New Scientist: Their Will Be Done

“A failure on the part of US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to win evangelical votes could have a significant impact on the way that some science is done and taught in the US,” writes Jim Giles, a correspondent in New Scientist's San Francisco office, in an Election 2008 Special report in hard copy titled “Their Will Be Done” (subtitled: “US presidential candidates are vying for the evangelical vote. Where does that leave science and science education?”). Giles warns that the possibility of a conservative Supreme Court could have profound consequences for science: it would create a favourable climate for overturning abortion laws and making human embryonic stem cell research illegal (see below). Therefore, in addition to a section called “Science and Religion” (see blog of 16 September “Royal Society's stance on religion under fire”), our campaign in support of hESC research and therapeutic cloning will also have a section called “Science and the Law”.



Giles reports that when asked at what point human rights should be assigned, Republican presidential candidate John McCain replied with confidence: “At the moment of conception”. When pastor Rick Warren put the same question to Barack Obama last month, in a live broadcast from Warren's Californian megachurch, the Democrat presidential hopeful was less concise. “Well, you know, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade,” Obama said.

Many scientists and religious leaders say that it is impossible to pinpoint the moment at which a growing embryo should receive human rights. But Obama's meandering reply did not impress white evangelical Christians, many of whom believe that life begins at conception, says Giles, adding that if Obama cannot connect with at least the more moderate members of this group, the implications will not be limited to philosophical debates about the beginning of life.

The last two elections show why. In 2004 white evangelicals made up almost a quarter of the electorate and voted over 3 to 1 in favour of George W Bush. “The polls were very clear that the evangelical vote put Bush over the top,” Giles quotes David Neff of Christianity Today International as saying. “[Bush] has been very careful to keep that constituency happy,” Neff adds. On issues such as funding restrictions for hESC research, Bush has demonstrated his willingness to clash with scientists and toe the evangelical line.

Until recently, it seemed that this election might be different, in part because evangelical politics has changed since 2004. The rise of a new generation of moderate evangelicals has broadened the movement's political agenda. Some prominent pastors now preach the need to address global warming and help developing countries on moral grounds, issues on which the Democratic Party has a strong track record. The Democrats, in turn, have started trying to pick off previously Republican Christian voters.

It is not clear whether the Democrats have been making much headway. For some religious voters, Obama's support for gay marriage and abortion rights represents an insurmountable barrier. According to recent polls, two-thirds of white evangelicals favour McCain (black evangelicals have always tended to vote Democrat). Many of the surveys were conducted before Sarah Palin joined the Republican ticket as McCain's running mate. Her strongly conservative views appear to have energised the religious right, who may now turn out to vote in greater numbers on election day. If exit polls show that evangelicals helped elect McCain and Palin, Christian groups may retain much of their current influence in Washington.

What would that mean for science? Giles: “Researchers might find that current restrictions limiting the number of embryonic stem cells that can be used in federally funded research would stay in place. The Republican party and Palin both oppose changes to the rules. McCain's stance, the one that matters most, is less clear. In 2006, he voted for a bill, later vetoed by Bush, that would have ended the restrictions. ‘He will now be under pressure to change his position,’ says Amy Comstock Rick of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research in Washington DC.” In his recent reply to a set of 14 science policy questions put to both candidates, McCain does not commit to lifting federal restrictions on stem cell funding, or even mention them. His campaign declined a request from New Scientist to clarify.

“Those concerned about a McCain presidency under the influence of the religious right have even more to worry about when it comes to the US Supreme Court,” says Giles. “The court shifted to the right after two recent Bush appointments, and McCain has pledged to continue this trend, which would create a favourable climate for overturning abortion laws and other religiously motivated issues. Lawyers on the religious right are already preparing for such a situation.”

This November, voters in Colorado will decide on whether to amend the state's constitution so that a “person” would “include any human being from the moment of fertilization”. The amendment was drafted by Rob Muise and colleagues at the Thomas More Law Center, a conservative religious legal organisation based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Giles points out that by assigning rights to the embryo, it would probably make both abortion and stem cell research illegal. “Pro-choice advocates would challenge the law in court, creating what Muise calls a legislative ‘train wreck’: a series of appeals by one or both sides that would eventually take the case to the Supreme Court, which by then might have a conservative and anti-abortion majority,” writes Giles.

Giles continues: “The train-wreck strategy could also reshape the teaching of evolution. McCain has said that intelligent design (ID), the idea that a divine force guided evolution, should ‘probably not’ be taught in science classes. When running for governor of Alaska in 2006, Palin talked about the need to teach both creationism and evolution, but she later said that she would not push school boards to add the former to their curricula. School curricula are set by the committees in charge of the country's 17,000 local school districts, so the next president will not have a direct say on the issue, but Muise and colleagues have worked on ID cases before and say they would also be keen to take this issue to the Supreme Court.”

According to Giles, a decision on ID would probably revolve around whether teaching the subject violated the separation between church and state. He quotes Mark Frankel, an expert on science and the law at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC, as saying that the court might decide that it did not. Frankel adds, though, that the justices would be well aware that ID was not science and so could qualify their ruling by declaring that the subject should not be taught in science lessons. Giles: “Just the possibility of a conservative Supreme Court is enough to make the legal approach attractive to the religious right. Any state ruling could trigger the train wreck Muise is hoping for. And if McCain is president when that happens, the consequences for science could be profound.”

Pope Benedict XVI’s recent four-day trip to France has been painted as a deliberate effort to weaken France's secular foundations (see blog of 23 September “Church-State struggle in Europe”). Should conservative US Christian legal groups succeed in the Supreme Court, the profound consequences for science may very well be felt in Europe too, despite “the weakening of religious belief” (see blog of two days ago “Steven Weinberg: Without God”).

Steven Weinberg: Without God

At the risk of sounding repetitive, the majority of emails that I send to scientists and academics inviting them to sign Declan's petition to the UN on research cloning of embryos and stem cells are being dumped to spam boxes (or to cyberspace, see blog of 4 September "Obama: Yes to stem cells, funding") – except a few out-of-office autoreplies; and, presumably, the two or three emails I send immediately before; which could explain why we get a signature now and again. Take Wednesday: when I finally got to email 148 scientists from Cambridge University (see previous blog), all I got were 6 autoreplies. Two came from the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre (out of a total of 26) – from 2nd, and 4th emails. Yesterday didn’t fair better: 120 emails to scientists, mainly from the Welcome Trust Sanger Institute and University College London, which resulted in 4 autoreplies – from 15th, 19th, 77th, and 80th emails.

Half the computers at our local council's Idea Store Whitechapel library have been out of action for many weeks now and, as I correctly predicted in the blog of 26 August “Fighting for the Right to Clone”, competition for the remaining ones is hotting up – in addition, on 29 January the library imposed on both our membership cards a maximum of 3 hours of PC access per day despite that for several months previous we were given "additional time" subject to computer availability in accordance with the council's "Idea Stores PC Usage Policy". Anyway, yesterday afternoon I found no computer available for today on floor 1, so I had to book one on floor 3. Clearly I look forward to having a laptop again and working undisturbed as I build a website in support of human embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning. Nonetheless, I don’t complain: our campaign has increasingly taken shape as result of all the research I do prior to the writing of a blog.

For example, I decided to add a section called “Science and Religion” after reading that scientists such as Nobel prize winners Sir Harry Kroto (NAC Honorary Associate) and Sir Richard Roberts look with horror upon the spread of faith schools; the growing influence of bodies such as the Templeton Foundation; and the prospect of creationism being taught in science classrooms (see blog of 16 September “Royal Society's stance on religion under fire”). The Science and Religion home page will cite Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg’s four sources of tension between science and religion, especially in the West, where science has been most advanced. This home page will look very much like Greenpeace UK’s section “Climate change”. The four sources of tension come from an essay by Weinberg, an American physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in physics and the National Medical of Science, published this week in The New York Review of Books under the title “Without God” (see below).

The Large Hadron Collider will look at how the universe formed

Weinberg begins his essay by pointing out that the idea of a conflict between science and religion has a long pedigree. According to Edward Gibbon, it was the view of the Byzantine church that “the study of nature was the surest symptom of an unbelieving mind.” Perhaps the best-known portrayal of this conflict is a book published in 1896 by Cornell's first president, Andrew Dickson White, titled “A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom”, says Weinberg.

In recent times there has been a reaction against talk of warfare between science and religion. According to Weinberg, White's “conflict thesis” was attacked in a 1986 paper by Bruce Lindberg and Ronald Numbers, both well-known historians of science, who pointed out many flaws in White's scholarship. The Templeton Foundation offers a large prize to those who argue that there is no conflict between science and religion. “Some scientists take this line because they want to protect science education from religious fundamentalists,” writes Weinberg. “Stephen Jay Gould argued that there could be no conflict between science and religion, because science deals only with facts and religion only with values. This certainly was not the view held in the past by most adherents of religion, and it is a sign of the decay of belief in the supernatural that many today who call themselves religious would agree with Gould.”

Weinberg continues: “Let's grant that science and religion are not incompatible - there are after all some (though not many) excellent scientists, like Charles Townes and Francis Collins, who have strong religious beliefs. Still, I think that between science and religion there is, if not an incompatibility, at least what the philosopher Susan Haack has called a tension, that has been gradually weakening serious religious belief, especially in the West, where science has been most advanced.” In his essay, Weinberg traces out some of the sources of this tension, and then offers a few remarks about the very difficult question raised by the consequent decline of belief, the question of how it will be possible to live without God.

For Weinberg, the tension between science and religion is not primarily a result of contradictions between scientific discoveries and specific religious doctrines. “Contradictions between scripture and scientific knowledge have occurred again and again, and have generally been accommodated by the more enlightened among the religious,” he writes. “But if the direct conflict between scientific knowledge and specific religious beliefs has not been so important in itself, there are at least four sources of tension between science and religion that have been important.”

The first source of tension arises from the fact that religion originally gained much of its strength from the observation of mysterious phenomena – thunder, earthquakes, disease – that seemed to require the intervention of some divine being. But as time passed more and more of these mysteries have been explained in purely natural ways. “Explaining this or that about the natural world does not of course rule out religious belief. But if people believe in God because no other explanation seems possible for a whole host of mysteries, and then over the years these mysteries were one by one resolved naturalistically, then a certain weakening of belief can be expected,” Weinberg agues. “Of course, not everything has been explained, nor will it ever be. The important thing is that we have not observed anything that seems to require supernatural intervention for its explanation.”

The problem for religious belief is not just that science has explained a lot of “odds and ends” about the world. There is a second source of tension: that these explanations have “cast increasing doubt on the special role of man, as an actor created by God to play a starring part in a great cosmic drama of sin and salvation”, says Weinberg. We have had to accept that our home, the earth, is just another planet circling the sun; our sun is just one of a hundred billion stars in a galaxy that is just one of billions of visible galaxies; and it may be that the whole expanding cloud of galaxies is just a small part of a much larger multiverse, most of whose parts are utterly inhospitable to life. Most important so far, says Weiberg, has been the discovery by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace that humans arose from earlier animals through natural selection “acting on random heritable variations, with no need for a divine plan to explain the advent of humanity”. This discovery led some, including Darwin, to lose their faith. Weinberg comments that it is not surprising “that of all the discoveries of science, this is the one that continues most to disturb religious conservatives”.

A third source of tension between science and religious belief has been more important in Islam than in Christianity. Around 1100, the Sufi philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, argued against the very idea of laws of nature, on the grounds that any such law would put God's hands in chains. According to al-Ghazzali, a piece of cotton placed in a flame does not darken and smolder because of the heat of the flame, but because God wants it to darken and smolder. Al-Ghazzali is often described as the most influential Islamic philosopher. Weinberg: “I wish I knew enough to judge how great was the impact on Islam of his rejection of science. At any rate, science in Muslim countries, which had led the world in the ninth and tenth centuries, went into a decline in the century or two after al-Ghazzali. As a portent of this decline, in 1194 the Ulama of Córdoba burned all scientific and medical texts.”

There is a fourth source of tension between science and religion that may be the most important of all, says Weinberg. Traditional religions generally rely on authority, whether the authority is an infallible leader, such as a prophet or a pope or an imam, or a body of sacred writings, a Bible or a Koran. “Perhaps Galileo did not get into trouble solely because he was expressing views contrary to scripture, but because he was doing so independently, rather than as a theologian acting within the Church,” writes Weinberg. “We have our heroes in science, like Einstein, who was certainly the greatest physicist of the past century, but for us they are not infallible prophets. For those who in everyday life respect independence of mind and openness to contradiction, traits that Emerson admired – especially when it came to religion – the example of science casts an unfavorable light on the deference to authority of traditional religion. The world can always use heroes, but could do with fewer prophets.”

According to Weinberg, the weakening of religious belief is obvious in Western Europe, but it may seem odd to talk about this happening in America. “No one who expressed doubt about the existence of God could possibly be elected president of the United States. Nevertheless, though I don't have any scientific evidence on this point, on the basis of personal observation it seems to me that while many Americans fervently believe that religion is a good thing, and get quite angry when it is criticized, even those who feel this way often do not have much in the way of clear religious belief. Occasionally I have found myself talking with friends, who identify themselves with some organized religion, about what they think of life after death, or of the nature of God, or of sin. Most often I've been told that they do not know, and that the important thing is not what you believe, but how you live. I've heard this even from a Catholic priest. I applaud the sentiment, but it's quite a retreat from religious belief.”

Church-State struggle in Europe

I still haven’t been able to email over 127 scientists from the Departments of Zoology, Pharmacology and Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge to invite them to sign Declan's petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning (see last Friday’s blog “‘Creationism’ biologist quits job”). The computers at our local council's Idea Store Whitechapel library were down on Saturday and Sunday – although it was business as usual for laptop users. Yesterday the computers were back, but the internet was so slow come my second hour that I had to quickly abandon the idea of emailing (on 29 January our library imposed on both our membership cards a maximum of 3 hours of PC access per day), and turn instead to research for a blog. It must be a lack of staff: men's toilets on all four floors are generally locked (including for the disabled); and numerous computers have been down for weeks now – in fact, the computer I normally book for 12.00noon, is not available tomorrow until 2.00pm.



Pope Benedict XVI’s four-day trip (12-14 September) to France highlights church-state struggle in Europe. In an article dated 20 September, the International Herald Tribune said: “Benedict's insistence that religion and politics be ‘open’ to each other - coupled with his strong renewal while in Lourdes of the church's opposition to same-sex couples, communion for the divorced and euthanasia - sends a direct message: The church doesn't want European law to be at odds with church teaching.”

France, Germany and Italy are governed by church-friendly center-right coalitions. Last spring, the right made unprecedented challenges to Italy's 30-year-old law legalising abortion. In 2005, Italy passed a law restricting artificial insemination. The IHT quotes John Allen Jr, a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter in the United States, as saying: “Let's not make mistakes, there are laws in Europe that the Vatican would like to change.” The Vatican, Allen added, is concerned about “a progressive secularisation of European institutions” that is “heavily influenced by the French model”.

Unlike any French president in decades, Nicolas Sarkozy sees a more open role for religion in French society. The political commentator Agnes Poirier points out in a recent article in the New Statesman that in December last year, when Sarkozy visited the Pope at the Vatican, the president seized the opportunity to develop a new idea that he called “positive secularism” – an expression that allows religion to play a greater role in public life. “This past week, in Paris, Sarkozy did it again: advocating, in front of the evidently delighted Pope, the benefits of a secularism ‘more open to religions,’” says Poirier.

Critics of the French President say it is not the province of a man elected to uphold the laws of the French republic to talk about God. They say he is violating the basic law of 1905, which establish laïcité, or the institutional Separation of Church and State, a defining characteristic of the French republic. Leading Socialist Party member Julian Dray said that “religion is an individual view in a state that respects religion. The president has to be the guardian of those principles.” Said The Christian Science Monitor: “It's a result of hundreds of years of efforts to remove the influence of the Roman Catholic church from French institutions and reduce its moral authority. French media don't discuss religion. At offices or work, most French believers don't tell colleagues they are going to mass or church. It is seen as a private matter.”

Yet political insiders say Sarkozy is calculating that he will be able to change at least the terms of public expression in France – if not the deeper roots of laïcité, which include the status of churches and religious exercise. “Sarkozy is appealing to conservative Catholics, 70 percent of whom voted for him,” says the Christian Science Monitor. “He is addressing a postsecular generation in the West, where ideas of transcendence, of a spiritual dimension to life, are widely discussed in everything from New Age seminars to the Internet and popular film. He is also speaking to a growing Muslim population in France that is unashamedly willing to wear its faith on its sleeve – or in covering its head.”

While Catholicism remains by far France’s number one religion, Agence France-Presse reports that a survey published last year showed 51 percent of the French consider themselves Catholic, down from 80 percent in the early 1990s. Of those, only 10 percent attend mass regularly, the survey in Le Monde des Religions magazine showed. (According to The Times, fewer than five per cent of the historically Roman Catholic French attend services regularly. Fifteen per cent of the French call themselves atheists - a figure that is double the European average.)

Poirier (she is French) had the following to say in the New Statesman on “positive secularism”:

To speak of positive secularism is to imply that there are two kinds of secularism, one good, the other bad. The supposedly good one, put forward by the Pope and his acolyte Nicolas Sarkozy, is a secularism that would allow politics to mingle with religions. One which would, for instance, turn a blind eye to sects and their actions, one which would accept that people be treated differently according to their faiths, one which would blur the frontiers between the public and private spheres. Sarkozy certainly knows a great deal about the blurring of the two distinct worlds whose separation has been France's trademark for at least two centuries.

Positive secularism would thus emerge to correct secularism as France has always known it, which the French must apparently now think of as negative: too rigorous, too restrictive, too extreme, a secularism that forces assimilation of a heterogeneous population rather than trying to create a tapestry rich with difference.

What the Pope and president pretend not to know is that there is no positive or negative secularism (laïcité in French). Secularism is neutral. It is neither a dogma nor a doctrine. If anything, it's an abstention. Secularism abstains from favouring one religion over another, or favouring atheism over religious belief. It is a political principle that aims at guaranteeing the largest possible coexistence of various freedoms.

From a strictly legal perspective, secularism is extremely positive: it creates a universal freedom to believe or not to believe, and protects individuals from any public interference in their belief, provided that their belief or lack of it does not disturb the peace. As the philosopher Catherine Kintzler wrote in the French weekly Marianne: unlike religion, secularism creates freedom. What religion has ever recognised the rights to believe and not to believe? What religion has promoted the physical emancipation of women? What religion accepts what believers would deem to be blasphemous words?

Instead of speaking of positive secularism, President Sarkozy would have done better to demand in the name of secularism that religions such as Catholicism be less exclusive in their political, intellectual and legal views - or, in other words, more positive.

Poirier points out that according to the political scientist Caroline Fourest, author of a recent book on the Catholic Church, the sympathy between the Pope and the French president shouldn't be surprising. Their “new idea” is a Trojan horse. The term “positive secularism” was actually coined in 2005 by the then Cardinal Ratzinger, whose views have inspired two of President Sarkozy's close aides and speechwriters, the practising Catholic Emmanuelle Mignon and the Dominican friar Philippe Verdin. Poirier: “So what we have witnessed is Nicolas Sarkozy pretending to have an idea that originated at the Vatican, while the Pope, its delighted author, sits back and waits for the president to implement ‘his’ idea. A few days ago, in an interview with the Catholic French daily La Croix, Benedict's private secretary clearly stated that the Holy Father expected the president of France to diligently transform this idea into acts. Machiavelli would be impressed.”

“Is the Roman Catholic Church a beleaguered underdog, fighting for a voice in secular Europe, or a still-mighty power, wielding its influence on European law through friendly center-right governments?” asks the International Herald Tribune. Well, I don’t think Poirier would answer the “beleaguered underdog”.

Creationism a threat to human rights - Council of Europe

Creationism – the belief that God created the earth and man in six days less than 10,000 years ago – is enjoying a resurgence of support in the UK, says a BBC News website item on 15 September, "Who are the British creationists?" Creationism is widely believed in the United States, where, according to the BBC, an estimated 47% of Americans reject outright Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, accepting instead the Bible's account of the creation of the universe - as laid out in the first chapter of Genesis.

Leading British scientist and author Richard Dawkins has warned of creationist "brainwashing" in the UK – spurred on by an unwillingness of the authorities to offend religious sensibilities. His creationist adversaries say their ideas are beginning to gain wider acceptance within these shores as dissatisfaction grows with "materialist" evolutionary explanations of how life began.

A 2006 survey for the BBC found that more than a fifth of those polled were convinced by the creationist argument. Less than half - 48% - chose evolution. Said Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society: "There is no question that creationism is growing. It is increasingly well funded, and well organised." The society says Britain is beginning to follow the lead of the US where supporters and opponents of creationism have joined battle – in the school classroom.

An article in The Independent of 12 September "The Big Question: Why is creationism on the rise, and does it have a place in education?" reports that, according to a More 4 report earlier this year, there are at least 40 schools in Britain that teach creationism in science lessons. Of those schools, five were part of the state system, but defied government guidelines. The report was the result of enquiries to just 50 faith schools, of almost 7,000 in the country (over 99 per cent of which are Christian) – so there may be many more schools doing the same thing.

The Government's Guidance on Creationism and Intelligent Design – to which the Royal Society's former director of education Rev Michael Reiss (see previous blog) contributed – says that creationism and intelligent design should not be taught as part of the national curriculum; but, crucially, it adds that "there is a real difference between teaching 'x' and teaching about 'x'", and argues that questions about creationism "could provide the opportunity to explain why they are not scientific theories".

"Science lessons are not the appropriate place to discuss creationism, which is a world view in total denial of any form of scientific evidence," said John Fry, a physicist at the University of Liverpool. He said challenging evolution scientifically was appropriate in school science classes. But he added: "Creationism doesn't challenge science, it denies it." His views echo those of Dawkins, who said science was being threatened in classrooms because the Government accepts that theories including "intelligent design" (described as creationism's trojan horse) can be discussed "in the context of being one of a range of views on evolution".

Why is creationism an issue? It is partly to do with an increasingly organised evangelical Christian movement and a growing number of Muslims in the UK who subscribe to creationism, explains The Independent. "There is an insidious and growing problem," says the geneticist Steve Jones. "It's a step back from rationality. They (the creationists) don't have a problem with science, they have a problem with argument. And irrationality is a very infectious disease."

On 21 June 2006, the world's leading scientists urged schools to stop denying the facts of evolution amid controversy over the teaching of creationism (Smithers, Guardian, 22/6/06). The national science academies of 67 countries – including the UK’s Royal Society – issued a joint statement warning that scientific evidence about the origins of life was being "concealed, denied or confused". It points out that "within science courses taught in certain public systems of education, scientific evidence, data, and testable theories about the origins and evolution of life on Earth are being concealed, denied, or confused with theories not testable by science". It went on: "We urge decision makers, teachers, and parents to educate all children about the methods and discoveries of science and foster an understanding of the science of nature. Knowledge of the natural world in which they live empowers people to meet human needs and protect the planet."

A year later, on 4 October 2007, the Council of Europe (CoE) urged governments to "firmly oppose" the teaching of creationism as a scientific discipline (Lipsett, Guardian, 5/10/07). Members of the CoE's Parliamentary Assembly voted 48 to 25 against giving creationism the same status in education as the theory of evolution. "If we are not careful, creationism could become a threat to human rights," they said. "The prime target of present-day creationists, most of whom are Christian or Muslim, is education. Creationists are bent on ensuring that their ideas are included in the school science syllabus. Creationism cannot, however, lay claim to being a scientific discipline." The parliamentarians said there was "a real risk of a serious confusion" being introduced into children's minds between belief and science. They added: "The theory of evolution has nothing to do with divine revelation but is built on facts. Intelligent design, presented in a more subtle way, seeks to portray its approach as scientific, and therein lies the danger." They said creationism was affecting "quite a few" CoE member states, including Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the UK.

As I explained in the blog of 16 September "Royal Society's stance on religion under fire", our campaign in support of human embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning will have a section called "Science and Religion" which will carry pieces about the spread of faith schools; the growing influence of bodies such as the Templeton Foundation; and the prospect of creationism being taught in science classrooms. Because of the addition of this section to the website, I have decided that my model will not be Make Trade Fair; instead, the campaign will initially be loosely based on Greenpeace UK (see, for example, their section on "Climate change"); and eventually, as we get more material and cooperation from scientists and groups, on Greenpeace International (see, for example, their section on "Protect ancient forests").

This is not wishful thinking on my part: the NAC website, which was suspended on 8 March, was loosely based on Greenpeace International – and, in fact, by the time we were made homeless I had uploaded hundreds of articles and photographs on the Vatican and the Christian right and their tireless work to insinuate their values into every aspect of public policy at every level of government. Oh, we also featured books, and had three original campaigns – one of which was titled "The Vatican and the achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals", incorporating as a Take Action an email to Pope Benedict XVI urging him to stop obstructing family planning. NAC was also interested in gay rights, but we have decided that NAC is exclusively about the public being exposed to the scientific perspective – and this presupposes the separation of church and state and public policies that are based on secular principles, not religious doctrine. We actually stated the following in our mission page: "Science transcends borders and provides the most reliable basis for finding solutions to our problems. NAC maintains that secular, not religious, principles must govern public policy."

'Creationism' biologist quits job

Yesterday I wasn't able to do any emailing to scientists and academics to invite them to sign Declan's petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning. I had already added the names and email addresses of over 127 scientists from the Departments of Zoology, Pharmacology and Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge to Declan's database when the internet went down for over two hours in our local council's Idea Store Whitechapel library. No internet for two hours is quite a hit because on 29 January the library imposed on both our membership cards a maximum of 3 hours of PC access per day, despite that for several months previous we were given "additional time" subject to computer availability in accordance with the council's "Idea Stores PC Usage Policy". Actually, Declan has written quite a number of times to the Leader of Tower Hamlets Council; see, for example, blog of 6 August “Library blocks access to Google Mail account”.

On the matter of my arrest by City of London police on the night of 10 September (because I refused to be 'moved on' as result of having nowhere else to sleep), we are sleeping, since 11 September, back in the place I mentioned in the blog “Human Embryonic Stem Cells Reduce Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms”: tucked away, about twenty paces from the side entrance of a building, down some twelve steps. (On 4 September, we returned to the porch we had been sleeping in since 3 November 2006 to find an unlocked trellis gate; on 5 September the gate was locked. On the 7th we found the place we are now; but then on the night of the 9th, some guys decided to hold a fifteen-minute party almost beside us – despite the road being described on the internet as a "quiet thoroughfare" – so the next night we went back to where we slept on the night of the 5th, and I got arrested.)



The UK's The Royal Society's embattled director of education resigned on Tuesday, days after causing uproar among scientists with a speech he gave to the British Association for the Advancement of Science on 11 September, in which he “suggested that creationism be discussed in UK science classes”, says New Scientist. Reiss, a biologist and ordained Church of England minister, agreed to step down from his position with the national academy of science after its officers decided that his comments “had damaged its reputation”, according to The Times.

On 13 September, Nobel Laureates Sir Richard Roberts, Sir Harry Kroto (NAC Honorary Associate) and Sir John Sulston wrote to the society's president, Lord Rees of Ludlow, asking that Reiss step down, or be asked to step down, as soon as possible. Roberts wrote on behalf of himself and Kroto and Sulston:

We are greatly concerned by the remarks recently made by Professor Michael Reiss, who is currently Director of Education at the RS. We appreciate that there will be a clarification, but the fact that the comments were made in the first place by an official representative of the premier scientific society in the UK, if not the world, is most disturbing.

We gather Professor Reiss is a clergyman, which in itself is very worrisome. Who on earth thought that he would be an appropriate Director of Education, who could be expected to answer questions about the differences between science and religion in a scientific, reasoned way? Creationism, Intelligent Design etc. have no place in a science classroom discussion and should not be legitimized as acceptable alternative theories to evolution by anyone who claims to be a scientist. Ill-conceived opinions by a representative of the RS will only encourage those teachers, both scientists and otherwise, with a creationist agenda to speak about it to their students in the classroom.

We would urge that Professor Reiss step down, or be asked to step down, as soon as possible.

Following Reiss’s resignation, Kroto told New Scientist that it was unwise of the Royal Society to appoint him in the first place, and very wise of him to step down now. "On the face it, what Reiss actually said at the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting seems fairly reasonable - if uttered by a freethinker for whom evidence-based philosophy is pre-eminent," Kroto said. "Unfortunately the key point is that it was said by the director of the Royal Society education programme who is, apparently, deeply religious. It thus gives a green light to those who wish to foist their own personal religious interpretation of the origin of the universe and its inhabitants on children in the science classroom."

The The Royal Society stood by the scientist initially, insisting that he had not departed from its official policy and that his remarks had been misinterpreted. Many senior figures, however, felt that Reiss had been naive, at best, to make statements that could easily be seen to back teaching creationism as if it were science, and should not have done so while speaking in his Royal Society role. Said Chris Higgins, Vice-Chancellor of Durham University (and a signatory of Declan's petition): "While I have no doubt that Michael Reiss's comments have been misinterpreted by parts of the media, I think that the fact that he has generously stood down allows the Royal Society to clarify the robust position on this issue. There should be no room for doubt that creationism is completely unsupportable as a theory."

Phil Willis MP, the chairman of the Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee, told The Times: “It is appropriate for the Royal Society to have dealt with this problem swiftly and effectively, rather than provoking continued debate. I hope the society will now stop burying its head and start taking on creationism."

Commenting in the Guardian yesterday, Professor of philosophy AC Grayling, one of Britain's foremost public intellectuals, wrote: "Take the connections one might make between the resignation of Michael Reiss from the Royal Society because of his views about creationism in schools, and the opening this week of the first Hindu faith-based school. One of the Hindu creation myths has Vishnu asleep in the coils of a cobra, itself afloat on a dark ocean whose waves lap the shores of nothingness … Should chemistry and biology teachers devote part of their lessons to explaining why the story of Vishnu and his cobra is not chemistry or biology? In effect this is what - to put the best construction on it - Professor Reiss was trying to suggest."

Royal Society's stance on religion under fire

Yesterday morning was the first time since 3 November 2006 that the Catholic Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre didn’t hand each homeless a grated-cheese sandwich (“for later”) with their cereal breakfast – the only meal they provide. My only food M-F after 9.00am is two of these sandwiches – Declan makes a two-hour round-trip walk to the Catholic Manna Centre to be guaranteed a bite to eat for lunch – so I was pretty hungry for the day. This morning at the Dellow, as I was gone for my take-away coffee, Declan got manhandled by a homeless: “Ey, mate; I am talking to you,” he says as he repeatedly hits Declan in the arm.

In the last blog “Human Embryonic Stem Cell Secretions Minimize Tissue Injury After Heart Attack” I said that I had compiled the email addresses of medical practitioners from Israel's Hadassah Medical Organization to send Declan’s email to yesterday. Well, they were sent (127 in total, plus 17 Nobel laureates) but I got zero out-of-office autoreplies, and unsurprisingly no signatures. Normally, the majority of emails that I send to scientists and academics inviting them to sign Declan's petition to the UN on research cloning of embryos and stem cells go to spam boxes (or to cyberspace, see blog of 4 September "Obama: Yes to stem cells, funding") – like on Friday for example: I emailed 77 scientists, got only two autoreplies, and not one single signatory despite that 31 went to the Department of Chemistry at Yale University, from which we have two signatories, one of them a Nobel laureate.

No signatories from Hadassah University Hospital is all the more baffling because in the blog of 10 September "Human Embryonic Stem Cells Reduce Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms" I feature a significant discovery made by scientists from Hadassah Hospital; one of the lead investigators involved in this discovery is a signatory of the petition; and in his email Declan writes that our campaign in support of human embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning will feature the discovery as an application of hESC technology (we are trying to raise £450 to buy a laptop so I can build a website, see blog of 26 August “Fighting for the Right to Clone”).

Faith or fact ... Michelangelo's The Creation Of Adam

Two Nobel prize winners – Sir Harry Kroto (NAC Honorary Associate) and Sir Richard Roberts – have demanded that the Royal Society “sack” its education director, Professor Michael Reiss, writes The Observer science editor Robin McKie in an article of 14 September titled “Creationism call divides Royal Society”. The call, backed by other senior Royal Society fellows, follows Reiss's controversial claim last week that creationism be taught in schools' science classes.

Reiss, an ordained Church of England minister, has since alleged he was misquoted. Nevertheless, several Royal Society fellows say his religious views make him an inappropriate choice for the post. “I warned the president of the Royal Society that his [Reiss] was a dangerous appointment a year ago. I did not realise just how dangerous it would turn out to be,” said Kroto, a Royal Society fellow, and winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Roberts, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work on gene-splicing, was equally angry: “I think it is outrageous that this man is suggesting that creationism should be discussed in a science classroom. It is an incredible idea and I am drafting a letter to other Nobel laureates – which would be sent to the Royal Society – to ask that Reiss be made to stand down.”

Zoologist Richard Dawkins, a Royal Society fellow, said: “A clergyman in charge of education for the country's leading scientific organisation – it's a Monty Python sketch.” McKie reports that a spokesman for the Royal Society rejected the principle that it was inappropriate for a clergyman to hold a senior post at the organisation. “Michael Reiss's views are completely in keeping with those of the Royal Society,” he said.

The row over Reiss's remarks is the second recent controversy over the society's stance on religion. Fellows, including cancer expert and Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse (one of the first signatories of Declan’s petition), complained about the financial links that had been established between the society and the Templeton Foundation, a conservative US organisation that seeks to establish links between science and religion. The latter funded a lecture course at the society.

Many fellows fear the society, the world's oldest and most prestigious scientific organisation, is failing to take a sufficiently robust stance against the spread of fundamental religions which oppose scientific teachings about the origins of the Earth and humanity. “The thing the Royal Society does not appreciate is the true nature of the forces arrayed against it and the Enlightenment for which the Royal Society should be the last champion,” Kroto said.

In an article in Observer Comment titled “Our scientists must nail the creationists”, McKie explains that scientists such as Kroto, Roberts and Dawkins look with horror upon the spread of faith schools; the growing influence of bodies such as the Templeton Foundation, a conservative US organisation which constantly seeks to establish links between science and religion; and the prospect of creationism being taught in Britain's science classrooms. They expect the Royal Society to take a tough stand on these issues. McKie comments:

Many of their fears are based on their American experiences, it should be noted. Kroto and Roberts now work there while Dawkins is a frequent visitor on the US lecture circuit. And what they see in America unnerves them: school science teachers who firmly believe the world and humanity are the 6,000-year-old handiwork of God and who cannot accept what DNA tells us about our close relationships with the animal world, what isotope research reveals about the deep antiquity of our planet, what astronomical studies tell us about the size and age of the universe; and what fossils reveal about our own species' multimillion-year lineage. The prospect of such ignorance spreading to Britain quite rightly appals them.

Britain is still a broadly secular society which guarantees freedoms not just to atheists but to all religions, no matter how few its adherents, McKie notes. “If we follow the example of America then all are threatened by the rise of a powerful Christian right.” The Chistian right of course is particularly relevant for embryonic stem cell research (see here for The Boston Globe “GOP wants to close stem cell lab doors”). Accordingly, our campaign will have a section called “Science and Religion” which will carry pieces about the spread of faith schools; the growing influence of bodies such as the Templeton Foundation; and the prospect of creationism being taught in science classrooms.

Human Embryonic Stem Cell Secretions Minimize Tissue Injury After Heart Attack

Although the vast majority of emails I send to scientists and academics inviting them to sign Declan's petition to the UN on research cloning of embryos and stem cells are still going to spam boxes (or to cyberspace, see blog of 4 September "Obama: Yes to stem cells, funding"), I have compiled the email addresses of medical practitioners from Israel's Hadassah Medical Organization (see blog of 10 September "Human Embryonic Stem Cells Reduce Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms") to send Declan’s email to tomorrow.

On Friday, I emailed 77 scientists and got only two out-of-office autoreplies – we didn't get one single signatory despite that 31 went to the Department of Chemistry at Yale University, from which we have two signatories, one of them a Nobel laureate. Perhaps to say that I will be emailing tomorrow is wishful thinking though since on Thursday I was arrested at 12.30am after I refused to be 'moved on' as result of having nowhere else to sleep (see blog here); and on Friday Declan received an email from the City of London police informing him that the police operation under which I was arrested "is likely to continue for the foreseeable future" (see previous blog).

Scientists of the Institute of Molecular Cell Biology in Singapore

Scientists from the Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) and
Bioprocessing Technology Institute (BTI), under Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), and the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands have jointly developed a novel way to improve survival and recovery rate after a heart attack (ScienceDaily, 11/9). This method, the first non-cell based therapeutic application of human embryonic stem cells, entails using secretions from stem cells. Said Dr Lim Sai Kiang, IMB, who leads the group from Singapore: "Using secretion instead of cells allows us to circumvent many highly intractable problems such as tumour formation, immune compatibility, cell viability, delivery, costs and timeliness." Unlike the more common approach of directly administering stem cells for therapy, this new method carries negligible risk of tumour formation or rejection by the body.

The scientists discovered that this approach could minimise heart injury after a heart attack. This is particularly important as the heart has a limited ability to regenerate. The preclinical work was carried out on pigs, the closest animal approximation to the human heart in terms of size, structure and function, and the findings were published in science journal Stem Cell Research. The research findings are especially important as they show that the new method can overcome the unwanted side effects of reperfusion, the best therapeutic option currently available to heart attack patients.

Reperfusion is the restoration of blood flow to the oxygen-deprived heart after a heart attack, ScienceDaily explains. Heart attack or Myocardial Infarction (MI) occurs when blood flow to part of the heart is blocked and the heart muscle is deprived of oxygen. If allowed to persist, prolonged oxygen deprivation causes cell death and irreversible loss of heart function, and inevitably progresses to heart failure and death. To minimise heart muscle damage and preserve the pumping action of the heart after MI occurs, early reperfusion by standard medical treatments such as angioplasty (commonly known as "ballooning") or bypass surgery is carried out in the hospital. Despite this, most MI patients suffer additional irreversible cardiac muscle cell loss, ironically as a result of these treatments a condition known as reperfusion injury.

The researchers found that the administration of secretion from stem cells minimised heart injury by enhancing reperfusion therapy and reducing tissue death by another 60%. Heart function was also markedly improved. By demonstrating the efficacy of this secretion in an experimental pig model, currently the best approximation to a human heart attack patient undergoing reperfusion therapy, the researchers have addressed the longstanding problem of reperfusion injury in the most clinically relevant experimental setting.

Said the advisor to the team of researchers in Singapore, Professor Lee Chuen-Neng, who is the Head of the Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery at the National University Hospital, Singapore and Chair of Surgery at the National University Health System, Singapore: "This is a major discovery of clinical significance. There are some problems and issues associated with the use of stem cells to treat heart attacks and blocked arteries in the heart, and with this new method, many of these issues are removed. Potentially, we may have an important way to treat heart attacks. More tests will need to be done and human trials planned." This discovery is all the more significant because the therapy for reperfusion injury remains an unmet need despite three decades of huge resource investment, thousands of research papers and hundreds of experimental protocols, ScienceDaily adds. This preclinical study had come amidst an international call to improve the translation of preclinical experimental therapies for reperfusion injury to clinical applications.

In a recent article titled “America misses yet another boat”, the American Chronicle points out that America is falling behind in the global race for new patents and pharmaceuticals based on stem cell research. “While the debate centers on whether or not, as held by the fundamentalists, these fertilized embryos are ‘unique human lives with inherent dignity and matchless value’, the rest of the world quite wittingly is taking advantage of the sleeping giant America, reveling in the Bush vetoes and lack of funding,” says the American Chronicle. Countries that have allowed embryonic stem cell research are Australia, Brazil, Spain, Canada, Sweden, Belgium and the United Kingdom. Three other countries worthy of note are Switzerland, South Korea and Singapore. Switzerland solved the political problem by putting the matter before voters in the form of a national referendum. South Korea has made strong advancements in stem cell research, due to very flexible policies regarding research. “Neck-in-neck in the global race for stem cell research, in fact ahead in many scientists´ eyes, is small, rich and enlightened Singapore,” says the American Chronicle. “The list of leading scientists who are happy to work in this thriving environment goes on and on, many from Europe and Japan as well.”

Letter from the City of London Police

Yesterday Declan received an email letter from Superintendent Lorraine Cussen in reply to his email to her on Thursday (see previous blog) – following my arrest at 12.30am by four City of London police officers for a breach of the peace because I refused to be 'moved on' as result of having nowhere else to sleep. The background is quite simple: on 4 September we returned to the porch we have been sleeping in since 3 November 2006 to find an unlocked trellis gate; and the following night the gate was locked.

As I stated in the blog of 10 September "Human Embryonic Stem Cells Reduce Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms", on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday we slept in an out-of-the-way place; but after some guys decided to hold a fifteen-minute party almost beside us – our road is described on the internet as "a quiet thoroughfare" – we went back to the place we slept in on Friday night. It was also an out-of-the-way place, but that didn't stop me from landing in a police van. (We are now back sleeping in the "quiet thoroughfare".)

This is the second time Cussen has emailed Declan: the first time, on 10 June, was in reply to an email Declan sent on 9 June to City of London Police Commissioner Michael Bowron (see here) complaining that on 2 and 9 June we were threatened by City of London police officers with arrest, under Operation Poncho, if we did not move out of the porch to beyond city boundaries. On the night of my arrest, we were issued two tickets citing Operation Poncho, hence Declan's email to Cussen, the supervisory police officer who is overseeing Operation Poncho within the City of London Police.

Cussen says in her email (presented below) that "this programme is likely to continue for the foreseeable future", which I take to mean that I could be arrested again, unless of course I prefer to walk for the night carrying all my belongings – as I explained to the four officers that arrested me, Declan and I had spent over eight hours looking for an alternative place to bed down. She seems to justify arrest as an enforcement measure to drive rough sleepers off the streets. However, according to the co-author of a report, published last year, which examines the impact of enforcement on ‘street users’ in England, arrests as a tactic is of “questionable legality”, particularly in a place such as London where there is no ‘freely available’ accommodation. Accordingly, I am prepared to have Operation Poncho tested: I don't believe that in a court of law it would stand up to scrutiny under the Human Rights Act 1998. (An article in the April 2007 issue of the Police Review magazine, titled “Rough Sleepers”, points out that "people have the right to sleep in the streets if they want to", and that in this respect police "need to comply with the Human Rights Act 1998".)

This month’s issue of The Pavement, a free magazine for London’s homeless, states that local authorities justify ‘hot washing’ (wetting the streets to discourage rough sleeping) as a deterrent that may encourage rough sleepers to “come inside”. Well, I would say to a judge that Declan and I are working quite hard to “come inside”: by running a petition to the UN on research cloning of embryos and stem cells which has already been signed by 530 scientists and academics, including 24 Nobel laureates; and by seeking to raise £450 so that I can buy a laptop and build within two weeks a 20 or so page website for an international campaign in support of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning.

I would further explain to a judge that we cannot look for accommodation or be referred to a hostel for homeless people because we would have to 'sign on' for benefits, and consequently Declan would have to withdraw his application to the European Court of Human Rights – the Department of Work and Pensions terminated our benefits on 27 September 2006 because Declan did not ‘sign on’ two days before he was due to do so on 29 September (see blog of 8 September 2007 “Application to the European Court of Human Rights”.) And even if we were offered beds that don’t require benefits, we would still be forced to turn them down given the amount of harassment and intimidation that Declan in particular is normally subjected to by other homeless: see, for example, blog of 18 June “Declan robbed in the Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre”; or blog of 19 June “Declan assaulted in the Manna Centre”; or blog of 16 May “More racially aggravated harassment in the Dellow Centre”; or blog of 10 April “Washing in the street”. Oh, and on 18 June 2007 we were barred from the Methodist Church Whitechapel Mission by the minister's wife due to concerns about our safety, after I was assaulted in an unprovoked attack by a homeless woman in the canteen (see here).

Comedian Sabina Guzzanti 'insulted Pope'

Remarkably, my lot is almost a walk in the park if you consider the case of Italian comedienne, Sabrina Guzzanti, who is facing a prison term of up to five years for saying that Pope Benedict XVI would go to Hell and be tormented by homosexual demons (Owen, Times, 12/9). She was addressing a Rome rally in July that was called in part to protest against alleged interference by the Vatican and the Catholic Church in Italian affairs. The joke may have gone done well with her crowd on the Piazza Navona in Rome, the Times says, but not with Italian prosecutors. She is facing prosecution for “offending the honour of the sacred and inviolable person” of Benedict XVI. Prosecution requires authorisation from the Ministry of Justice, for which Giovanni Ferrara, the Rome prosecutor, has applied. The Times: “The incident has strong political overtones as Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been at pains to court the Vatican – and the Catholic vote – since returning to power for the third time in May. Last weekend he accompanied Benedict to Cagliari in Sardinia and attended mass there.”

Meanwhile, Michael Reiss, director of education at the Royal Society, says excluding discussion of creationism and intelligent design from science lessons could put some children off science completely (Randerson, Guardian, 11/9). He said that around one in 10 children comes from a family with creationist beliefs. Reiss, who is an ordained Church of England minister, agreed that creationism and intelligent design are not scientific theories, but he said that did not automatically exclude them from science lessons. "Just because something lacks scientific support doesn't seem to me a sufficient reason to omit it from the science lesson … there is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts they have – hardly a revolutionary idea in science teaching – and doing one's best to have a genuine discussion." Well, if there is much to be said for allowing students with creationist beliefs “to raise any doubts they have”, surely the same should be applied to non-religious people. Like Sabrina Guzzanti. Or like us, for that matter.

This is the email Declan received yesterday from Cussen:

Subject: Operation Poncho II

Declan

I am sad to hear that your wife was arrested last night. As you are aware from my previous communication with you, the police are continuing to work in partnership with the City of London Corportion to clean areas of the City and this programme is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

If you wish to make a complaint about the incident then please click on the following link which will provide you with information on how to proceed http://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/CityPolice/Contact/MakeAComplaint/

Yours sincerely
Lorraine Cussen
Superintendent
City of London Police

And this is the subsequent email Declan sent yesterday to the Registrar of the European Court, Erik Fribergh, with Cussen’s email attached:

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

Dear Mr Fribergh

I refer to my email letter and attachments to you yesterday and attach copy of an email to me of even date from Superintendent Lorraine Cussen of Snow Hill police station establishing the arrest of my wife the night before last (for a breach of the peace because she refused to be 'moved on' as result of having nowhere else to sleep).

Specifically with regard to the reference to Article 34 of the European Convention of Human Rights (Right of individual petition), I again respectfully request that the Court take this matter up with the respondent Government. I further request under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court that the Chamber or its President decide to give priority to my application of 8 September 2007.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

I am arrested for ‘breach of the peace’

At about 12.30am this morning I was put in the back of a police van (LMO5 HZN). I had been read my rights, searched, and told I was being arrested for breaching the peace because I refused to move out of our sleeping pitch for want of anywhere else to sleep. In a pre-arranged move, Declan made himself untouchable by moving. I, on the other hand, was driven to Snow Hill Police Station, left in the van for some fifteen minutes, and then released because female police officer 827B deemed that I wasn't breaching the peace any more! When I asked to be given something in writing about my arrest, I was told to come back in the morning with my lawyer. So I found myself at 1.00am with an incident number (10411), without a clue where I was, and on my own. I'm sure police officers 827B, 361B and 596B - there was a fourth officer but I didn't get his number - had a great laugh at my expense.

As I explained in yesterday's blog "Human Embryonic Stem Cells Reduce Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms", we had been sleeping in this place since Sunday (last Thursday night we returned to the porch we had been sleeping in since 3 November 2006 to find an unlocked trellis gate installed; the next night the gate was locked). It is really just an open space behind some steps but nonetheless, as soon as we are bedded down last night, a security guard comes out of nowhere and tells us to leave immediately. Shortly after this we hear a police siren, and within a couple of minutes we are surrounded by four City of London police officers. The surroundings are owned by the City of London Corporation (the municipal government for the City of London), they haven't given us permission to sleep there, and if we don't want to be arrested we have to move on, we are told.

So we repeat ourselves again and again: we are dead tired of walking trying to find a place; we are in nobody's way; we get up at 4.30am; we don't want to walk the street all night; and Declan's case regarding the termination of our benefits is before the European Court of Human Rights. None of it cuts any ice, however, and we have to leave we are told because the City of London Corporation doesn't want us there. Moreover, when I am released from the van outside Snow Hill Police Station, I am told the security guard can manhandle me and my belongings, and if corporation property gets damaged in the process I will be charged with criminal damage. It gets better: because Declan was told that I might not be released at all but brought before the court as soon as possible this morning, we didn't agree on an early meet up time when we were split up. So I didn't get any sleep at all and walked the streets until 4.00am. I then went to Liverpool Street train station and waited in our usual spot for Declan to arrive at 6.00am. What a night!

A report published last year examines the impact of enforcement on 'street users' in England. The study was carried out by Sarah Johnsen and Suzanne Fitzpatrick of the University of York and published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Arrests as an enforcement tactic against rough sleepers was not used in any of the case studies areas in London. One reason, Johnsen explains to The Pavement, a free monthly magazine for London's homeless, is because "it would be of questionable legality in a lot of places, as people can only be arrested if they have refused the offer of 'freely available' accommodation. In somewhere like London, you cannot say 'here's a bed space available to you right now' because it just doesn't happen that way. There's a real process people have to go through in order to get into a hostel, red tape that has to be negotiated, hoops they have to jump through … It doesn't happen instantly."

So this afternoon Declan wrote to Superintendent Lorraine Cussen of Snow Hill Police Station, a copy of which he sent to City of London Police Commissioner Michael Bowron and to European Court Registrar Erik Fribergh. This is Declan's cover e-letter to Fribergh pursuant to Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Article 34 establishes a duty on Convention states not to subject applicants to any improper indirect acts or contacts designed to dissuade or discourage applicants from pursuing a Convention remedy):

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. (As the Court has been made aware, my wife and I are of no fixed abode and have been sleeping rough in the City of London since 3 November 2006.)

Please find enclosed a copy of my email letter and attachment of today's date to Superintendent Lorraine Cussen of Snow Hill Police Station following the arrest of my wife last night for a breach of the peace because she refused to be 'moved on' as result of having nowhere else to sleep.

In my email letter of 5 September, I submitted that the attempts by the City of London Police to move my wife and me out from the porch we sleep in at night to beyond the City boundaries constitute a violation of my effective right of application as established under Article 34. I again respectfully request that the Court take this matter up with the respondent Government. I further request that the Chamber or its President decide to give priority to my application of 8 September 2007.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

And this is the email letter to Superintendent Cussen:

Subject: Operation Poncho II

Dear Superintendent Cussen

I refer to the attached copy of your email of reply to me of 10 June, wherein you confirm that you are the supervisory police officer who is overseeing Operation Poncho II within the City of London Police. As you were made aware by my email letter of 9 June to City of London Police Commissioner Mike Bowron, my wife and I are of no fixed abode and have been sleeping rough in the City of London since 3 November 2006. (We slept in the same porch until 4 September 2008 when a trellis gate was installed.)

I wish to confirm that at 12.30am last night my wife was arrested under Operation Poncho II for a breach of the peace by four of your police officers because she refused to be 'moved on' as result of having nowhere else to sleep (incident no. 10411). She was subsequently brought to Snow Hill Police Station in a police van, from which she was released at 1.00am because she "was not breaching the peace anymore". Moreover, when she asked to be issued with written confirmation of her arrest, she was told to come back in the morning with her lawyer.

I reconfirm that my case in respect of the ceasing of entitlement to allowances is before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and that I am currently waiting for notification from the Court as to whether my application of 8 September 2007 has been declared inadmissible or the case communicated to the Government. On 4 July, I submitted my second request for priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court, stating:

Since 9 May 2008, the applicant and his wife have been visited on a number of occasions by the City of London Police in the middle of the night, to be ordered to immediately move out of the porch they sleep in to beyond city boundaries or be arrested: on 9 and 17 May, they were told by police officers that the City of London was being "cleaned" of rough sleepers (see copy of letter and enclosures to Prime Minister Gordon Brown of 19 May in Supporting Documents, pp 10-15); on 2 and 9 June they were told by police officers that, under the City of London Police's Operation Poncho II, the City of London's cleansing service had to wash and disinfect the porch floor with immediate effect (see copy of email letter and attachments to Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis Sir Ian Blair of 11 June in Supporting Documents, pp 7-9).

In your email of 10 June, you advise me to find accommodation with the help of Broadway, a homeless charity, and that "the cleansing will continue for the foreseeable future". In respect of finding accommodation, I beg to again point out that on 22 November 2006 the Dellow Day Centre recorded on my wife's registration form that St Mungo's, London's largest homelessness organisation, had informed the centre that neither she nor I could be referred to a hostel "due to not being on any benefits". Most recently, on the night of 24 June, we were visited by three street outreach workers from Broadway to be asked if we would go on benefits, which I declined because I would have to withdraw my application to the Court. (As submitted in my initial application to the European Court, the Department for Work and Pensions ceased our allowance entitlement on 27 September 2006 because I did not 'sign on' two days before I was due to do so on 29 September.)

I should perhaps mention here that as soon as my wife and I raise £450 we will buy a laptop to build within two weeks a 20 or so page website for an international campaign in support of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning. My petition to the United Nations, titled "Consideration at the United Nations of a Declaration on Human Cloning for Therapeutic Reasons", has since 22 October 2007 been signed by 530 distinguished scientists and academics, including 24 Nobel Prize winners.

Kindly note that a copy of this letter and its attachment will be submitted this afternoon to the European Court in further reference to Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 34 establishes a duty on Convention states not to subject applicants to any improper indirect acts or contacts designed to dissuade or discourage applicants from pursuing a Convention remedy.

Please would you acknowledge receipt.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey

cc City of London Police Commissioner Michael Bowron

Human Embryonic Stem Cells Reduce Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms

Declan and I have been sleeping in the same place since Sunday (on Thursday night we returned to the porch we have been sleeping in since 3 November 2006 to find an unlocked trellis gate; and on Friday night the gate was locked). We are tucked away, about twenty paces from the side entrance of a public building, down some twelve steps. It is actually quite cold and windy so probably not suitable for the winter. There is not a single pub, bar or club in the area; nonetheless, last night at about 11.30pm three or four guys came out of a car, congregated under the roof of the paved enclosure and lifted the place for fifteen minutes; then they left.

They were so out of context we take it as a warning. Declan jokes that perhaps we should make a stand and sleep outside Wood Street police station (the nearest station) – see blog "A trellis gate is installed in the porch" for Declan's latest letter to the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights citing violation of Article 34 of the European Convention of Human Rights and requesting that the Court take this matter up with the Government (Article 34 establishes a duty on Convention states not to subject applicants to any improper indirect acts or contacts designed to dissuade or discourage applicants from pursuing a Convention remedy).

The majority of emails that I send to scientists and academics inviting them to sign Declan's petition to the UN on research cloning of embryos and stem cells are still going to spam boxes (or to cyberspace, see blog of 4 September "Obama: Yes to stem cells, funding"): yesterday I sent 127 and got three out-of-office-autoreplies; we also only got one signature.

hESCs reduce multiple sclerosis symptoms

Israel's Hadassah University Hospital and Hadasit, the technology transfer company of Hadassah Medical Organisation, announced Monday that scientists at Hadassah University Hospital have discovered a new application for human embryonic stem cells. They have demonstrated for the first time that transplanted neural cells derived from human embryonic stem cells can reduce the clinical symptoms in animals with a form of multiple sclerosis. The findings of the study are published in an article titled "Neuroprotective Effect of Transplanted Human Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Neural Precursors in an Animal Model of Multiple Sclerosis" in the Scientific Journal of PLoS One (see the article here).

The data presented in the report are the result of a long-term collaboration between Benjamin Reubinoff, director of the Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research Center at Hadassah Hospital (and a signatory of Declan’s petition), and Tamir Ben Hur, director of the Neurological Department at Hadassah Hospital. Michal Aharonowiz and Ofira Einstein both from Hadassah, as well as Hans Lassmann from the University of Vienna also contributed. "Human embryonic stem cell-derived neural precursors were transplanted into the brains of mice with an experimental form of MS. The grafted human cells integrated in the mice brains and migrated towards the sites of inflammation. They suppressed the inflammatory process in the brain, and consequently protected the animals from demyelination and nerve cell extension (axonal) injury, which are the pathological hallmarks of MS," said Reubinoff.

MS is the most common disabling neurological condition affecting young adults. MS is caused by an inflammatory reaction of the patient's own immune system against the myelin sheath that envelops the nerve processes. The destruction of myelin leads to the degeneration and loss of nerve cells and permanent neurological disabilities. MS affects 2.5 million people worldwide.

"We believe that the encouraging therapeutic effects in the rodent model of MS justify moving ahead to clinical studies. We also anticipate that the anti-inflammatory effect demonstrated in the pre-clinical study may be combined in the future with the use of other human embryonic stem cell derived neural cells to repair the myelin in the brain," said Reubinoff.

The website of Hadassah Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research Center states the following in respect of the potential of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research for transplantation therapy:

Given their unique properties, hESCs are expected to have far-reaching applications in the study of early human development, the development of new drugs, and regenerative medicine. Human ES cell lines can serve as a renewable unlimited donor source of specialized human cells for transplantation therapy.

Human ES cell-derived mature cells could potentially be transplanted to restore tissue function in a wide range of human diseases that are associated with loss of cell function.

These conditions may include neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, Multiple Sclerosis, cerebrovascular accidents, spinal cord injuries, as well as heart failure, diabetes mellitus, and others. The number of patients that potentially could benefit from transplantation of hESCs is overwhelming. For example there are over 16 million patients worldwide with neurodegenerative disorders, and over 120 million diabetic patients. Moreover, transplantation of genetically modified hESCs may allow the transfer and expression of foreign genes in target organs in the course of gene therapy.

While the promise of hESCs for cell and gene therapy is remarkable, further extensive research and development are required to exploit their potential for regenerative medicine.

An article dated 2 October 2007 in the Jewish Advocate, titled "Hadassah brings Stem Cell Summit to Boston", quoted Rafi Hofstein, president and CEO of Hadasit, as saying: "It is common knowledge that the medicine of the future will be based on stem cell-derived treatments." In 2000, the Hadassah University Hospital in Israel teamed with Monash University in Australia and the National University of Singapore to become only the second group in the world to develop human embryonic cell lines. "[The Hadassah University Hospital] in Israel is at the forefront of stem cell medical research," Hofstein said. "We believe we are doing the right thing and something of great importance." Research has been slowed, however, due to a lack of funding for U.S. researchers, according to Hofstein. He said Israeli researchers cannot fully collaborate with their American counterparts because the Bush administration has limited the amount of funding available through the National Institute of Health.

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) group is the 3rd largest political group in the European Parliament. Speaking before the ALDE Conference "Secularism and Religions in the European Union" in the European Parliament (28-29 August), ALDE Group Leader Graham Watson (UK, LibDem) stressed that the Catholic Church has the right both to spread its word and to lobby governments with its points of view on matters like abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research. But Watson believes that "for policy makers reason has to be the basis. Faith should not underpin policy-making."

Survey: Keep Religion Out of Politics

Declan and I are still looking for a place to sleep (on Thursday night we returned to the porch we have been sleeping in since 3 November 2006 to find an unlocked trellis gate; and on Friday night the gate was locked). Still, a part of me welcomes leaving the porch behind. It shouldn't be difficult: I have been assaulted there three times; and as recently as 2 August I was urinated on. Also, the City of London police have woken us on numerous occasions mainly to put us under pressure to go into a homeless hostel, meaning Declan would have to 'sign on' for benefits, and consequently withdraw his application to the European Court of Human Rights (see blog "A trellis gate is installed in the porch" for Declan's most recent letter to the Registrar of the Court). And when these police visits didn't have the desired effect, a City of London Police 'No sleeping' went up on the back wall of the porch (see blog of 25 June "Police ‘No sleeping’ sign in the porch").

Today, a year ago, Declan submitted his application to the European Court with a request for priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court: in a letter of 22 November the Court stated that it was not necessary to consider Declan's first request for priority because it would be examining his application "shortly, possibly by the end of January 2008"; seven months later, in a letter dated 16 June (see here), it is "as soon as practicable" – coincidentally, two days before Declan received this letter from the Catholic Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre, his main bag, containing all our money and documents, was robbed in the centre (see here). On 4 July, he submitted a second request for priority, drawing to the attention of the Court a violation of Article 34 and requesting that the Court take this matter up with the Government – Article 34 establishes a duty on Convention states not to subject applicants to any improper indirect acts or contacts designed to dissuade or discourage applicants from pursuing a Convention remedy.



On Thursday, LiveScience reported under the headline "Survey: Keep Religion Out of Politics" that, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center, for the first time in more than a decade a majority of Americans think religious organisations should stay out of politics. In addition, an increasing number are uncomfortable when politicians talk about how religious they are. Overall, 52 percent thought that churches and other religious institutions should stay out of politics, an increase of eight percentage points since 2004, when the last US presidential election was held. A huge shift came from voters who described themselves as conservative, with 50 percent saying churches should stay out of politics compared to 30 percent in 2004. Among Republicans, 51 percent held this view, up from 37 percent in August of 2004. And among Democratic voters, the percentage who wanted churches out of politics was almost unchanged since 2004 at 52 percent. Commenting on the results, the Pew Research Center said: "Where there was once a substantial partisan and ideological gap on this question, there is now far less of a divide."

Perhaps there are parallels between this development and the emerging anticorporate attitude among many young activists that prompted journalist Naomi Klein to write the book titled “No Logo”. Klein explains in the introduction to the book that as she was doing some research on university campuses in the mid-90s, she began to notice that many of the students she was meeting were preoccupied with the inroads private corporations were making in their public schools. They were angry that ads were creeping into cafeterias, common rooms, even washrooms; that their schools were diving into exclusive distribution deals with soft-drink companies and computer manufactures, and that academic studies were starting to look more and more like market research. They worried that their education was suffering, as institutional priority shifted to those programs most conducive to private-sector partnership.

“Successful multinational corporations are increasingly finding themselves under attack,” Klein writes. But what are the forces pushing more and more people to become suspicious of or even downright enraged at multinational corporations, the very engines of our global growth? Perhaps more pertinently, what is liberating so many people – particularly young people – to act on their rage and suspicion? Klein provides some answers to these questions. “That corporations have grown so big they have superseded government. That unlike governments, they are accountable only to their shareholders; that we lack the mechanisms to make them answer to a broader public,” she writes.

Consider, for example, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown turning up in the US on a three-day visit from 15 to 18 April, only to be upstaged by Pope Benedict XVI (MacAskill, Guardian, 15/4); or the Pope’s rejection in July of an invitation to address the European parliament, prompting Mary Honeyball MEP, a labour spokesperson in the European Parliament Women's Rights Committee, to write in the Guardian that the pontiff was “effectively holding the EU to ransom” (Honeyball, Guardian, 25/7). As for accountability, there is the US Conference of Catholic Bishops: despite recent statements by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the National Academies and the International Society for Stem Cell Research emphasising that studies of all types of stem cells should continue in parallel, the Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website continues to display their two recently released print ads describing embryonic stem research as “obsolete” (the ads were distributed at the Democratic Convention in Denver and at the Republican Convention in Minneapolis/St Paul by pro-life groups, according to LifeSiteNews.com).