Letter to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor

In the blog of 3 April “Still blocked by Facebook”, I published an email Declan received from Detective Paul De-Krestser of Limehouse Police Station suggesting that he calls police immediately when he next makes sight of the homeless guy against whom he has three crime references numbers so that he can be arrested; the Dellow Day Centre of the Catholic Sisters of Mercy Providence Row Charity is not divulging the identity of this guy to police even though they know his details. Well, this morning in the Catholic Manna Day Centre Declan saw him. In fact, the guy seemed quite pleased to be seen, Declan kept bumping into him here and there. So Declan decided to take the five-minute walk to the local police station.

Of course, the police officer couldn’t assure Declan that he wouldn’t get himself barred for bringing the police to the Manna Centre – “we don’t run the place,” PC 396MD told him – so he decided to skip Det. De-Krestser’s advice and update instead the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, in his capacity as Archbishop of the Diocese of Westminster, to which the Dellow Centre belongs. (Our concern to be barred from one or both of these day centres is not unfounded: 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.) For the record, this is Declan’s email this afternoon to Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor:

Subject: Providence Row Charity

His Eminence Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster.

Your Eminence,

I refer further to the email of acknowledgement of 25 June 2008 that I received from your Personal Secretary, Sister Damian McGrath, stating: "I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your email concerning Providence Row Charity. The Cardinal is out of the country at the present time but he will see your email on his return next week."

I wish to bring to your attention that I continue to wash in the street as a result of harassment and intimidation by homeless people in the Dellow Day Centre of the Sisters of Mercy Providence Row Charity and the Catholic Manna Day Centre (whose building is provided rent-free by the Archdiocese of Southwark), which I have been doing every weekday morning since 10 April last year; and my wife has been doing since 27 February.

In order to avoid being barred through no fault of my own, I do not venture into the washroom in the Dellow Centre and this morning thought it best to leave the Manna Centre, having been stalked both inside and outside the centre by the homeless man against whom I have three crime reference numbers (see (2), (4) and (7) below) – the breakfast provided by the Dellow Centre is the only food available to my wife for the entire day Monday-Friday; I walk a two-hour round trip virtually every weekday to the Manna Centre to avail of the free lunch provided to homeless people.

Since my initial letter of complaint to you of 21 April 2008 (almost two weeks after I took to washing in the street), I reconfirm the occurrence of the following incidents:

(1) on 28 April 2008, I submitted a written complaint to the Chief Executive of the Providence Row Charity, Ms Jo Ansell, against a homeless man for verbal abuse in the canteen of the Dellow Centre;
(2) on 16 May 2008, I reported a homeless man to the Metropolitan Police for racially aggravated harassment in the Dellow Centre's men's washroom (crime reference no. 4212667/08);
(3) on 18 June 2008, I was robbed in the canteen of the Dellow Centre of all my and my wife's money and documents (crime reference no. 4215697/08); on 24 June, I was informed at Bow Street police station that the case had been struck out due to the police being unable to obtain any CCTV footage whatsoever from the Providence Row Charity;
(4) on 19 June 2008, the day after the robbery of all our money and documents in the Dellow Centre, I reported the same homeless man referred to in (2) above to the Metropolitan Police for assault while queuing for food in the Manna Centre (crime reference no. 3021917/08);
(5) on 30 June 2008, I submitted a written complaint to Ms Ansell against a homeless woman for verbal abuse in the canteen of the Dellow Centre;
(6) on 6 November 2008, I submitted a written complaint to Ms Ansell against the same homeless woman referred to in (5) above for verbal abuse from the reception desk of the Dellow Centre;
(7) On 24 February 2009, I reported the same homeless man referred to in (2) and (4) above to the Metropolitan Police for assault in the canteen of the Dellow Centre (crime reference no. 4204029/09); on 25 March, I received an email from Detective Paul De-Krestser of Limehouse Police Station stating that the case had been struck out due to the police being unable to obtain the identity of the suspect from the Providence Row Charity “even though they do know his details” (see attachment). (Detective De-Krestser suggests that I call police immediately when I next make sight of the suspect so that he can be arrested.)

This morning I was informed at Southwark police station that if the suspect referred to in (2), (4) and (7) above was arrested at the Manna Centre, the police could not prevent me from being barred from the premises. On 18 June 2007, my wife and I were barred from the Methodist Church Whitechapel Mission by the minister's wife due to concerns about our safety following an unprovoked assault on my wife (crime reference no. 4217341/07). Despite that the Whitechapel Mission's website states that homeless people are not barred or excluded and that I wrote by registered post to the minister himself and to the head of the Methodist Church in the UK, Rev Graham Carter, neither my wife nor I were readmitted.

Please would you acknowledge receipt.

Yours sincerely,
Declan Heavey

New NAC website very much in the firing line

This morning Declan thought it best if we left the Catholic Manna Centre at 9.00am, for the third Saturday in a row (see blog of 21 January “Violence and economic strangulation”); on this occasion, Declan was man-handled in the men’s toilets by a homeless who insisted that he engage in conversation with him. We left without Declan getting a bite to eat.

Declan continues to wash in the street, which he has been doing since 10 April last year as a result of all the harassment he has received from other homeless: see, for example, blog of 16 May 2008 “More racially aggravated harassment in the Dellow Centre”; or blog of 18 June 2008 “Declan robbed in the Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre”; or blog of 19 June 2008 “Declan assaulted in the Manna Centre”. 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). Declan has written on several occasions to the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, in his capacity as Archbishop of the Diocese of Westminster, to which the Dellow Centre belongs (see blog of 6 November 2008 “Letter to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor”).

It seems that the new NAC website that I am building in support of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning at http://network.obxhost.net/index.html is still very much in the firing line: Declan had no problem accessing it this morning from the local internet café but I was once again unable to access it or the web host from our local council’s Idea Store Whitechapel (see blog of 23 January “Letter to the Leader of Tower Hamlets Council”). In fact, I still can’t, meaning I can’t upload an article by Steven Pinker entitled “The Stupidity of Dignity” (see below).

Pinker, world-renowned thinker and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University (and an honorary associate of NAC and early signatory of Declan’s petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning), argues that the concept of dignity is natural ground on which to build an obstructionist bioethics. It’s not surprising, then, he wrote on 28 May last, that ‘dignity’ is a recurring theme in Catholic doctrine: The word appears more than 100 times in the 1997 edition of the Catechism and is a leitmotif in the Vatican’s recent pronouncements on biomedicine. In its most authoritative declaration on bioethics for more than 20 years, the Vatican released on 12 December a 32-page document titled “Dignitas Personae” (the dignity of a person).

As I stated in the previous blog, we received our first donation last Monday and I believe this may be influencing things: perhaps to discourage somebody else for doing the same. For example, this morning I emailed 35 scientists and academics in New York State inviting them to sign Declan’s petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning but received no autoreplies and no-one has signed – I received one undelivered email to my spam box. To date, the petition has been signed by 589 scientists and academics, who include recognised authorities from the world’s leading universities and research institutes, as well as 24 Nobel Laureates.

This is the document (three pages) I am waiting to upload:

Violence and economic strangulation

For two years we survived on the streets of London by selling The Big Issue, a magazine sold by homeless people on registered pitches throughout the UK. As I wrote in the blog of 17 November, our Big Issue pitches have been terminated (see blog of 11 November “Letter of complaint to the chair of The Big Issue Foundation Charity”). Although we can still sell the magazine on the pitches we had for two years, we have no priority whatsoever: we have to leave if the vendors to whom the pitches have been allocated come along, and not stand in on the pitches at all if a vendor is already there – the former was experienced by Declan this evening (a first in three weeks). The fact that we don’t have pitches any more is particularly serious for me, because I am facing possible prosecution for begging.

With respect to our campaign in support of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning, I announced in Monday’s blog that the website is launched at http://network.obxhost.net/index.html - the same morning Declan was virtually attacked by a rough sleeper outside the Catholic Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre (see blog of 6 November 2008 “Letter to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor”; Declan has written on several occasions to Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, in his capacity as Archbishop of the Diocese of Westminster, to which the Dellow Centre belongs). I am hoping to have finished uploading New York State within a few days, including a “Take action” in respect of payment for egg donation which the ethics committee of the Empire State Stem Cell Board is currently discussing. The Take action will make the case that donors should not be paid for their eggs, but rather they should be compensated for the burdens of egg retrieval (reference: Steinbock B. Payment for egg donation and surrogacy. Mt Sinai J Med 2004;71:255-265).

Can a cell have a soul?

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 being dumped to spam boxes (or to cyberspace, see blog of 4 September “Obama: Yes to stem cells, funding”). On Thursday, I only got 14 out-of-office autoreplies from 226 emails: 36 emails to the Department of Zoology at Cambridge University yielded zero autoreplies; 45 to the University's Neurology Unit, just one. Since Monday I have sent 628 emails which have resulted in five signatures; last week it was one signature from 1,072 emails (see blog of 26 October “British lawmakers back human-animal embryo research”). I would actually be surprised if more than 5 percent of my emails this week went to inboxes – the petition has so far been signed by 571 scientists and academics, including 24 Nobel Laureates.

This week temperatures plummeted – the first time London has seen snow in October for 70 years. Nonetheless, Declan continues to wash in the street, which he has been doing since 10 April as a result of all the harassment he has received from 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”. 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). Declan has written on several occasions to the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, in his capacity as Archbishop of the Diocese of Westminster, to which the Dellow Centre belongs (see blog of 4 July “Second Request for Priority to the European Court”).

Approximately life-sized, eight weeks of embryonic development

Yesterday the Catholic News Agency reported that the Bishop of Lansing Earl Boyea rebuked Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm’s Sunday endorsement of Proposal 2, the 4 November ballot proposal that would loosen restrictions on embryonic stem cell research in Michigan (see, for example, blog of 17 October “Stem Cell Research: Five Basic Things To Know”). Speaking at a political rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Granholm said: “As a Catholic, I can say to be pro-cure is to be pro-life.” In a Monday statement Bishop Boyea responded to the governor’s comments. He described as “shocking” her mention of her Catholic faith to justify her endorsement. “While the Catholic Church strongly supports legitimate forms of stem cell research and all other proper forms of scientific inquiry, the Church also teaches that is it is always immoral to destroy a human embryo,” he wrote. “For that reason, the Catholic Bishops of Michigan have taken a strong position in opposition to this well-funded assault on human life.”

Writing recently for the British Medical Journal, Professor John Burn, Medical Director and Head of the Institute of Human Genetics at Newcastle University (and a signatory of Declan’s petition) asks at what point a cell becomes a human. “The Catholic church has made its position absolutely clear,” he writes. “Life begins at conception, and any deliberate generation of embryonic stem cells – or, to some, generation of embryos without the intention of implanting them into a woman – is tantamount to murder.” Like some of his predecessors, Pope Benedict XVI has declared that “ensoulment” might occur at conception. But, Burn argues, if souls are delivered, it is difficult to see how this could occur before 14 days. It is only then that the primitive streak forms, and a single embryo could be said to exist. Before this, the cells that make up the embryo could result in up to five identical embryos.

Burn concludes: “Just as protests about cadaver organ donation were addressed rationally and led to the widespread acceptance that the definition of death could no longer depend on biblical interpretation, so medical need dictates that the origin of human individuality must be defined with similar pragmatic precision. A cell cannot have a soul”.

In an interview with Discover Magazine, published in 2002, Lord Robert May of Oxford, then head of the Royal Society of London and former chief scientific advisor to the British government, spoke of misconceptions around the stem-cell debate. “Most people think that the heart of the debate is whether the soul enters the embryo at conception,” he said. “Up until 130 years ago, the official position of the Catholic Church – this is not my position, but something the bishop of Oxford drew to the attention of the House of Lords – was that the soul entered the embryo on the 40th day after conception if it was male and the 80th day after conception if it was female. That derives originally from Thomas Aquinas. It was changed in 1869 to say the soul enters the embryo on the day of conception, the same for men and women.

“So at the heart of this debate is not some absolutely fundamental tenet at the heart of Christianity. Adopt Thomas Aquinas’s original position and there would be no problem today. Research in the UK is only on embryos up to 14 days old. So Thomas Aquinas would be perfectly happy with it. There is no ethical issue.” (Burn points out that the 40 day ruling – still used in Jewish and Islamic teaching – dates back to Aristotle, who concluded that man receives his soul after 40 days and woman hers after 80 days.)

Professor Lisa Jardine, the chair of the British British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, told the New Statesman in May that the moment of fertilisation is not a very helpful moment to begin talking about the sanctity of human life. “As a woman who’s had a long childbearing life, I know perfectly well that any number of embryos were swept away. Maybe [some] naturally, but some of them weren’t. Sometimes I’d jumped up and down in the hope that I wasn’t pregnant, you know?” In the same issue of the New Statesman is philosopher Julian Baggini on deciding ethical issues. “The world’s major religious texts have nothing to say about stem cells, not least because those words do not appear in any of them,” he writes, adding: “It may be a matter of faith that Christ rose from the dead, but Christians have to defend anything they say about the first stages of life.”

As I explained in the blog of 26 October “British lawmakers back human-animal embryo research”, our campaign in support of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning, also known as somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), has been greatly simplified. Gone now are the sections I had planned – “Science and Religion”, “Science and the Law” and “Religion in Public Life” – mainly because Declan was right all along: they distract from the campaign. Greenpeace International and Greenpeace UK are still our main models. Like Greenpeace UK, we will include in the homepage menu “Blog”, “About NAC”, “What we do” and “Media centre”. (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 public policy reforms strongly rejected by the Vatican and the Christian right. 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.)

What for Greenpeace UK is the subsection “Climate change” – after you click “What we do” – for us will be “Embryonic stem cell research” and will include the following associated subsections: “Science”, “Law and Policy”, “Ethics” and “Applications”. And, as in the Greenpeace International website, each of these associated subsections will be further subdivided: under “Ethics”, for example, we will propagate the view of some of the world’s leading figures in bioethics that, for example, there is no ethical issue with research on embryos up to 14 days old, and that there should be a relaxation of rules restricting the compensation of egg donors to boost the supply of human eggs needed for SCNT (see blog of 16 July “Therapeutic cloning: Researchers back bid to pay egg donor”).

The campaign will argue that stem cell research, including human embryonic stem (hES) cell research, is not only vital to advancing regenerative medicine, but has the potential to be an economic boon for countries and to lower overall domestic health care costs. We will also have a “Take action”, feature books, and publish, for example, all the various letters that have been signed by Nobel Laureates in support of SCNT. We won’t be announcing Declan’s petition to the UN in this website since we believe it’s best if scientists and academics sign first. What interested person would say no to a petition that has been signed by a large number of top scientists and academics from around the world, including several Nobel Laureates?