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?

US bishops condemn embryonic stem cell research

This morning Declan paid another visit to Brick Lane police station to enquire if PC Van-Gelder (number unknown) has started the investigation into the robbery in the Catholic Dellow Centre of his main bag, which contained all our money and documents (see blog of 18 June “Declan robbed in the Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre”) – the robbery took place the same day Declan had intended sending by registered post his second request for priority to the European Court of Human Rights, which I posted to the blog that afternoon; and can be read here. (Two days after the robbery, the Dellow Centre presented Declan with a letter from the European Court, which is published in the previous blog).

No, there is no news at all, and Declan can’t speak with PC Van-Gelder because he is not in the station. Declan will try again tomorrow – the entire canteen area is covered by CCTV; although Declan was informed in Southwark police station the next day that homeless day centres generally don’t provide police with information on clients without a warrant (see blog of 19 June “Declan assaulted in the Manna Centre”).

Bishops' document blasts embryonic stem cell research

On 13 June, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a document titled "On Embryonic Stem Cell Research", the first formal statement issued by the organisation devoted exclusively to the issue. The bishops voted 191-1 to adopt the statement, without debate or discussion. Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, and part of the bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities, was hopeful the document "would be taken seriously by all policymakers".

In a BBC article of 10 April Sir Martin Evans, who received the Nobel Prize for medicine last year, urged British MPs voting on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill to "stop listening to the emotive arguments of religiously motivated pressure groups”, adding: “Please look at the evidence. Don't immediately go for the knee-jerk reaction mainly powered by the 'yuck' factor.” The US bishops’ statement finds room for plenty emotive arguments. We read that “harvesting embryonic stem cells involves the deliberate killing of innocent human beings”, that “some researchers, ethicists, and policy makers claim that we may directly kill innocent embryonic human beings as if they were mere objects of research”, and that “the same ethic that justifies taking some lives to help the patient with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease today can be used to sacrifice that very patient tomorrow”.

Sir Martin is also quoted in the article as saying: “I think the point of debate really is: are the embryos that are being used for research fully-formed humans? To me and to many other scientists - knowing that these are just a small bunch of cells - the answer is no.” Lisa Jardine, the new chair of the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, is one such scientist. She tells the New Statesman (see blog of 29 May “Stem cells and morality”) when asked about the beginning of life: "I think I need consciousness - I've a little bit of a philosophical temperament - and we're a hell of a way from consciousness at 14 days." She adds: "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?"

Also in the same issue of the New Statesman is philosopher Julian Baggini on deciding ethical issues. "When it comes to specific matters of morality, the idea that religious convictions need respect, not interrogation and defence, is absurd," he writes. "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. 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." Clearly the bishops do not believe they have to defend anything they say about the first stages of life: they make their case with appeals like “the human embryo, from conception onward, is as much a living member of the human species as any of us” (and related expressions as “the embryo is a complete and distinct member of the species Homo sapiens” and “human beings at the embryonic stage of development”).

The US bishops’ statement has a problem not just with embryonic stem cell research but with therapeutic cloning, also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer – it is “intrinsically evil,” they say, “because it reduces human procreation to a mere manufacturing process, producing new human beings in the laboratory to predetermined specifications as though they were commodities”. The NSW Minister for Science and Medical Research, Verity Firth, wouldn’t be impressed to hear therapeutic cloning described as “intrinsically evil”: on 19 June she announced at the BIO 2008 convention in San Diego that Sydney IVF and the Australian Stem Cell Centre (ASCC) in Melbourne have launched a project to characterise and compare induced pluripotent stem cells, human embryonic stem cells and stem cells derived from somatic cell nuclear transfer. "Both the NSW and Victorian governments are proud to be supporting this ground-breaking work, which we believe will offer new hope to people living with debilitating diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease,” Firth said. "The combination of the international quality talent and significant resources of these two collaborative partners gives this project the potential to provide world-first advancements in these new biological frontiers."

And what about hybrid embryos, which the US bishops are also troubled by because they “disturbingly blur the line between animal and human species”? Well, on 19 May British MPs voted in favour of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which allows for the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos (see blog of 20 May "UK parliament backs human-animal embryo research") – the hybrid approach is a tool for generating disease-specific embryonic stem cells without the need to use donated human eggs; the cells will not be used in patients, but be used to model diseases in the lab, test new therapies and study cloning processes. (In April, Lyle Armstrong of Newcastle University, a signatory of Declan’s petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning, announced that he and his team had created human-animal hybrid embryos for the first time in Britain. The scientists merged human genetic material with cow egg cells that had most of their own genetic material removed, see blog of 5 April “Declan narrowly escapes being assaulted”.)

The bishops write that adult stem cells “have already demonstrated great medical promise” – but in an article that appeared on 11 June in the Minnesota Daily, Rep Phyllis Kahn, who has a PhD in biophysics from Yale, states: “We can't really maximize the potential of adult stem cells without the parallel embryonic stem cell science." The bishops further adduce: “Researchers have even developed new non-destructive methods for producing cells with the properties of embryonic stem cells – for example, by ‘reprogramming’ adult cells.” However, on 30 January the International Society for Stem Cell Research issued a statement on the stem cell initiatives announced in President Bush’s State of the Union Address, which says: “The breakthrough in iPS cell research was made possible by several years of prior embryonic stem cell research. Embryonic stem cell research must continue if scientists are going to have the most modern and powerful research tools at their disposal”.

Despite these exclusions, the bishops write: “It now seems undeniable that once we cross the fundamental moral line that prevents us from treating any fellow human being as a mere object of research, there is no stopping point. The only moral stance that affirms the human dignity of all of us is to reject the first step down this path.” The concept of human dignity has been dealt with by Steven 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) – in an article for The New Republic entitled “The Stupidity of Dignity” (see blog of 23 May “The Stupidity of Dignity”). Denouncing dignity, for one thing, as a “squishy” concept (ambiguous, slippery, and vague), Pinker writes:

The concept of dignity is natural ground on which to build an obstructionist bioethics. An alleged breach of dignity provides a way for third parties to pass judgment on actions that are knowingly and willingly chosen by the affected individuals. It thus offers a moralistic justification for expanded government regulation of science, medicine, and private life. And the Church's franchise to guide people in the most profound events of their lives--birth, death, and reproduction--is in danger of being undermined when biomedicine scrambles the rules. It's not surprising, then, 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.

So, despite the best efforts of the US bishops, I can’t help but think about an article by professor of philosophy AC Grayling – and one of Britain’s foremost public intellectuals – published in The Guardian on 3 May 2006, which states that “it is the business of all religious doctrines to keep their votaries in a state of intellectual infancy (how else do they keep absurdities seeming credible?)”. Oh well, granted: I am not the most impartial person in the world.

Stem cells and morality

The police didn't wake us up in the middle of the night over the holiday weekend to tell us to pack our bags and leave the porch right away due to police "cleaning" the City of London of rough sleepers – we have been sleeping in this porch since being forced to become rough sleepers on 3 November 2006. As I wrote in the previous blog, the first time we were told to pack up and leave was on 9 May (see blog "Letter to the Mayor of London"), and after that, on 17 May (see blog "Letter to the British Prime Minister"). On the first occasion, PC 698B told us the "cleaning" would carry on for a month, so we may very well be visited again. (Sleeping in the porch is still eventful though. For example: this morning, for the first time in a year and a half, the cleaner – who since mid-April has been going in and out through the porch door every weekday morning between 4.00am and 5.15am (we get up at 4.30am) – cleaned the outside of the door while we were packing to leave; on Sunday night somebody threw a cigarette butt, burning a hole in my sleeping bag; and on Saturday night someone parked their car a few feet away, blasting music for forty-five minutes.)

Declan would like to send the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights more compelling evidence of a violation of Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights (see blog of 13 May "Letter to the European Court under Article 34") - 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. So, I would have two questions for the police officer(s): (a) could the ticket we each ought to be issued state that the reason for the encounter is the "cleaning" of rough sleepers from the City of London (on 9 May, PC 698B didn't even issue us tickets; on 17 May, PC 601B wrote that the reason for the encounter was "welfare" – although since when did being told at 1.50am on a Friday night to pack your bags and leave the porch you are sleeping in constitute "welfare"?); and (b) could the tickets state that refusal to leave carries a power of arrest (PC 698B told us to leave or he would arrest us; PC 601B told us we wouldn't be arrested if we didn't leave and wrote on each of our tickets "ATP" for Allowed To Proceed).

Sperm Swimming Towards Egg

The New Statesman this week carries a story entitled "Lisa Jardine on life and death", with the subheadline: "The new chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority did not seek a fight, but she is ready. Christians, she says, have no monopoly on morality." In April Jardine, the Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, former Booker Prize chair, councillor of the Royal Institution and prolific broadcaster, writer and commentator, became chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the regulatory body tasked with overseeing the areas covered by the new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (see blog of 20 May "UK parliament backs human-animal embryo research").

The article says that Jardine didn't even have time to settle into the role before the attacks began. Hybrid embryos, "saviour siblings", the role of fathers in IVF and amendments on abortion limits all provided plenty of issues on which temperatures could, and did, rise. At the end of March, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, condemned the bill's proposals on human-animal embryo research as "a public government endorsement of experiments of Frankenstein proportion", and the Anglican Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, said that all denominations of Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims, should object to what he called "species-bending".

Commenting on the Catholic view on hybrid embryos, which will not be allowed to live beyond 14 days, but whose creation the Church still considers to be an intolerable meddling with human life, Jardine says: "It was only relatively recently that the date at which the soul enters the embryo was moved back to fertilisation. St Augustine believed that it happened when the baby kicked in the womb - 17 weeks - and that suited for a very long time. This isn't conscience, this is Church ruling." (The New Statesman article adds that Pope Pius IX removed the distinction between "unformed" and "formed" foetuses in 1869; prior to that, a number of theologians, including Thomas Aquinas as well as Augustine, accepted that "ensoulment" occurred later than conception.)

So when does Jardine think that this mysterious, key stage of life, whatever one calls it, begins? "I think I need consciousness - I've a little bit of a philosophical temperament - and we're a hell of a way from consciousness at 14 days." She adds: "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?"

Jardine says she was surprised at the churches' reaction to hybrid embryos for research. When it was put to her by the New Statesman that for many religions - and especially today, when hardline or more strictly orthodox faiths are gaining ground - to obey conscience is not about deciding whether to follow edicts from the pulpit but simply to follow those edicts, Jardine replied: "I think it's not correct for any church to suggest that they have a monopoly on conscience. There is a debate to be had, a serious debate, about conscience." (Also in this week's New Statesman is philosopher Julian Baggini on deciding ethical issues. "When it comes to specific matters of morality, the idea that religious convictions need respect, not interrogation and defence, is absurd," he writes. "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. 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.")

Lisa Jardine has her own answer to the citadels of faith. "My church is education," she says. "It's no accident that I work in the period 1500-1700, which is the time when mass education altered the face of Europe for the better. Individual conscience is something you can't have unless you've been taught the autonomy of decision-making. I have to believe that education will take people beyond regulatory religion. That's why I go on teaching. I still teach because I believe every single person you educate, you help take moral decisions for themselves, rather than be told the rules. I have to believe it."

In a recent article for The New Republic entitled “The Stupidity of Dignity” (see previous blog), Steven 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 – poses the question: “How did the United States, the world's scientific powerhouse, reach a point at which it grapples with the ethical challenges of twenty-first-century biomedicine using Bible stories, Catholic doctrine, and woolly rabbinical allegory? Part of the answer, Pinker says, lies with the “outsize influence” of Leon Kass, the founding director of the President’s Council on Bioethics, who came to prominence in the 1970s with his moralistic condemnation of in vitro fertilization and, in 2001, convinced President Bush to outlaw federally funded research that used new embryonic stem cell lines.

“Kass packed it [the Council] with conservative scholars and pundits, advocates of religious (particularly Catholic) principles in the public sphere, and writers with a paper trail of skittishness toward biomedical advances, together with a smattering of scientists (mostly with a reputation for being religious or politically conservative),” Pinker writes. “After several members opposed Kass on embryonic stem-cell research, on therapeutic cloning (which Kass was in favor of criminalizing), and on the distortions of science that kept finding their way into Council reports, Kass fired two of them (biologist Elizabeth Blackburn and philosopher William May) and replaced them with Christian-affiliated scholars.”

It’s hard not to conclude that for the Catholic Church in Britain, in the short term at least, life under Kass might be very different to life under Jardine.