Bishop: Oppose embryonic stem cell research

The Big Issue is a magazine sold by homeless people throughout the UK on registered street pitches. 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”); and 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 latter has been experienced by Declan for two days now. The fact that we don’t have pitches any more is particularly serious for me, because I am facing possible prosecution for begging.

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. In fact, as I explained in the blog of 18 November “Our sleeping pitch is soaked”, the spamming is quite severe. Yesterday, I only received six out-of-office autoreplies from 320 emails; on Wednesday, it was one from 99 emails. No surprise then that only one scientist signed from 419 emails - last week it was two signatories from 640 emails; three weeks ago, one signatory from 1,072 emails. The petition to date has been signed by 584 scientists and academics, including 24 Nobel Laureates.

James Thomson at Tuesday’s 10-year celebration of his hESC breakthrough

I have also written that since the termination of our Big Issue pitches, I have had to adapt my blogs because we are now restricted to the free 3-hour maximum computer use per day at Idea Store Whitechapel library that our local council imposed on each of our membership cards on 1 February. Emphasis now is on the product of my research so that as soon as I have a laptop I am in a position to build within two weeks a website for our campaign in support of embryonic stem (ES) cell research and therapeutic cloning, also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Applications will be central to this website; also the institutes, labs and people involved. For a way to develop the navigation menu I have Greenpeace International – see here; also the homepage will be loosely based on theirs (for more about the campaign website, see blog of 1 November “Can a cell have a soul?”).

My thinking behind this website is that once the general public is exposed to the work of scientists and clinicians, the funding their work attracts and the potential for clinical cures and therapies for debilitating diseases and disorders, the misinformation and fear that the Catholic church and conservative evangelical groups continue to spread will be seen straight through. A recent statement written by Bishop Robert Carlson of Saginaw, Michigan to Catholic voters on Proposal 2, the amendment to the Michigan Constitution allowing research on embryos that were created for fertility treatments and would otherwise be discarded, serves as an example. “Because it is scientifically unnecessary, because it goes too far and because it is based on reprehensible moral principles, I call on all Catholics in the Diocese of Saginaw to oppose Proposal 2,” the Bishop wrote. His statement also asserted that the use of adult stem cells “has already played a role in the treatment and cure of over 70 types of diseases” (a claim that has been widely discredited), and that the use of embryonic stem cells “has resulted in zero treatments or cures.” Not only was Proposal 2 approved, but Detroit News exit polling showed 56 percent of voters who identified themselves as Catholic supported the measure – overall the measure passed by a 53-47 margin.

Scientists generally agree it’s crucial to push forward rapidly in all three key areas of stem cell research: embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells and induced pluripotent (or “reprogrammed”) stem cells. Around the world, these three kinds of stem cells are under intense study for possible treatments for conditions from spinal cord injuries to juvenile diabetes. Scientists argue that it would be shortsighted to pursue only one kind because each may hold particular promise for understanding and treating specific diseases. Results in one area of research will continue to shed light on work in the others. The capacity of embryonic stem cells to turn into virtually any other kind of cell obviously gives them the most potential for organ and tissue replacement (ScienceDaily, 14/10).

Fighting for the Right to Clone

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

Robert Lanza

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Scientist: Faith in denial

Declan's difficulties while attempting to sell The Big Issue (a magazine sold by homeless people on registered street pitches) have continued – on Thursday afternoon he had to write to the founder and editor-in-chief of The Big Issue, John Bird, see previous blog. On Thursday and Friday evening Declan's pitch was unceremoniously taken over by a distributor of the free daily London Lite and he had no choice but to walk off. So since he had some magazines left, on Saturday we decided to take a bus to Covent Garden, where we have a weekend pitch for the two of us. We shouldn't have bothered spending money we don't have on the transport: almost as soon as Declan was on the pitch, four homeless with cans of beer came along, sat beside him and, well, more or less scared away any potential Big Issue buyer. (Noam Chomsky – described by The New York Times as "arguably the most important intellectual alive", and an early signatory of Declan's petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning – identifies economic strangulation as a primary method of domination and control – see blog of 12 June “The threat of a good example”).

        Delacroix's 1830 masterpiece Liberty Leading the People

The latest issue of the New Scientist carries a piece by British philosopher AC Grayling "How humans dared to know", with the subheadline: "Our passion for 'Enlightenment values' owes a lot to the 18th century. But where do those values come from and what do they mean today?" Grayling, one of Britain's foremost public intellectuals, says that if one compares the lives of ordinary people 300 years ago with those we can enjoy now, the impact of the Enlightenment on the structure and practice of society can be fully appreciated - and admired. "As a historical phenomenon," writes Grayling, "the Enlightenment movement emphasised reliance on reason, sought to take a scientific approach to social and political questions, championed science, and opposed the clergy, the church and all forms of superstition as obstacles to progress." He also writes: "Enlightenment values today are commitments to individual autonomy, democracy, the rule of law, science, rationality, secularism, pluralism, a humanist ethics, the importance of education, the promotion of human rights."

Science is also central to an article by Michael Brooks, former senior features editor at the magazine, titled "Faith in denial", with the subheadline: "The Catholic church's insistence on demonising IVF is making it look irrelevant and out of touch". Brooks comments that it is time for the Vatican to accept IVF: Louise Brown, the world’s first test-tube baby, turned 30 last week; and, with more than 3 million people having now been conceived through IVF, she is no longer the miracle she once seemed.

At the time of Brown’s birth the church was undecided about the morals and ethics of IVF, but it has since banned its members from using the technology, declaring it "morally unacceptable". That, Brooks explains, is primarily because it views the destruction of embryos, a common aspect of the IVF process, as equivalent to murder. The church also takes the view that IVF allows us to play God. “The Catholic church’s position is looking ever more absurd, especially when you consider that it stands virtually alone on this matter,” Brooks writes. “The vast majority of Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu groups see IVF as a useful means to an essential end: overcoming infertility. Muslim scholars issued their first proclamation, or fatwa, on IVF within two years of Brown’s birth. This came from the leaders of the majority Sunni group, to which over 90 per cent of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims belong. The fatwa decreed that a married couple was free to use IVF as long as there was no donation of gametes from third parties. The minority Shiite group is even more tolerant: it has allowed its members to use donated eggs or sperm since the mid-1990s, so long as all parties adhere to Islamic codes regarding parenting.”

Brooks points out that most Catholics “are similarly progressive, but this means they have to flout the dictates of their church”. He adds: “After a 1987 Vatican pronouncement on the immoral nature of IVF, Margaret Brooks, an Australian Catholic and the first woman to have a child born from a frozen embryo, boldly told The New York Times that no one paid any attention to such decrees. At the same time, several European Catholic hospitals announced that they would defy the church and continue to provide IVF treatment. It was, one hospital said, ‘an infinitely precious human service’.”

“The pope is not in the business of bowing to popular demand, but even he must sense that the church’s position is becoming ever more isolated,” Brooks writes, adding: “He could do something about it. The church has changed its views in response to scientific and technological developments before. It was the invention of the microscope and the subsequent discovery of the ovum that first persuaded Catholics to err on the side of caution and adopt their current position on the sanctity of the embryo. Why can't the Vatican take account of all we have learned in the IVF area and revise the rules again?”

Brooks goes on to argue that making "a sensible retreat" over IVF would also open the way to resolving other controversies over reproductive technologies – for example, stem cell research, which the Vatican opposes. “This in turn might enable other conservative religious groups to back down without losing face. Muslim scholars have already blazed a trail here too. In 2001 the Islamic Institute, a think tank based in Washington DC, convened a panel of medical, scientific and religious experts to work out how IVF and stem cell research fit in with Islamic teaching. They concluded that IVF is ‘a compassionate and humane scientific procedure’. On stem cells they went even further, calling it ‘a societal obligation’ to perform research on the extra embryos that are produced in IVF procedures because of the potential benefits that could accrue from it.”

Since it seems unlikely the Vatican is going to willingly embrace "Enlightenment values" in respect of IVF, as part of our international campaign on therapeutic cloning and human embryonic stem cell research we intend having a ‘take action’ section with an email to Pope Benedict XVI urging him to revise the church's rules on IVF in response to scientific and technological developments. (Our NAC website, which was suspended on 8 March due to an erroneous Spamcop report that was sent to our web host, carried three original campaigns, one of which "The Vatican and the achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals" contained as a 'take action' an email to the Pope urging him to stop obstructing family planning.)

Introductory letter to the European Court of Human Rights

Yet another example of police intimidation and harassment, this time involving London Lite and The London Paper (two free London tabloid papers handed out to people in the evening Monday to Friday): Thursday evening Declan didn’t even bother stepping into his pitch outside Liverpool Street Station – where he sells The Big Issue during the week – after he found a bicycle tied up at his pitch and facing it a girl flogging the London Lite on one side and a guy harassing passers-by to take The London Paper on the other.

While such intimidation and harassment does little for the state of our finances, at least on this occasion there was a silver lining. The next morning, Declan lodged our case with the European Court of Human Rights by introductory letter. This is the letter he sent by fax and registered post:

Dear Sir/Madam

Re:   HEAVEY v UK

I am writing to introduce an application under Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

On 11 August 2006 I attended an advisory interview to review my Jobseeker’s Agreement (JSAg) with an employment officer in Birmingham Erdington Jobcentre Plus of the Department for Work and Pensions in respect of my claim for Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA). As with my first JSAg, my pursuance of a “temporary job” that would enable me retrain to start my own business was accepted as part of the new JSAg that I signed.

On 14 August 2006 my wife attended an advisory interview in Birmingham Erdington Jobcentre Plus to review her JSAg in respect of her JSA on my claim. Contrary to the provisions of her first two JSAg’s however, she was threatened with the suspension of her JSA unless she agreed to sign a new JSAg without the restriction that she is looking for a temporary job that would enable her retrain for a new career. She was not provided with any reason as to why this restriction was no longer acceptable, and was furthermore denied her right pursuant to section 9(6)(a) of the Jobseekers Act 1995, to have her proposed JSAg referred to an adjudicator for him to determine whether she would satisfy the conditions that she was available for employment and was actively seeking employment.

On 18 August 2006 my wife and I were to attend another advisory interview in Birmingham Erdington Jobcentre Plus, this time with the adviser manager. After my wife had been informed by this adviser manager that he would neither accept her proposed JSAg nor refer same to an adjudicator, she refused to attend the interview. I likewise refused to attend any such interview until such time as I was advised that the Jobcentre would either accept my wife’s proposed JSAg or refer same to an adjudicator in accordance with section 9(6)(a) of the Jobseekers Act 1995.

In a letter dated 18 August 2006, Birmingham Erdington Jobcentre Plus advised my wife and I that my joint claim JSA would be suspended from 19 August 2006 on the basis that there was a doubt as to our availability for work.

Having been denied the only remedy that was capable of providing redress in respect of my wife’s complaint, on 24 August 2006 I lodged an urgent application in person for permission to apply for judicial review against Birmingham Erdington Jobcentre Plus and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions with the High Court in London, claiming that the suspension of my joint claim JSA was irrational.

In a letter dated 13 September 2006, an adjudicator advised my wife and I that the doubt as to our availability for work had been removed and that any arrears of JSA due to us would be paid. On 14 September 2006 summary grounds for contesting my claim by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions was lodged with the High Court, claiming that the decision to suspend benefit was lawful. Further it was submitted that my application for judicial review was premature and/or disproportionate.

On 15 September 2006 I wrote to the manager of Birmingham Erdington Jobcentre Plus advising that neither my wife nor I would attend another advisory interview until such time as I was advised that the Jobcentre would either accept my wife’s proposed JSAg or refer same to an adjudicator. This resulted in the suspension of my joint claim JSA on 19 September 2006 due to the non-attendance of my wife and I at our respective advisory interviews earlier that same day. In a letter dated 25 September 2006, Birmingham Erdington Jobcentre Plus advised me that my joint claim JSA had been looked at again and reinstated from 21 September 2006.

On 29 September 2006 my wife and I attended Birmingham Erdington Jobcentre Plus to sign our respective declaration (that we were available for employment and actively seeking employment) as we were meant to, but were prevented from doing so without explanation. On 30 September 2006 I received a letter dated 27 September 2006 from the Jobcentre advising that the entitlement of my wife and me to JSA was ceased as from 19 September 2006 because I did not attend to sign my declaration. On 30 September 2006 I wrote to the manager of Birmingham Erdington Jobcentre Plus advising of the Jobcentre’s mistake, and sent a copy of this letter to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

Subject to regulation 27(1) of the Jobseeker’s Allowance Regulations 1996, entitlement to a jobseeker’s allowance shall not cease if the claimant shows, before the end of the fifth working day after the day on which he failed to provide a signed declaration, that he had a good cause for the failure. Nonetheless, the Department for Work and Pensions neither changed the decision of 27 September 2006 to cease our entitlement JSA nor gave me an explanation, the latter of which I required within one month of the date of the decision letter to have a right to appeal to an Appeal Tribunal. (All I received from the Department was a letter from Birmingham Erdington Jobcentre Plus dated 5 October 2006 acknowledging receipt of my letter dated 30 September 2006.)

In a letter dated 31 October 2006, the High Court in London advised me that my permission application had been listed for oral hearing on 11 December 2006. With no income, our savings depleted, and not entitled to JSA hardship provision (JSA at a reduced rate) or a Social Fund loan (unable to repay), my wife and I were faced with the choice of going homeless in London or in Birmingham. We chose London because the pursuance of our claim through the national courts was accessible, capable of providing redress in respect of my complaint and offered reasonable prospects of success. We would have been more vulnerable and insecure had we stayed in Birmingham, particularly as I had been deprived of my right of appeal against the decision to cease our entitlement to JSA.

My wife and I have been rough sleepers in London since 3 November 2006 save a brief period in rolling shelters. On 22 November 2006 the Dellow Day Centre recorded in my wife’s registration form that St Mungo’s, London’s largest organisation working with the homeless, had informed the Centre that neither my wife nor I could be referred into night shelters "due to not being on any benefits". My application for permission to apply for judicial review was refused by the High Court on 11 December 2006. According to the Court, my application for permission was premature. The Court’s decision also stated that I should have had my complaint about the letter of 27 September 2006 determined by an Appeal Tribunal.

On 18 December 2006 I was admitted to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for pneumonia. In the discharge summary report dated 20 December 2006, my doctor recorded that I was admitted with chest pain worse on breathing, worse on inspiration, and that I had not been eating due to lack of finance. Furthermore, the doctor also noted that I did have an episode of loss of consciousness, witnessed by my wife. On 17 February I was punched twice in the face in the Whitechapel Mission Day Centre in an unprovoked attack by a homeless man (crime reference number: 4204886/07).

My application for permission to appeal was refused by the Court of Appeal on the papers on 22 March 2007 as being totally without merit for the reasons cited by the Court on 11 December 2006, and an order was made that I may not request the decision to be reconsidered at a hearing. No further avenues of redress are available to me. My wife and I are currently surviving on the streets of London by selling The Big Issue, a magazine that is sold on the streets by homeless people in the UK.

I submit that in the circumstances of this case there has been a violation of Article 8 (the right to respect for private and family life) arising from the two suspensions of my joint claim JSA and the subsequent ceasing of the entitlement of my wife and me to JSA and that we were deprived of an effective remedy in violation of Article 13 of the Convention. I also complain that we have been the victims of discrimination because my wife wanted to continue to have her interests protected (in violation of Article 14 taken together with Articles 8 and 13).

I further submit that the abandonment of our flat and possessions and our current status as homeless has caused us suffering of sufficient severity for the acts of the Department for Work and Pensions to be categorised as inhuman treatment within the meaning of Article 3 (the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment). I also complain that there has been a violation of Article 1 of Protocol 1 (protection of property) arising from the abandonment of our home and possessions.

In addition, I submit that the true purpose of the two suspensions of my joint claim JSA was to intimidate my wife into signing a new JSAg on unfavourable terms in violation of Article 18 (limitation on use of restrictions on rights) of the Convention in conjunction with Article 8. I also complain that the ceasing of the entitlement of my wife and me to JSA was a measure introduced with a view to influencing the judicial determination of the dispute, in violation of the right to fair trial under Article 6 of the Convention.

I seek a declaration from the Court that Articles 3, 6, 8, 13, 14, 18 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol 1 have been violated, together with just satisfaction under Article 41 (pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages, plus legal costs and expenses).

This letter has been introduced within six months of the exhaustion of domestic remedies, in accordance with Article 35(1) of the European Convention.

A completed application form, together with a file of relevant copy documents, will be submitted shortly.

Please would you acknowledge receipt.

Yours faithfully

Declan Heavey

And these are some of the highlights of the week: we are treated to employees leaving the building by the porch we sleep in – they do have a very nice front entrance – either at the moment we arrive or when we are getting into our sleeping bags (Monday to Thursday between 8.15pm and 8.45pm); homeless try to get Declan to let them use his sink, and the fact that he is at it with half a foot of soapy water, for one character it was “So what?” (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday between 6.15am and 6.30am in the Whitechapel Mission washroom); a homeless first kicks the table Declan is sitting at, spilling coffee that narrowly misses his papers, and then kicks Declan in the shin as he is reading (this morning at 10.30am in The Connection at St Martin-in-the-Fields).

On the secular front, on Tuesday I found a very funny short bit in the Independent on Pope Benedict’s visit to Brazil. It reads: “In a speech at the end of his tour of Brazil, Pope Benedict condemned 'authoritarian governments' who are 'wedded to old-fashioned ideologies'. Presumably a sense of irony isn't very useful if you're a Pope, but even so it was a wonder he didn't blush. I thought 'old-fashioned ideologies' - resistant to reason - were part of the point of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Surely the fact that the Catholic church is rich and powerful, regularly earning bonuses of billions of pounds a year in deals with governments, and claiming a monopoly on truth, means that its head shouldn’t have to be constrained by fine-tuned speeches.

Second email to the founder of The Big Issue

This morning Declan had another run with a Polish homeless guy – he was drunk, which made it even more dangerous – in the Whitechapel Mission at 6.10am. He was adamant that Declan salute him with his good morning and when Declan didn’t pay him any more attention, he began shouting at him in Polish. Then this Ali’s girlfriend (Ali being the guy that punched Declan in the face twice last Saturday) comes out from nowhere and hugs him (she told some homeless guy the Sunday before last that her brother was going to slit his throat from ear to ear).

This Pole almost assaulted (would have assaulted if floor staff hadn’t intervened) another homeless because he had sat at his table, which he wanted to be exclusively for Poles. Most Polish homeless go around in groups, in contrast with other homeless, and perhaps it is creating a bit of conflict. It is a lack of individualism, I think, encouraged by Catholic Church traditions. Social control is, I should imagine, the ultimate goal, the Catholic Church being so big on authority and rules. No doubt that is why they are equally big on the nuclear family.

And in countries like Spain, where I am from, the extended family – first cousins for example – are almost as important as brothers and sisters. When the Catholic Church wants to bury some scandal, the first thing they do is go at the family of the person they want to shut up – through the parish priest, if there are no clergy known to, or part of, the family. Sometimes it doesn’t work, most of the time it does … when it doesn’t work it is the State, through the police, that takes over. I know that because Declan and I have gone through the steps.

This morning also Declan emailed for the second time the founder of The Big Issue, Dr John Bird. We were given two green jackets on 8 February so we could sell the magazine in the City of Westminster after 6.00pm. A few days ago, we were given a pitch in Westminster for the both of us after 6.00pm, but it turned out that it wasn’t an official pitch. Anyway, this is the email:

Subject: Westminster pitch

Dear Dr Bird

I refer to my call in to your head office yesterday and this morning and, given the difficulties my wife (badge no. 1170) and I have experienced with pitches in Covent Garden, would be grateful if we could be issued a pitch protected by both pitch slip and pitch listings to sell The Big Issue in the City of Westminster after 6.00pm.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey
Badge no. 1163