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”).

Hosed out of our sleeping pitch

Mike Di Scipio in a billboard he posted in New York City, 2004

As I said in the blog of 4 December “Charis Thompson: Why we should, in fact, pay for egg donation”, last Wednesday we learnt that the place where Declan gets his breakfast every weekday and I get my food for the day, the Catholic Sisters of Mercy Dellow Centre, is closed this week Monday to Wednesday, a first in over two years; and that I am pretty much on red alert: for example, two days after the date on a letter from the European Court of Human Rights advising that Declan’s case would be dealt with “as soon as practicable”, our main bag, containing all our money and documents, was robbed in the centre (see blog of 20 June “Letter from the European Court of Human Rights”). My eyes have been particularly on 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.

I’m afraid I could hardly be more spot-on: in addition to being told on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night to stay away until 1.00am due to there being a “function” (we get up at 4.20am M-F; 6.20am on weekends), this morning I was convinced Declan and I were heading for the local City of London police station to seek to make a statement in respect of the hosing of our property by a cleaner at 4.30am this morning. We don’t disturb or obstruct anybody; nevertheless, as soon as we got up two cleaners came out of the building: one threw a bucket of water down the steps, and shortly after, the other, for twenty minutes, hosed around us, spraying both me and our bags in the process (by the time we had packed to leave, the approximately four-inch deep gulley on two sides of us was almost overflowing). In over two years as rough sleepers we have never experienced anything like it; the closest was on 9 June when, under the watchful eye of a City of London police officer who had just threatened us with arrest if we did not “move on”, two cleaners from the City of London’s Cleansing service washed around our groundsheet, water pouring down the two steps of the porch onto the pavement (see blog of 9 June “Letter to the City of London Police Commissioner”).

We find it all a bit odd, especially since communications started out cordial between us and employees: we were visited by an employee within days, and on three occasions within the first two weeks we were given food. Also, according to the website of the company that owns the building, they are well respected and not only fund raise 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), but run a project for the homeless.

However, even if we had gone to the police station, we would still be back in the place tonight: on 10 September, after we bedded down elsewhere, I was arrested for refusing to move on as a result of having nowhere else to sleep (see blog of 11 September “I am arrested for breach of the peace”). And I don’t have to be reminded of the eventful two years in the porch, despite it being located in London’s financial district (I slept on the outside, Declan on the inside with our well-tied bags): for example, within two weeks somebody sat on the right hand side of my face (see blog of 18 November 2006); I was dragged out of the porch by the ankles while I was in my sleeping bag, then a few hours later I was kicked in the back (see blog of 5 May 2007); a guy repeatedly kicked me in the chest and shoulders as his mates stood by (see blog of 22 September 2007); and I was urinated on (see blog of 2 August). Declan was also jumped on, feet first, as he slept in the porch, and was especially fortunate not to have bones broken (see blog of 14 June). Since we have no option but to be in the street (see blog of 21 October “European Court of Human Rights declares application inadmissible”), we prefer to be at the back of a building, off the streets; though it seems not everyone shares this preference with us.

I mentioned in the previous blog that I believe there is a link between the little sleep we have been getting since Wednesday (and now the hosing) and the work I started early last week on the compensation of egg donors to boost the supply of human eggs needed for therapeutic cloning, also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). I expect the “functions”, and perhaps now also the hosing, will likely become a nightly occurrence, which is why in the previous blog I said that I am cutting my losses and concentrating exclusively on SCNT: I am putting together all the content that will be on my website in support of nuclear transfer – the blog of 1 November “Can a cell have a soul?” describes what this website will contain, including with respect to human embryonic stem (hES) cell research.

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

On the SCNT front, I was particularly interested to discover that the Empire State Stem Cell Board Ethics Committee (New York) is currently discussing the financial compensation of women who donate their eggs for research - the Committee makes recommendations regarding scientific, medical and ethical standards to the ESSC Board Funding Committee which oversees and administers $600 million in funding to promote stem cell research and development in New York State; $100 million was earmarked for FY 2007-2008 and $500 million was earmarked at $50 million per year for ten years beginning in FY 2008-2009. The minutes of the Committee’s meeting on 4 September reveals that Franciscan Friar Daniel Sulmasy, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Bioethics Institute of New York Medical College, “questioned whether New York State should go out on a limb and be the first to explicitly allow compensation of egg donors for research”. He also suggested that the Committee “should return to its discussions about the embryo and the unresolved issue of what the Committee means by ‘respect for the embryo’.” The Committee’s upcoming meeting is scheduled for 26 January.