic Manna Centre opened Declan reckoned it was better we left, even though it meant going hungry for the day – also a first since we started going there back at Easter (I only go on weekends, while Declan makes the two-hour round-trip walk every weekday to be guaranteed a bite to eat for lunch).

With that background, it didn’t surprise me that out of the 201 emails I sent on Saturday afternoon to scientists and academics inviting them to sign Declan’s petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning, all I got was 14 out-of-office autoreplies (as I explained in the blog of 2 August “I am urinated on in the porch”, the number of out-of-office autoreplies is my best indication as to whether Declan's emails are going to inbox or spam: two or three autoreplies within a batch of 10 would be a good indicator of the former). For instance, I sent 69 emails to scientists of the University of California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (from which we have a few signatories) and got 4 autoreplies – the last 48 emails yielded no autoreplies at all. I am afraid that the emails I sent to Oxford Brookes University didn’t fare any better: I sent 40 emails and got 4 autoreplies. I didn’t do any emailing on Sunday because the computers in the Idea Store Whitechapel library were down for the day. This morning we had no new signatories – can’t say I expected any.

Sex, Science and Stem Cells, by Congresswoman Diana DeGette

A new book "Sex, Science and Stem Cells: Inside the Right Wing Assault on Reason", exposing the politization of science by the right wing in the US Congress and the heavy influence of the religious right, hit store shelves in the US last week. Its author, Diana DeGette, six-term Democrat Congresswoman from Colorado and a chief architect of the stem cell research bill that was twice vetoed by President George W Bush, told DailyCamera.com: "The reason I did this book now is because as the fall elections approach I wanted to let the American public know how health policies must be based on sound science. The United States is based on separation of church and state, and federal, public health programs ought to be based on science, not on religion."

The Scientific American carries an interview with DeGette in an article dated 5 August titled “Congresswoman Slams Religious Right's Assault on Science's ‘Edgier’ Side”. When, on 19 July 2006, President Bush ceremoniously vetoed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005 (he would veto the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007 on 19 June 2007), he was surrounded by children born from discarded IVF embryos that other couples had “adopted” through a Christian agency. Such publicity stunts, DeGette told the Scientific American, have helped kill a wide range of legislation on sex and reproduction: the plan B “morning after” birth control pill, the human papillomavirus vaccine (touted as the best method for preventing cervical cancer), and even sex education. With regard to stem cell research, she says: "I think President Bush was frankly unconcerned about what the public will was. He had a personal religious view and he felt strongly about that. So, he just stubbornly blazed ahead."

DeGette says she wanted to write a book to let the general public know what really goes on inside of Congress, from an insider's perspective. “When I started to write the book, I realized that all of the personal examples that I had and a lot of the issues that I had personally been fighting on all relate back to sex and reproduction. They're not all one thing: They're not abortion. It's stem cell research. It's international HIV/AIDS policy. It's birth control,” she says. Although there have been other issues that the Bush administration has politicized (global climate change, for example), for DeGette “if you want to look at an area that has been thoroughly politicized from top to bottom, it’s the area of sex and reproduction”.

DeGette, who currently co-chairs the bipartisan Congressional Diabetes Caucus (her daughter Francesca was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1998 at the age of 4), charges that there has been a lot of hyperbole around the reprogramming of adult skin cells. “I’m pro-science, so I welcome all of those different types of stem cell research. I think we have moved, not away from embryonic stem cell research, but we have moved to a richer research environment, which was probably likely to happen anyway. The mistake that the press and politicians have made is characterizing this as either/or ... and the one who is the most compelling talking about this is [National Institutes of Health director Elias] Zerhouni, who says all of these types of research support each other and we need to not be making political decisions picking one over the other.”

She thinks that the vast majority of leaders behind “these antiscience arguments” are really making a political calculation, and “the political calculation they're making is: ‘I don't want to anger the religious right, so I'll just go along with this because I think my constituents think this anyway’”. She adds: “I say on page 21 of the introduction: ‘What in god’s name are these people doing? Why does the religious right try to limit scientific advances when they relate to human reproduction? I’ve come to believe that the most extreme (and, frequently, the most influential) right wing advocates seek a country that comports with their view of the Bible. If it was up to them, they would not only outlaw abortion altogether, but all forms of birth control except the rhythm method and abstinence’.” She can’t think of any other explanation why the religious right would so thoroughly polititicize every aspect of sex and reproduction. “I think they want to have a society where it’s really God’s will whatever happens. That’s all well and good within their own families: they can structure their family that way. But, when you're talking about public policy, it's a very big waste of money and it's very dangerous to public health. Teen pregnancy went up last year.”

DeGette admits that she thinks there are a lot of politicians that are afraid of science. “If you say in a vacuum, ‘Science should play a role,’ people get freaked out because a lot of people didn't do so well in high school science or whatever. But, if you say to them, ‘Congress passed a bill that allowed states to give health insurance coverage to fetuses but not the pregnant mother,’ people would say, ‘Well, that's insane.’ I think the devil is in the details.” In her view, scientists and people who care about sound science need to be willing to go on TV shows and radio shows and write op-eds “and talk in layperson's terms about how this politicization is hurting the public policies that affect their lives”. Needless to say, we intend running NAC’s international campaign in support of therapeutic cloning and human embryonic stem cell research with that firmly in mind.

Library blocks access to Google Mail account

This afternoon at about 2.45pm our local council’s Idea Store Whitechapel’s filter software blocked access to Declan’s Google Mail – the account we use to email scientists and academics around the world inviting them to sign Declan’s petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning. I had actually been on a computer since 12.00 noon and had already emailed 31 scientists; although perhaps I shouldn’t have bothered: I only got one autoreply. (As I explained in the blog of 2 August “I am urinated on in the porch”, the number of out-of-office autoreplies is my best indication as to whether Declan's emails are going to inbox or spam: two or three autoreplies within a batch of 10 would be a good indicator of the former).



Anyway, I had just pasted into Drafts a very long list containing the names, emails and phone numbers of the academic staff of the School of Law of The University of Manchester (from where we have a very distinguished signatory) when it happened. I should perhaps add that on Sunday both our booked computers in Idea Store Whitechapel had a virus which infected the two USB drives we were using (see previous blog). I got Google Mail back some twenty minutes later, after which the technician informed Declan that “it may happen again for any length of time”. So this is the email letter that Declan sent this evening to Councillor Lutfur Rahman, the Leader of Tower Hamlets Council at cllr.lutfur.rahman@towerhamlets.gov.uk (further to an email letter he sent him on Monday on the deletion of data):

Subject: Idea Store Whitechapel

Dear Cllr Rahman

I refer further to the attached copy of my most recent correspondence with Mr Ian McNicol, Head of Idea Stores, to whom the former Leader of Tower Hamlets Council, Cllr Denise Jones, referred my original complaint of 21 January regarding Idea Store Whitechapel and the repeated loss of computer bookings and internet access on both my wife's card (card no. D000350314) and my card (card no. D000355837) since 14 November 2007.

In the continued absence of a response from Mr McNichol in respect of the aforementioned complaint of 21 January, I wish to further confirm that this afternoon at approximately 2.45pm MIMEsweeper, the filter software used by the Idea Store network, blocked access to my Google Mail account due to "PornDetected" (see attachment "MIMEsweeper"). At 3.10pm I was again able to access the account, after which the technician informed me that "it may happen again for any length of time".

I reconfirm that since my complaint of 21 January to Cllr Jones, my wife and I have encountered the following sample problems while trying to access the internet in Idea Store Whitechapel:

(1) 1 February: the Principal Idea Store Manager, Mr Sergio Dogliani, sent me an email advising that the restriction by Idea Store Whitechapel of my wife and I to a 3-hour maximum free computer use per day as from 29 January was irretractable, despite that for several months previous both my wife and I had been given extra hours of free computer use, subject to computer availability;
(2) 10 February: my wife lost her booking to another card holder and had to spend 10 minutes dealing with a member of staff before the computer was re-booked in her name;
(3) 11 February: a member of staff had to move me from one computer to another because it was not possible for me to access the internet; no other computer user reported any such difficulty;
(4) 23 June: at approximately 3.30pm, my wife was asked by a member of staff to give her computer up to another card holder, despite that a member of staff had confirmed in writing that she had booked the computer for my wife from 2.30pm to 5.30pm;
(5) 24 June: at approximately 12.30pm, a member of staff threatened my wife with security if she did not give up her computer up to another card holder, despite that thirty minutes earlier a member of staff had confirmed in writing that my wife had booked the computer from 11.30am to 2.30pm;
(6) 3 August: both of the computers my wife and I had booked the previous day contained a virus which spread to the two USB drives we were using, rendering my wife's portable programs inoperable and corrupting some of my most valuable data.

As explained in my email letter to you of 4 August, since 22 October 2007 my wife and I have been using as much of our computer time in Idea Store Whitechapel as possible to contact distinguished scientists and academics to invite them to sign my petition to the United Nations on therapeutic cloning and the use of stem cells for research and for the treatment of disease. To date, this petition has been signed by 520 scientists and academics, including 22 Nobel laureates.

Please would you acknowledge receipt.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

cc Mr Zoinul Abidin, Manager of Idea Store Whitechapel (by email)

Declan’s data is deleted

It seems bad luck keeps bumping into Declan and me: at 5.10am on Saturday I was urinated on while I slept in my sleeping bag in the porch we have been sleeping in since 3 November 2006 (see previous blog); and yesterday afternoon both our booked computers in the local Council's Idea Store Whitechapel library contained a virus which infected each of the two USB drives we were using – Declan lost his database of over 3,000 scientists and academics from around the world (although he had an up-to-date copy of it in Google Mail), as well as a Word document of a categorised list of British signatories of his petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning.



It is not the first time that our data has been deleted through no fault of our own: on 26 January all emails sent to Declan after 12 August 2007 were moved to Trash and 300 draft documents, which included the names and email addresses of over 2,500 scientists and academics, were deleted for good (see blog “Declan’s Google Mail is raided”).

Perhaps it is unfortunate that the Idea Store is situated in Tower Hamlets, one of the poorest boroughs in London: for instance, the Methodist Church Whitechapel Mission, a day centre for homeless people, is just across the road (on 18 June 2007 we were barred by the minister's wife due to concerns about our safety). Still, the library is a modern building and the computers are up-to-date and well-equipped: a firewall, virus program, and filter software are installed across the network; moreover, all computers are programmed to automatically restore custom settings (and delete all activity by prior users), if you re-start them.

I was under the impression that all these things are supposed to be covert – but apparently not. The Independent ran a piece on 10 July entitled: “J'accuse! Ségolène Royal links Sarkozy 'clan' with break-in at apartment”. On France 2’s nightly news programme, the defeated French presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal, said she believed that there was a “link” between a break-in at her apartment on 27 June and her accusation the previous day that the President's wealthy friends were mounting a "take-over" of France. This followed a decision by Sarkozy to ban advertising from state-owned television – potentially increasing by €450m (£350m) annually the revenue of commercial television channels owned, or controlled, by his close friends. "I observe that on the day after I said that it was time to halt the Sarkozy clan's take-over of France, my home was ransacked," Royal told astonished viewers. "I make a link between the two events." Her comments were immediately dismissed by politicians close to Sarkozy who said they were the result of a "martyr complex". However, senior opposition figures sprang to Royal's defence. Jean-Marc Ayrault, the leader of the Socialist group in the lower house of parliament, said that President Sarkozy's 14 months in power had created a "climate" which "recalled the most unpleasant periods of French political history". Once such a climate is created, he said, "anything can happen".

For the record, this is Declan's email yesterday to the manager of Idea Store Whitechapel:

Subject: Idea Store Whitechapel

Dear Mr Abidin

Previous correspondence refers.

Yesterday evening my wife and I booked two computers for today - computer 16 from 1.00pm to 4.45pm and computer 15 from 2pm to 4pm. For security reasons, and as usual, we both re-started our computers prior to log in so as to automatically delete all prior activity. Nonetheless, we were both greeted by an announcement: "Tazebama.dll". Shortly after my wife then put her USB drive into her computer, she discovered that most of the portable programs contained in her USB drive were now inoperable. In my case, after I then put my USB drive into my computer, I was unable to open a database (containing the names and email addresses of over 3,000 scientists and academics from around the world) through Microsoft Excel due to "an error trying to open", and a related Word document entitled "List-Breakdown UK" was "corrupt and unreadable" (see attachment).

According to information derived from the internet, Tazebama.dll is W32.Mabezat.B, which is "a backdoor worm that spreads through network shares and allows attackers to access and gives full control over infected computer". In respect of Tazebama.dll, the Symantec website advises to "perform a forensic analysis and restore the computers using trusted media".

If I am in any way mistaken, please so advise at your earliest convenience.

Please would you acknowledge receipt.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey
Card no. D000355837

I am urinated on in the porch

At 5.10am this morning somebody urinated on me while I slept in my sleeping bag in the porch we have been sleeping in since 3 November 2006 – a first (we wake up at 4.30am M-F, and 6.30am on weekends). Based on the evidence, this is what Declan thinks: this guy began urinating on the wall a couple of feet from us, then moved and proceeded to urinate on me, before running off as Declan sat up (I sleep on the outside, and Declan on the inside with our well-tied bags). The urine came at me with such force I actually woke up convinced somebody was emptying the contents of a glass of beer over my head; still, none of it touched my face as I was sleeping on my side with my back to the street and was wearing a cap and an eye cover. Needless to say, the clothes I use as a pillow, my cap and my sleeping bag were wet with urine.

Unsettling as it is, worse has happened to me while sleeping in this porch (and this is the best place we have come across to sleep): within two weeks of sleeping in the porch somebody sat on the right-hand side of my face; on 5 May 2007 some guy dragged me out of the two-step porch by the ankles while I was in my sleeping bag, then a few hours later I was kicked in the back; and on 22 September a guy repeatedly kicked me in the chest and shoulders as his mates stood by – the porch is situated in a business area well covered by CCTV.

The European Court of Human Rights doesn't think that these things are too bad: in a letter of 22 November 2007, the Court stated that it was unnecessary to consider Declan's request for priority of 8 September 2007 because it would be examining his application "shortly, possibly by the end of January 2008"; and in a letter of 16 June Declan is informed that "the Court will deal with the case as soon as practicable" – on 18 June, two days before Declan received this letter, all our money and documents were robbed in the Catholic Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre (see blog of 18 June “Declan robbed in the Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre”).

If I had to elaborate on an explanation as to why I was used as a urinal, it would have to be because of this: for the last three days Declan has been working on the Faculties of Engineering, Medicine and Natural Sciences of Imperial College London – from which institution some very distinguished scientists have signed his petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning – especially to try and get the petition signed again. In fact, on Thursday I emailed about 15 scientists from ICL (plus another 40 scientists from the University of California, San Francisco) and on Friday well over 30. The number of out-of-office autoreplies is my best indication as to whether Declan's emails are going to inbox or spam (two or three autoreplies within a batch of 10 would be a good indicator of the former): of a total of 45 emails to Imperial College scientists I got two autoreplies; and of a total of 40 emails to the University of California I got four autoreplies in a batch of 10 and then almost none …. There seems to be an uncomplicated approach to things in relation to Declan and me: he is looking to get the local support we need, I get urinated on; I send emails, they get delivered to spam mailboxes.

Actually, I am lucky I can send emails at all from the local council’s Idea Store Whitechapel library (see blog of 25 June “Police ‘No sleeping’ sign in the porch” for Declan's most recent letter to the Leader of Tower Hamlets Council): frequently on an hour booking I find myself unable to log in to my computer and have to wait for ten to fifteen minutes before my membership card number and password are accepted; and, for instance, on Wednesday it was announced that nobody would be able to use a computer.

A proposal to define a fertilised human egg as a person will land on Colorado's ballot this November, the first time the question of when life begins will go before voters anywhere in the US. If voters agreed, legal experts say, it would give fertilised eggs the same legal rights and protections to which people are entitled. The ballot initiative is funded by Colorado for Equal Rights, which on Monday announced the support of over 70 physicians and pharmacists. “We are honored to have received these endorsements from such respected physicians," stated Kristi Burton, the sponsor of the amendment. "Science clearly proves that life begins at the time of fertilization. We are secure in the fact that we have science and reason on our side, and we are pleased to have the medical community supporting our efforts." We are equally honoured that Declan’s petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning has received the endorsement of 520 scientists and academics, including 22 Nobel laureates; it’s just a pity we are not competing on a level playing field.