Vatican Denounces Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Fertilisation Treatments

Wednesday last week Declan was diagnosed with a viral infection in the Royal London Hospital and is only now starting to recover. He got it while we were snoozing in the doorway of an unused building as we waited for 1.00am to bed down in our sleeping pitch – since 7 September we have been sleeping tucked away, about twenty paces from the side entrance of a building, down some twelve steps; prior to that we slept for almost two years in a porch. The previous blog gives a brief account of some of the events of late, so I won’t repeat myself. Of course we are still being told, pretty much every working night now, to stay away until 1.00am due to there being a “function” (we get up at 4.20am M-F; 6.20am on weekends), and on Monday we were again hosed out of the pitch. The company that owns the building is a Livery Company – a self-contained society with a strong commitment to charitable causes; it also plays an important part in the system of local government in the City of London, reflecting its historical roots (see www.heraldicmedia.com). In fact, communications started out cordial between us and employees: the company not only fund raises for science education (Declan’s petition to the UN on research cloning of embryos and stem cells has been signed by 587 scientists and academics, including 24 Nobel Laureates, despite months of serious spamming), but run a project for the homeless.

Press conference on bioethics at the Vatican on Friday

In its most authoritative declaration on bioethics for more than 20 years, the Vatican on Friday reinforced its hostility to a wide range of techniques and treatments that have become available in recent decades, said The Guardian. They included IVF, embryonic stem cell research, the morning-after pill and the contraceptive drug mifepristone. The 36-page document endorsed by Pope Benedict XVI also condemns the creation of hybrid human-animal embryos – demanded by researchers looking to cure diseases because of a shortage of human eggs – which is now legal in the UK thanks to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008.

The document stopped short of declaring that human embryos were people, according to The Guardian. The pope’s chief adviser on bioethical issues, Monsignor Rino Fisichella, told a press conference that such a declaration would have embroiled the Vatican in a “very complex philosophical debate”. But, he said, the document fully backed the idea that a human embryo had the “dignity typical of a person”. And he noted this was an “advance” on the position taken in the Vatican’s last high-level pronouncement, its 1987 instruction entitled Donum Vitae (The Gift of Life).

The formulation in its latest document, Dignitas Personae (The Dignity of the Person) comes close to equating with murder such practices as the destruction of defective embryos in IVF, said The Guardian. On one issue – what to do with frozen, “orphan” embryos – the Vatican admitted it was flummoxed. Dignitas Personae rules out every apparent solution: their destruction, their donation to infertile couples and their use for therapeutic or experimental purposes. It said that proposals for the adoption of unwanted embryos were “praiseworthy in intention”, but fraught with problems.

Fisichella’s predecessor as president of the Pontifical Pro-life Academy, Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, said: “Our basic advice is that the freezing [of the embryos] ought not to be done.” It created “a blind alley”; a situation “the correction of which implies another mistake”. Neither he nor any of the other Vatican officials at the presentation would venture an opinion on what they considered the lesser evil.

According to The Guardian, the document otherwise restates the Catholic church’s opposition to abortifacient forms of contraception, or those it regards as such. These include the world’s most widely used method of reversible contraception, the intrauterine device (IUD) or coil. Dignitas Personae said most forms of artificial fertilisation were “to be excluded” on the grounds that they replaced “the conjugal act” as a means of reproduction. And it said pre-implantation diagnosis during IVF, in which embryos are examined for defects or to determine gender or other characteristics, was “shameful and utterly reprehensible”.

Saying life was sacred from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death, the document also defended the Catholic church’s right to intervene on such matters. It accepted, however, that Catholic parents, especially in the US, might have no alternative to having their children inoculated with vaccines produced with cells from aborted foetuses. It also stressed that stem cell research “should be encouraged” if the tissue is obtained from adults, umbilical cord blood or foetuses that have died naturally (Hooper, The Guardian, 13/12).

Thomas Murray of the Hastings Center told the Washington Post
that the guide “is significant in the sense that the church has now laid down a marker on these important issues … The church has now dug in and committed itself to an official position.”

The document has drawn criticism from many groups, said the Washington Post. “The Vatican’s statement on bioethics shows that it is once again on the wrong side of science and the needs of contemporary society,” said Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice. Infertility doctors and stem cell researchers defended their efforts. “It has contributed to the quality of life of patients and families through the improved ability to have children, which clearly is a worthwhile goal and a focus of many couples in their life goals,” said Robert Brzyski of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Said George Daley of the International Society for Stem Cell Research: “Cells are not people and embryos are not people, and my first responsibility as a physician is to patients – not cells in a petri dish.”

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), argues in a piece in The New Republic titled “The Stupidity of Dignity” (posted 28 May) that 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,” he writes. “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” (see blog of 23 May “The Stupidity of Dignity”).

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”).

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”.

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).

Barred from the Dellow Centre?

We think that this morning could have seen us barred from the Catholic Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre, the place where we sometimes shower and eat breakfast every weekday – the only food available to me for the entire day (see previous blog). Despite six tables being available in the canteen – the place had just opened – the homeless that on Sunday, while in the Manna Centre, more or less told me I would be found one morning with a knife in my back decides to sit with me. He throws his newspaper on the table with such force it lands on the chair beside me and then proceeds to open it on top of mine; I had to move to another table. And when Declan goes for a shower – he is now washing and shaving in the street as a result of all the hassle from homeless while attempting to wash in the men's washroom, see blog of 10 April “Washing in the street” – a homeless takes offence that he grabbed a chair and begins shouting loudly at him (the word f**k and its variations got repeated quite a few times). Yet no member of staff came in, despite that one of the nuns is normally attending to the two washing machines in the next room. Needless to say, Declan left the washroom as quickly as he could and we left the premises.

We are wary of this morning, understandably I think, because this is exactly how we got ourselves barred from the Methodist Church Whitechapel Mission last June (the place we had been washing since we were forced to become rough sleepers on 3 November 2006): the day we got barred by the minister’s wife due to concerns about our safety, I was assaulted by a homeless woman out of the blue in the canteen. And although Declan wrote by registered post to the minister himself and to the head of the Methodist Church in the UK, Rev Graham Carter, we were never readmitted. (Oh, and we still can’t access our drafts in Google Mail while in the Tower Hamlets Council Idea Store Whitechapel (they are accessible in the internet café), which is unfortunate since all our emailing to try and raise £4,000 for our campaign to support Declan’s petition to the UN is done from there and I now have to go to greater pains to do the work. We are beginning to wonder if the European Court of Human Rights might have invited the Government to set out its observations on the merits and admissibility of our case - Declan received a letter from the Registrar in December turning down his request of 8 September for priority, but informing him that the Court would examine his application, also of 8 September, possibly before the end of January.)


Pope Benedict XVI and bishops at the Basilica of the National
Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington 16 April

On Wednesday, the second day of his six-day US tour, Pope Benedict XVI visited the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in northeast Washington to speak directly to some 300 bishops and nine cardinals of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He began by praising America's religious vitality and quickly turned to warning against the dangers of an ideology that he said threatens to reduce faith to a strictly private matter: secularism. "Is it," he asked, "consistent to profess our beliefs in church on Sunday, and then during the week to promote business practices or medical procedures contrary to those beliefs? Is it consistent for practicing Catholics to ignore or exploit the poor and the marginalized, to promote sexual behavior contrary to Catholic moral teaching, or to adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death?" How such remarks will be taken by the bishops remains to be seen, but some observers saw them as strong encouragement to requiring stronger fidelity to Catholic principles among those citizens who claim to be Catholic, including politicians.

Cardinal Justin Rigali, archbishop of Philadelphia and chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities, doesn't need words of encouragement. On 6 June, the day before the US House of Representatives voted in support of S5, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, Rigali urged all House members to reject the "misguided and unethical legislation”, adding: "Ethically sound research using non-embryonic stem cells has continued to advance, helping patients with over 70 conditions in clinical trials." He clearly disregarded a letter of 4 April 2007 from the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) - the primary international organisation of scientific, ethical, and clinical researchers in the field of stem cell biology – to all Senate members when S5 had been before the Senate. The ISSCR, which strongly supported S5 and believed this was the only bill before the US Congress that would accelerate research dedicated to finding better therapies for patients suffering from a variety of diseases, stated:

Passage of S5 would ensure that scientists in the United States can use Federal grant funds to study the many valuable human embryonic stem cell lines that have been developed since August 9, 2001, the date that President Bush announced his stem cell research policy ... You might hear during the debate about a list of 72 conditions that can supposedly be treated with adult stem cells. We urge you to question the validity of these claims. While adult stem cell therapies are powerful, they are not as wide-ranging as claimed. The range of diseases effectively treated with adult stem cells is still extremely restricted, largely limited to blood disorders and specific cancers. A vote for S5 will ensure that all avenues of stem cell research are adequately explored.

Rigali must not have been happy when S5 was passed by the House on 7 June by a vote of 247-176 (the US Senate had passed the legislation on 11 April 63-34). But his spirits certainly lifted when the legislation was vetoed by President Bush on 20 June: in a statement made the same day he criticized US congressional embryonic stem-cell advocates for "tragically" dismissing the medical advances made using adult stem cells. “I commend President Bush today for vetoing S5, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act,” the cardinal said. “This bill would not actually enhance stem cell research, but divert federal funds away from legitimate research toward avenues requiring the destruction of innocent human life.” He added: “The cause of science is not enhanced but diminished when it loses its moral compass.”

Pope visits the US

As I reported in the previous blog, Declan was getting so much hassle from the homeless in the Sisters of Mercy-run Dellow Centre men's washroom that he began washing and shaving in the street – alas, this morning it was raining and he couldn’t shave in the park as usual, so instead we had to walk to the Thames River via the Tower of London. Some homeless must be quite motivated because yesterday afternoon one of the regulars at the Dellow passed by Declan as he was at his pitch on Liverpool Street attempting to sell The Big Issue – a magazine sold by homeless people on registered street pitches – and shouted at him: “F***ing c**t”. And the day before, while in the Dellow, another homeless came from behind Declan singing “there will be blood on the street”. (On Sunday morning it was my turn: while in the Manna Centre, a homeless close by shouted I would be found one morning with a knife in my back. Speaking of the Manna (whose building is provided rent-free by the Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark): yesterday afternoon, after Declan had walked for an hour with his bags to get a lunch, a worker served him one spoon of bolognese meat while the homeless around him walked away with two helpings.)

Food at the Dellow continues to be scarce (along with everything else, see blog of 14 March “SpamCop reports Declan as a spammer”), although today the homeless got a small bowl of pasta and some fruit cocktail with custard. The Centre only provides food in the morning and that is what I eat for the entire day: a maximum of four Weetabix, a maximum of three toasts and a grated cheese sandwich – from which the grated cheese is sometimes removed – that the nuns in the kitchen give the homeless "for later". I am almost a size 8 now. (Oh, as from this morning, we can’t access Drafts in Google Mail – on 26 January all emails sent to Declan after 12 August 2007 were moved to the Trash and 300 draft documents, which included the names and email addresses of over 2,500 scientists, were deleted for good; and as for the porch we sleep in: as from yesterday, the cleaner that since January had been going in and out through the porch door every weekday morning between 5.00am and 5.30am, is now going in at 4.00am – blog of 26 March “We are seeking to raise £4,000” has some of the problems we have been experiencing of late.)

Pope Benedict XVI arrived for his first visit in the United States yesterday with the country consumed by a heated presidential election campaign. The Los Angeles Times has stated that "political parties courting Roman Catholic votes may seek to take advantage of the publicity surrounding his words and actions", while The New York Times writes that the Democratic campaigns of Sens Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have hired Catholic outreach directors, deployed an army of prominent Catholic surrogates testifying on their behalf and created mailings that highlight their commitment to Catholic social teachings on economic justice and the common good.

The LA Times has also stated that “Benedict is not expected to overtly speak of the campaign or US politics” but perhaps this is because his positions on burning social issues facing Americans are already well-known. Take embryo research. On 31 January Reuters reported that, during an address to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Pope Benedict stated that embryonic stem cell research (among others practices) had "shattered" human dignity and that the Church had a duty to defend the "great values at stake" in the field of bioethics - US Cardinal William Levada, Benedict's successor as head of the doctrinal department, said the CDF was mulling the possibility of preparing a new Vatican document on bioethical issues. The Pope also dismissed criticism that the Roman Catholic Church blocks scientific progress.

However, Professor Sir Martin Evans, who received the Nobel Prize for medicine last year, has hit back at opponents of embryo research. In a BBC article of 11 April, Professor Evans rejects recent criticism from the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who described the creation of animal-human hybrid embryos as unethical and immoral - Prime Minister Gordon Brown was forced last month to give Labour MPs a free vote on the Government’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which has faced condemnation from Catholic Church leaders (the bill, to be debated in the House of Commons in May, is designed to bring the 1990 regulatory framework for fertility treatment and embryo research in line with scientific advances).

Professor Evans urged MPs voting on embryo research legislation to "stop listening to the emotive arguments of religiously motivated pressure groups". He added:

Please look at the evidence. Don't immediately go for the knee-jerk reaction mainly powered by the 'yuck' factor. 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.

On 9 April the world's leading researchers in stem cells gathered in Edinburgh to spread the message that experts must be allowed to continue to study stem cells in their many forms to push the science towards the ultimate goal: new treatments for those suffering serious disease. The UK National Stem Cell Network steering committee, which organised the three-day conference, stated the following in a press release on 31 March:

Medical researchers need to be able to derive embryonic stem cells – from both human embryos and human admixed, or ‘hybrid’, embryos in order to fully understand pluripotency. Only by understanding how pluripotent stem cells have the capability to become any cell in the human body will scientists be able to develop therapies for currently incurable degenerative diseases. The UKNSCN is calling for MPs to enshrine tight regulations in the HFE Bill but to ensure that all types of derivation remain open to researchers. Although some recent research suggests that the reprogramming of adult cells could be an effective way of producing pluripotent stem cells, this work is in its infancy and will still require benchmarking against human embryonic cells.

Endgame

Last night in the porch we sleep in at night, we were treated to one of the most prolonged sleep deprivations yet – its pinnacle being some guy that decided to lie down on the top end of my sleeping bag at 4.00am, fifty minutes before we get up.

We knew something was up when we found over a dozen large bags of rubbish and a broken office chair inside the porch (last Friday it was eight bags of rubbish – a first) which Declan had to move to the pavement for collection. When at 9.30pm the bin lorry collected the rubbish from across the street – and ignored ours – I was totally resigned to the fact that the contents of one of the bags might end up on top of me during the night (last Saturday an open rubbish bag was left beside my head while I was asleep).

Luckily, at about 10.00pm the bin men came back and collected all the rubbish – leaving of course the broken chair, which Declan, always prudent, brought back into the porch. Then it was the usual procession of people (of late) going in and coming out of the office building through the porch door between 10.30pm and 11.15pm. (Declan now sleeps wearing runners inside his sleeping bag because on Tuesday night, well, somebody coming out of the building at 11.00pm narrowly missed stamping on his feet.)

Things got more bizarre at 4.00am when some guy decided to have a nap in the porch – without the slightest concern that he was going down on his back on top of the end of my sleeping bag and with his legs stretched out on the sidewalk. A few minutes later he is touched by a policeman: he doesn’t tell him the obvious, which is that it may be a bit unsafe for him to be sleeping in a porch which is already occupied by two rough sleepers, but informs him that he is “totally entitled” to remain where he is. When did this feisty character leave? At 4.40am, when two friends came around – one of them walked across our ground sheet while the other took some memento photos of his sleepy friend with his mobile phone.

Declan’s selling of The Big Issue on his pitch in Liverpool Street is becoming increasingly more difficult: on Thursday he actually had to walk off the pitch again, this time after a distributor of City AM (a free London daily business paper) moved from where she was handing papers to passers-by into Declan’s pitch. After Declan told the girl that two people can’t work the pitch at the same time, she just said “ok” and continued passing papers in front of him – meaning: you leave. (In the evenings, the distributor of London Lite has been permanently encroached on Declan’s pitch to his own detriment – I should add – because by moving in on Declan’s pitch, he has been missing most people coming out of the train station and many going into it, approximately 30% of his business.)

So because we are trying to avoid becoming (illegal) beggars, Declan sent that very same morning another email to the Big Issue outreach manager Paul Joseph, which he also sent by registered post to the founder of the magazine, Dr John Bird. It reads:

Subject: City AM

Dear Paul

I refer to the telephone message I left for you this morning, wherein I graphically describe the unprecedented takeover of my McDonalds pitch on Liverpool Street (pitch no. 1408) by the above free daily business newspaper.

Having had to walk off the pitch to abide by the rule that a vendor shall not "argue or fight over pitches with … street traders", please advise how you can help me to maximise sales on this pitch, which I have had protected by pitch authorisation slip and pitch listings since the beginning of December 2006.

Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey
Badge no. 1163

cc Dr John Bird, Editor-In-Chief, The Big Issue (by registered post)

Things are so hot now that as well as washing in the street and in toilets – Declan and I were barred from the Methodist-run Whitechapel Mission on 18 June by the wife of the minister due to concerns about our safety after I was assaulted there that morning by a homeless woman – we are also doing our laundry in the launderette. We used to arrive every Monday at 7.00am at the gates of the Sisters of Mercy-run Dellow Centre so that when they would open at 9.15am we would be the first in the queue and therefore get a washing machine. Well, last Monday when we arrived at 6.55am there were already homeless queuing, which meant in all probability that we wouldn’t get a washing machine … so we kept walking.

Speaking of the Dellow Centre, last Friday I had to wash in one of their toilet cubicles with a wet towel and some shower gel after a homeless woman (the same homeless that two Thursdays ago stepped into the shower just seconds before I was going to step in myself) stormed past me into the women’s washroom as I was taking a couple of towels from the laundry room – it looked as well as if she had been waiting for me despite that this time I purposefully arrived at the place twenty-five minutes later than usual (they close at 11.30am and don't open during the weekend).

In an article in this week’s New Statesman titled “Am I a dwarf or a horseman?” Christopher Hitchens says that “he [Tony Blair] has been important to all of us who believe that peaceful coexistence with totalitarian and aggressive regimes (and ideologies) is neither possible nor desirable. It is this point of principle that ought to eclipse all others.”

Alas, he has also been important to the Christian church in Britain. Commenting on the departure of Blair – widely regarded as one of the most religious Prime Ministers since Gladstone – Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society said: “Tony Blair has done more to undermine the secular nature of British society than anyone in recent history.” For example, in 2003 he set up the Faith Communities Liaison Group to encourage partnership between government and religious communities – thus undermining the entrenched secularism of modern British politics, as religious communities have been encouraged to play an increasingly active role in civic and political life.

Wood goes on: “By consulting religious leaders about policy-making he has emboldened them. They now regularly use their new-found power to seek to thwart socially progressive legislation and make self-serving demands, including for the suppression of freedom of expression and the restriction of the human rights of others.” I would like to add here that Declan and I being homeless in the street is just a perfect example of the influence of religion on government.

So I found rather amusing Tony Blair's audience with Pope Benedict XVI on 23 June and the speculation that the former British leader will convert to Catholicism – Blair's wife Cherie is a Catholic, the couple's children have attended Catholic schools, and Blair habitually attends Catholic rather than Anglican services. The Act of Settlement of 1700 requires the monarch to be a member of the Church of England and to not marry a Catholic. However although it has been possible for a Catholic to head the government since 1829, when the Catholic Emancipation Act allowed members of the faith to be elected to Parliament, Britain has not had a Catholic prime minister.

Tony Blair – a Catholic? Well, I never.