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.

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.

Declan still recuperating

Declan is now getting over his “viral infection”. Gone are the sweats and the shivers and the fever, the only remaining symptom is the headache. When last Friday we returned to the Royal London Hospital (where he was hospitalised from 2-4 October but only treated with Paracetamol tablets and a fan one afternoon to reduce his temperature), he was told he had been discharged and that if he had problems he should go to the hospital’s Walk-In Centre. And what of Declan’s temperature of 39.1C, which had been taken by me with one of the hospital’s own 3M Tempa Dot Single Use Clinical Thermometers? Well, they are apparently quite unreliable things.

So a combination of Paracetamol and the Ibuprofen and Codeine Declan obtained on Friday afternoon from Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World), as well as almost total inactivity during the weekend, has more or less done the trick – at 9.00am on Saturday, when we were waiting for the Idea Store Whitechapel library to open, Declan’s face was colourless and big drops of sweat dripped from everywhere, really.

I was a bit worried early this morning because we were on our respective pitches at Liverpool Street Station selling The Big Issue and it was raining – Declan got sick after rain got through the bottom of his runners and wet his socks – but no, it looks like the infection is nearly over. It wouldn’t be thanks to the clothes that the Sisters of Mercy-run Dellow Centre gave me yesterday though. First, on Friday morning I was told by the nun in charge of clothes to come back on Monday, and on Monday she handed me an almost empty bag (I haven’t asked her for anything since 11 April and of course I don’t have to dig deep in my memory to remember why). I suspect I am wasting my time having another bash at asking for more clothes – so things on that front are a bit tricky. But perhaps not tricky enough: last night the alarm of the porch we sleep in at night flashed a blue light all night.

On Saturday, Declan wrote to the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights in further reference to his application of 8 September and with particular regard to his urgent request for expedition of the same date:

Application no. 22541/07
Heavey v. the United Kingdom

                                RULE 41-URGENT

Dear Sir/Madam

In further reference to my urgent request for expedition under Rule 41 of the European Convention on Human Rights made on 8 September 2007 (with particular regard to the reasons cited for the necessity of expedition), I enclose for the attention of the Court copy of Discharge Summary Report of 4 October 2007 from the Royal London Hospital certifying that I was admitted on 2 October with a viral infection.

I also enclose copy of prescription of 5 October 2007 from Medecins du Monde UK for Ibuprofen 400mg for 4 weeks and Codeine Phosphate 30mg for 1 week.

I also re-enclose copy of my letter and enclosures of 22 September 2007 to Chief Superintendent Ken Stewart of Bishopsgate Police Station regarding my (illegal) begging and severe assault on my wife.

I beg to again point out that under the heading “Necessity of expedition”, the aforementioned urgent request for expedition of 8 September states the following:

An urgent expedition is necessary in this instance because of the violations of the applicant's human rights already existing and are likely to be even greater. The right that will be violated is the right to private and family life by the threat to the applicant of being severely assaulted, becoming seriously ill and/or being reduced to begging. This would constitute a threat of irreparable and serious harm. Being reduced to begging is a threat that is imminent given that the applicant’s savings have already been exhausted.

Yours faithfully

Declan Heavey

Mario Capecchi and Oliver Smithies of the United States and Sir Martin Evans of Britain won the Nobel Medicine Prize yesterday for their research with stem cells. Their discoveries on embryonic stem cells developed a technology called gene targeting in mice that can inactive genes, providing information on their roles in various diseases. They can change any gene, disabling or enabling it. The manipulations are carried out in embryonic stem cells, then it's reintroduced to the mouse, where it's incorporated by the germ cells – sperm and eggs – so that the desired change is reliably passed on to a new generation of mice. Evans is widely credited with the discovery of embryonic stem cells.

In relation to NAC’s campaign for embryonic stem cell research, I am still doing my research but getting quite close to figuring out the campaign’s first take action. Declan and I are particularly taken by the work and accomplishments of Italian Luca Coscioni, who, before dying of amiotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2006 at the age of 39, had received the support of 96 Nobel Laureates in his appeal in support of freedom of scientific research. Portuguese Nobel Laureate in Literature, José Saramago, wrote to Coscioni:

Perhaps the support of a mere writer like me might be rather out of place in the list of renowned scientists who, by means of their names and their prestige, have put a seal on the statements made by Luca Coscioni in his letter of 20 March, so clear and moving. In any case, you are welcome to use my name. So that the light of reason and of human respect may illuminate the gloomy spirits of those who still believe, and will always believe, that they are the masters of our destiny. We had been waiting a long time for the day to dawn, we were tired of waiting, but suddenly the courage of a man struck dumb by a terrible disease gave us new strength. Thank you for this.