If enacted, the Gene Technology Bill will take us further away from our Kiwi foundational principles and our cultural heritage of independence and care.

The Bill signals a proposed new direction for New Zealand in alignment with and subsidiary to the world’s leading biotechnology nations that will have a radical effect on our food and our health. Yet if we reflect on the results of the biotech sector so far, by and large these are meagre, fleeting, unprofitable and unhealthy. We live in an increasingly complicated globalised technological world that is endangering health and life.

The good news last week was the announcement that the Health Select Committee has once again delayed its report on the Gene Technology Bill, this time until October 11th. This was due to the behind the scenes concerns of Winston Peters and New Zealand First. Both Peters and Luxon labelled the issue “complicated”. They are right. The delay gives us some more time to make this an election issue that won’t disappear. If you need reminding about the content of the Bill see here. Below we analyse the latest scientific evidence and the evolving issues for New Zealand.

Excess deaths continue

A Japanese study entitled “Significant Increase in Excess Deaths after Repeated COVID-19 Vaccination in Japan” provides some further background on the nation with the highest uptake of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in the world. The Japanese had received 3.6 doses per capita by March 2024 compared to 2.5 doses per capita in New Zealand. Around 80% of the population were vaccinated, the average figure equates to a range between 0—8 COVID-19 mRNA vaccines per person. 

As we have previously reported in our article The Unthinking Faith in Biotechnology and A.I., Japan now has the highest rate of excess deaths in the world. From January 2020 to March 2024, there have been a cumulative 350,000 excess deaths or 2,730 excess deaths per million. This rate is three times higher than the USA where mRNA vaccination uptake was significantly lower, and two times higher than New Zealand.

mRNA COVID-19 vaccination was the flagship product of the vast biotechnology industry designed to cement a biotech era of novel medicines, long life and new channels to gain economic prosperity. But the vaccine did not stop the spread of COVID-19 infection and its administration has been accompanied by a rate of reported adverse effects unprecedented in history. Initial claims that the vaccine was saving millions of lives have since been debunked. The preposterous 14 million lives saved claim promoted by WHO, has now been downgraded by the study of Ioannidis et al. to somewhere around 2.5 million confined to older people. Even this lower figure is in turn now being robustly questioned in the review literature. mRNA vaccination was not just a failure, it was deadly.

Flagship biotech companies are failing

As a result, it is hard to escape the notion that the global biotech industry with a current market valuation of $1.74 trillion grossly inflated by speculation has become a headless chicken, still running around while effectively dead. There are more than 20,000 biotech start-ups mostly funded by governments but also by private investment in the most active biotechnology nations. These include the USA, China, India, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Singapore, Israel, UK, Finland, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Japan.

In the US alone more than 2 million people are employed in the biotech sector. Following the dismal and dire results of mRNA technology, the investors, scientists and bio technocrats are being forced to face the reality of failure. Take Arena Bioworks for example, a company launched in January 2024 with huge fanfare and US $500 million of funding. It included the support of billionaires and the participation of a galaxy of highly credentialed biotech scientists. Arena’s announced intention was to become the “Bell Labs” of biotech “to simply do nothing but science” in order to “tackle the [world’s] most daunting problems.”

In March of this year Arena laid off 10% of its workforce, two days ago a further 30% were laid off. A spokesperson for Arena confirmed the cuts will mostly affect cell and gene therapy work which was, until the reality of adverse effects began to bite, the flagship program of biotech research around which its supposed health claims revolved.

Corporate biotech is launching a fightback, trying to protect its markets by placing opinion pieces in the legacy media.  

On August 19th the Wall Street Journal opinion column headlined “RFK Jr.’s Misguided War on mRNA” misdescribing more careful safety regulation as an effort “to tarnish a promising technology, a move that could damage U.S. innovation”. On August 15th a Washington Post opinion piece headlined “I witnessed Operation Warp Speed. Trump’s refusal to defend it is baffling.” It cited a now discredited three year old study which claimed the COVID-19 vaccines saved three million lives in the US and described the development of COVID-19 vaccines as “a masterstroke of American competition”. The NY Times opinion columns on August 18th led with “America Is Abandoning One of the Greatest Medical Breakthroughs“. It laments the Department of Health and Human Services decision to wind down 22 mRNA vaccine development projects under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, halting nearly $500 million in government biotech investments. Whilst admitting the vaccines had problems and side effects, the article rolled out a version of that tired old saw “give us another chance and some more money, we will get it right next time”. 

Biotech is profiting only when it can bypass safety testing

All this visible opposition to the sensible strengthening of medical safety testing standards means precautionary thinking is actually winning, so the biotech industry is trying any way it can to bypass the tightening of health regulation.

Look around the world today and you see the medical sector of the biotech industry crying out for more government funding and less regulation. In the face of repeated failures, astronomical costs and unprecedented rates of adverse effects, they are justifying their calls for more money by making promises they have no hope of meeting; all the while refusing to face the consequences of COVID-19 pandemic mistakes. As a consolation, they are unethically reaping what profits they can by applying exotic mRNA gene therapies to the lightly regulated animal veterinary sector, polluting the food chain.

Corporate biotech is also aligning itself with A.I. in an effort to tap into the current tsunami of A.I. investment. Make no mistake, it’s odds on that novel damaging illness is going to crawl out of the mass gene editing of millions of life forms under A.I. computer control. Software protocols experimenting on DNA. This is computers deciding how to edit humans. This is not science fiction, it is happening right now. Just remember that there are up to 10 million codons in the human genome in total, but a single codon out of place can cause fatal inherited illnesses like Huntington’s.

Meanwhile in the food sector, biotech companies are flying under the radar profiting through the introduction of biotech food processing aids and additives along with bio-edited synthetic copies of natural ingredients where any real requirement for safety testing has been removed. As we have been reporting (here and here), they have convinced regulators that industry-certified GRAS (Generally Recognised As Safe) principles will be sufficient in the food processing sector. In other words, they are asserting gene altered food and biotech production methods are safe by definition. But here too the deaths are mounting as the rapidly rising incidence of cancers is mostly being blamed on processed food consumption (AKA biotech processed foods).

The Gene Technology Bill runs counter to our New Zealand national interests

The direction being promoted by the New Zealand Gene Technology Bill amounts to the deregulation of biotechnology experimentation along with acceptance of the false principle that biotechnology is inherently safe and equivalent to natural processes. In addition, there are provisions for emergency authorisation of biotech medicines. Make no mistake about it, the absence of labelling requirements in the Bill is the result of intense lobbying by the biotech sector, they know the public are rightly suspicious of gene editing and they are demanding the right to alter traditional ingredients, processing methods, crops and medicines without being required to disclose what they are doing. In essence this is anti science, anti safety and anti life. Taken as a whole the Bill will simply be rubber stamping everything that was wrong with our government’s pandemic policy. It ignores the harm to the health of the nation we have suffered for the last five years (The latest June 2025 figures for deaths/ 1000 population are still elevated 2.5% above the pre-pandemic levels).  Moreover the Bill will cast aside any hope of maintaining the clean green image of New Zealand that is the basis of our agricultural export promotions and sales.

If the passage of the Gene Technology Bill is denied, New Zealand will be sending a message to the world that there is something very wrong with biotechnology industry practice. The unscientific paradigm driving the false dreams of health and longevity is deficient in understanding and safety. 

Who or what is to blame?

What happened in New Zealand during the pandemic was part and parcel of a global biotech overstep, we should realise that all New Zealand political parties in power at the time would certainly have made the same decisions if not worse. The COVID-19 virus emerged from biotechnology experimentation and COVID-19 vaccinations emerged from a biotech world of hype and hope that was not founded in reality. A glance at prior research findings should have been more than sufficient to realise that safety issues were proving insurmountable. Instead, known adverse mutagenic effects in the pre-pandemic years were swept under the carpet, while around the world governments, health authorities and the public were force fed an unremitting diet of false promises of ‘safety and efficacy’ and herded into decisions that ultimately lead to an economic and health catastrophe.

Incomplete science along with a disregard for safety testing and public health on the part of multinational food, pharmacy and biotech companies and their owners and principle investors bear the main burden of responsibility for the thirty million lives lost during the pandemic. Governments and their military wings had for years been naively believing in the false promises of the biotechnology industry. As we have discussed in hundreds of well argued and well referenced articles, the missing piece of the jigsaw lies in something unique to life that is literally staring us in the face whenever we look in a mirror, our own self behind the mask—the puppet master of bodily life: awareness. The whole biotech faulty paradigm of life has been constructed without a foundation in consciousness—the hallmark of the living—as if we were all just insentient machines. Nothing could be further from our own experience and the truth of life.

Our cause

New Zealand can face up to the glaringly obvious deficiencies in the current biotech misunderstanding about life by simply rejecting the Gene Technology Bill and requiring upgraded safety testing and labelling rules including information about GM processing methods and the presence of trace contamination residues. The New Zealand Bill of Rights should be elevated to a constitutional principle along with appropriate clauses protecting consumer choice. Biotechnology experimentation on the germlines of living organisms needs to be outlawed. No one anywhere in the world should be doing gain of function research or editing traditional food sources. 

By rejecting the Gene Technology Bill, we will be cementing a leading place for New Zealand in the rapidly growing global market for healthy natural foods, cosmetics, and medicines. We will continue to stand apart from the crowded world stage and chart our own course of health, self-sufficiency and common sense. This is not an anti-science option, as more and more studies of pandemic outcomes are being published, it is becoming crystal clear that the ideas driving biotechnology are completely at odds with the evidence. Genes form a network grounded in the quantum mechanical nature of physical reality. This genetic network supports the expression of our human consciousness and its highest ideals. Tinker with that only at the gravest peril to civilization. As the figures from Japan should be teaching us: ultimately billions of lives are at stake.

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You may have noticed a profusion of packaged goods which claim to be healthy because they are ‘low fat’. Weight loss products command a massive global market, the sector is worth $150 billion annually in the US alone. The entire global food market is worth $17 trillion. Securing a piece of this pie is a mouth watering prospect. Any advertising edge that producers can get through false healthy claims is readily adopted, no questions asked. So what does this mean for our stomach? Let’s take a look behind the glossy packaging and health claims.

For example, chocolates are now appearing from major brands on our supermarket shelves which contain so called ‘fat-reduced cocoa’ accompanied in some cases with claims they contain ‘lower calories’. When it comes to ‘fat reducing’ there is not a lot of information on the label. This is because there is no legal requirement to identify the source of many ingredients, simply to give them a name, specify a function and list them in order of quantity.

Among low fat alternatives offered in the US was the Gatsby 180 Calories per bar Chocolate Style Fudge Brownie, until that is people tasted it. A normal 80gm chocolate bar contains around 450 calories. Uber eats used to recommend the Gatsby which was described as a gluten-free, dairy-free, low-sugar, low-carb, and low-fat package of guilt-free indulgence which mimics the taste and texture of fudgy, chewy brownie batter. So what is not to like? Aside that is from the taste, and certainly the ingredients, all of which are widely used in New Zealand. These are listed in order of weight content in the Gatsby as follows:

Allulose, EPG modified plant based oil, Soluble Corn Fibre, Cocoa processed with Alkali, Palm Kernel Oil, Sugar, Sunflower Lecithin, and Natural Flavour

Actual chocolate content is fourth on the list, so what are the other ingredients for and how are they made? 

1. Allulose

Official description: A rare low-calorie sugar that doesn’t raise blood sugar; It is US FDA GRAS-Approved safe (GRAS=Generally Recognised As Safe, a status which simply exempts a substance from going through any premarket food additive evaluation. In other words, its safety has been self-certified by industrial food manufacturers.)

Actual Origin: Allulose is produced using genetically engineered microorganisms capable of enzymatically converting fructose or sugar into something else that still tastes something like sugar but isn’t actually sugar, and btw highly likely now contains trace contamination by genetically engineered microorganisms such as Corynebacterium glutamicum strain FIS002 and E. coli strain K-12 W3110 (pWKLP) which contains multiple copies of D-psicose 3-epimerase. These along with other reactive catalytic processing and preservative agents including antibiotic genes, antibiotic resistant genes and cell proliferation agents.

New Zealand Use: Allulose is currently approved for use in New Zealand baked goods up to 10% by weight (!!!). It is also widely marketed as a healthy super food alternative sweetener by New Zealand health food companies. FSANZ is currently going through an approval process to allow general use in the food industry.

2. EPG modified plant based oil  

Official description: Esterified Propoxylated Glycerol is a calorie reduced fat substitute which is not absorbed like regular fat. It has been safety tested and is FDA GRAS approved.

Actual Origin: The manufacturing process involves a patented technology that starts with splitting fats or oils (like rapeseed or canola oil) into glycerol and fatty acids. Glycerol is then reacted with propylene oxide. This process inserts propylene glycol units (PGUs) onto the glycerol’s hydroxyl groups, creating a modified glycerol molecule. The modified glycerol is then reacted with fatty acids. This process essentially re-links the fatty acids and glycerol, but with the PGUs in between, forming the EPG molecule. This results in a fat that’s resistant to digestion and reduces calories. In other words at the very least it has no nutritional value and is rejected by human bowel and digestive processes. Regulators consider it non-toxic although higher doses of EPG can cause some digestive issues like gas or oily stools.

New Zealand Use: EPG is used in various food applications, including confectionery, frying, baked goods, and snack foods although limited information is available about specific products. It is marketed as healthier and more sustainable than commonly used coconut and palm oils

3. Soluble Corn Fibre 

Official description: A prebiotic fibre from corn which aids digestion and doesn’t spike blood sugar.

Actual Origin: Soluble corn fibre is a type of dietary fibre or maltodextrin made from cornstarch. It’s produced using enzymatic hydrolysis, a process that involves breaking the chemical bonds of a molecule using enzymes produced by genetically modified microorganisms. It is consequently subject to genetic contamination as described in (1) above. 92% of the corn processed in this way is also grown from genetically modified strains. In higher quantities it can cause digestive issues like gas or bloating.

New Zealand Use: It is widely used in New Zealand to thicken or sweeten processed foods like cereals, baked goods, dairy products, protein bars, and salad dressings. Because it absorbs water in the digestive tract it is also marketed as a healthy digestive aid and weight loss product.

4. Cocoa processed with Alkali

Official description: A Dutch process invented in the 19th century which reduced the natural acidity and bitter taste.

Actual Origin: The alkalising agents employed vary, but include potassium carbonate (E501), sodium carbonate (E500), and sodium hydroxide (E525). The process also reduces the beneficial natural phytochemical and antioxidant characteristics of chocolate.

New Zealand Use: Almost universal in chocolate goods

5. Palm Kernel Oil 

Official description: A saturated fat from palm seed which is stable for cooking, safe in moderation and balanced with other oil sources. It is non-hydrogenated.

Actual Origin: It is pressed from palm kernels then refined using a four stage process of degumming, deacidification, decolourisation, and deodorization. Degumming involves the use of a genetically modified strain of aspergillus niger fungus to produce phospholipase enzymes. The other processes involve bleaching, treatment with alkalis and high temperature distillation. All of which degrade nutritional value as opposed to traditional cold pressing.

New Zealand Use: Widespread use in foods and cosmetics

6. Sugar

Although sugar can be made from genetically modified sugar beets, the refining process of extraction, clarification, and crystallisation is considered sufficient to break down any DNA or protein which btw also reduces its nutritional value. The health risks of high sugar intake are well known including weight gain and obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and tooth decay. Excessive sugar consumption can also contribute to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, some cancers, and potentially worsen depression. These health risks are not limited to sugar, many so-called healthy sugar alternatives pose comparable or worse health risks.

7. Sunflower Lecithin 

Official description: An emulsifier made from sunflower seeds. Emulsifiers help to mix ingredients smoothly. FDA and EFSA GRAS approved safe and well tolerated.

Actual Origin: Sunflower lecithin can be produced naturally by dehydrating sunflower seeds and separating them into oil, gum, and solids. The lecithin is extracted from the gum through a cold pressing process which avoids exposure to heat and oxygen. However an increasing amount of modern lecithin production now uses phospholipase enzymes, particularly phospholipase A1 and A2, which are produced using genetically modified microorganisms and therefore subject commercial lecithin to the same risks of GM contamination listed above in (1). A 2021 study published in the journal Microbiome entitled “Direct impact of commonly used dietary emulsifiers on human gut microbiota” raised questions about the effect of commercial emulsifiers increasing bowel inflammation. This was not found with any of the lecithin they tested, although the authors called for more research.

New Zealand Use: Many types of Lecithin are used widely in confectionery, chocolate, margarine, and baked goods. It is also sold as a health supplement along with dubious claims that it will improve brain and cardiovascular health, support the liver and aid breastfeeding mothers.

8. Natural Flavour

Official description: The term ‘natural flavour’ implies a flavour derived from natural sources like plants or animals.

Actual Origin: It is possible for ingredients labelled as ‘natural flavours’ to be derived from genetically modified sources. The use of the term ‘natural’ doesn’t exclude the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the production process. Specifically, flavour compounds can be produced by genetically engineered microbes and still be labeled as natural.

New Zealand Use: Products labelled as containing natural vanilla flavour, lemon flavour or strawberry flavour for example do not have to be derived from a vanilla bean, a lemon or a strawberry. In fact, they are highly unlikely to be so derived.

Bowel cancer rates worldwide are increasing. In New Zealand, early-onset colorectal cancer is experiencing a significant rise, particularly among younger individuals. While overall colorectal cancer rates in older age groups have decreased, early-onset cases (in those under 50) have increased by 26% per decade over the past 20 years, according to a study by the University of Otago. This increase is even more pronounced in the Māori population, with a 36% increase per decade in those under 50. Processed foods and ingredients are among the suspected culprits. Is FSANZ (Food Standards Australia and New Zealand) doing a good job of protecting our health or is it rubber stamping contaminated industrial food production? You tell me.

High bowel cancer rates indicate that FSANZ is not listening to warnings or taking a sufficiently precautionary approach. Virtually the only way we can start to influence the situation and avoid long term risks to dietary health is through our retail food choices. This is how Gatsby chocolate failed to find a sustained market. Cold pressed oils, whole foods, pure ingredients, organic produce, unrefined goods. Fresh rather than packaged. Home grown and home cooking. For more information see our previous article “Major Health Alert: the Extraordinary Genetically Modified Invasion of Our Supermarkets by Stealth.

Speak to your supermarket purchaser to encourage real natural alternatives, read the labels and treat the advertising hype with discretion.

We are now publishing our GLOBE articles at substack.com which probe deeper into the foundational principles of biotechnology and the alternatives. You can subscribe for regular updates to your email inbox which do not duplicate Hatchard Reports. Our latest is “Part Two The Long Read: Twenty Reasons to Completely Reject Biotechnology Experimentation: Consciousness-Based Alternatives which was published over the weekend.

RCR’s Gerry Pyves had me on last week for an in depth personal interview. You can listen in to a lifetime retrospective at https://rcr.media/episodes/guy-hatchard-food-safety-natural-medicine-advocate-consciousness-genetics-and-social-change.

If you enjoy reading our unique scientifically referenced and carefully researched content and find it useful, please don’t forget we rely on your support. A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed over the years. One off donations or small regular contributions keep us going. Naturally some contributors have had to drop out as priorities or financial circumstances change. We hope that other readers can consider stepping forward to help us according to your resources in order to meet our budget needs. With very best wishes.

Dr. Guy Hatchard, PhD.

Shane Jones MP has announced that the NZ First party will not support the
genetic modification of plants and animals unless there are very good
safeguards in place. This is a step in the right direction, but not enough. No
doubt the Health Select Committee has postponed any announcement on
the Gene Technology Bill because the National Party and ACT are
scrambling to come up with a version of the Bill which NZ First will support.
Therefore more needs to be done to educate the party. The pandemic should
have taught us that there are no adequate safeguards. Genetic modification
which cannot be contained, recalled or remediated. We need to contact NZ
First MPs to thank them but also to reiterate the dangers and pitfalls.

There seems to be some kind of perception growing that whilst genetic
modification of plants and animals should be approached with extreme
caution, nothing should stand in the way of medical research because of the
promised benefits for healthcare. This argument actually increases the risks.
The gain of function research programme at the Wuhan Virology Lab,
supported by members of the biotechnology fraternity from around the
world, was dedicated to developing a virus that was more infective and more and more deadly than the common cold. They succeeded. Since the escape of the manmade Covid virus and the introduction of novel biotech vaccines Our World in Data has calculated there have been more than 30 million excess deaths worldwide.

Last week we announced that we have transferred our GLOBE writing to Substack.com where we will publish articles setting out the reasons for the worldwide cessation of biotechnology experimentation. Two days ago we published an article The Long Read: Twenty Reasons to Completely Reject Biotechnology Experimentation Part 1. This morning I received an email from a new reader at the site who is an internationally recognised authority on the brain. They wrote:

“Many thanks, this is an excellent synthesis….you should fill it out and publish a short work on Amazon…I would very much like to see an expanded version”

We believe that GLOBE will reach a bigger audience at Substack and we very much encourage you to subscribe to our Substack posts and share them widely. They will not be duplicating our HatchardReport.com releases, so this will not burden your email inbox.

How did the biotechnology paradigm develop in the wrong direction?

In 1900 the world of physics was in crisis. The accepted classical theory predicted that radiation from a black body such as a wood burning stove would increase infinitely at the ultraviolet end of the spectrum. Experiment showed it didn’t. Max Planck proposed an elegant solution. Energy, he said, did not exist in continuous values, it was divided into discrete packets he called quanta. The resulting revolution in understanding led to the evolution of quantum mechanics, but it wasn’t adopted without a fight that rumbled on well into the twentieth century. The essential mistake was the belief that the microscopic world of the atom could be described in the same terms as the mechanical understanding of the macroscopic world around us that Newton and his successors elaborated. It couldn’t.

Today biotechnologists are making the same class of mistake, fundamentally they believe in a naive interpretation of molecular DNA that treats it as a linear alphabet, akin to the written word on the page, which arose through random evolutionary processes which can therefore be safely edited. It can’t be. Just as physicists couldn’t see the atom and its components, biotechnologists cannot directly see DNA and its functions. The properties of DNA have been inferred from indirect measurements using sophisticated equipment whose results unfortunately are being interpreted using a classical perspective. But the microscopic world is not classical, a hundred and twenty five years ago Planck proved that it is quantum mechanical.

The quantum world is not just composed of discrete packets of energy as opposed to classical continuous spectra, its states evolve in an abstract probability space which responds to the observer. It stores memories of past interactions which link distant entities together across time and space. It transcends our classical ideas of causality which are based on the billiard table where one ball hits another and then follows a continuous path to a definable goal. In today’s iterations of quantum ideas, time and space, rather than being the theatrical backdrop of every event, have become secondary concepts which evolve out of the self interaction of a unified field which just is—BEING itself.

Biotechnologists have ignored these quantum concepts, erroneously treating the body as a classical object devoid of consciousness. They have condemned themselves to remain behind in the 19th century classical world. To hide the deficiencies of this luddite paradigm, they have wrapped their pronouncements in mystique and promises of a glorious future of health and longevity. This is a mirage, an act of misperception and imagination. A book currently on the NY Times best selling list by Eric Topol entitled Super Agers, exemplifies the genre. Topol envisions biotech treatments for the worst chronic killers—diabetes, obesity, heart disease, cancer, and neurodegeneration which everyonewill begin to take long before middle age. A dystopian vision of a medical autocracy worthy of Orwell and Huxley.

The reality on the ground now, as we have been reporting, is quite different. Medical applications of biotechnology such as gene therapies are not actually curing people in large numbers or even small numbers, they are more often producing effects at great cost which are short lived (if at all) and accompanied by extreme risks of adverse effects on health. Recipients are facing the risk of death along with the certainty of a lifetime of expensive medical care. Because of the complexity of these procedures and the necessity for an individual approach (because everyone’s DNA is unique), there is no possibility of sufficient money, resources and personnel to carry them out on a wide scale within public health systems, nor is that desirable in any way.

The Gene Technology Bill proposes to give a virtual freehand to the biotechnology fraternity to experiment on the general public with the near certainty of a repeat pandemic performance, probably in an even more serious iteration. It even includes a clause to protect the instigators from any liability. If you need to remind yourself what is in the Bill go to our YouTube video and write to your MP. The 30 million excess deaths during the pandemic show just how much can go wrong and how quickly. All this points to the need for an alternative paradigm for biotechnology. That will be our next post on Substack. To subscribe go to https://guyhatchardphd.substack.com. As time allows, we will be developing educational courses on natural law and health which will be available through our Substack.

In his 2017 book ‘The Strange Death of Europe’ Douglas Murray argues that we have lost our sense of purpose. Fuelled by rational and scientific criticism (including concepts of social Darwinism) which developed in the nineteenth century, people have gradually lost faith in their religious and cultural traditions. Especially over the last five years, a new faith in so-called miracle technology has arisen to fill the void left by the demise of spiritual meaning. The tenets of this new technological religion extend to artificial intelligence and biotechnology which are together forcing their way into every facet of our existence. The promise of immortality through miracle medical drugs, a computer controlled life free of drudgery and a level of military preparedness sufficient to keep the enemy from borders is proving to be irresistible. As Murray would no doubt tell us, the reality is rather different. For the first time in human history outside of wartime, life expectancy is declining, daily life has become harder and more uncertain, while each year the borders are more porous and difficult to police. This article examines where we are really heading.

We are in danger of losing the fight for the right to choose

If you are still hoping to win the battle against the usual suspects including processed foods, glyphosate, fluoridation, arms manufacturers and vaccine mandates, think again, because the goal posts of the technological battlefield are being rapidly moved. This week the Health Select Committee is due to report on the Gene Technology Bill, its implications are set to radically change our lives, sufficient to challenge any pre-existing sense of normality. As you probably already know, a clause in the Bill automates the adoption of gene technology:

“Mandatory medical activity authorisations: for a human medicine that is or contains gene technology that has been approved by at least two recognised overseas gene technology regulators.”

Just what this will mean for us became very clear this week because of measures approved in the US, which, under the New Zealand Gene Technology Bill, we would be required to automatically adopt. According to a July 1st press release from Flagship Pioneering (the biotech firm that founded Moderna and enjoys close ties with multiple US Government agencies), it has launched a new company called Terrana Biosciences to spray crops with RNA, designed to “actually go inside the plant,” move through its internal systems, persist under extreme environmental conditions, and become “heritable across plant generations,” using synthetic RNA constructs generated from “a vast library of RNAs” built with “advanced AI and computational models.” In other words, it plans to pollute our entire food chain.

In another development, EcoHealth Alliance’s DEFUSE proposal to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is under renewed scrutiny for detailing plans to spray aerosolized chimeric coronavirus spike proteins, immune modulators, and self-spreading vaccines over human and animal populations using drones.

You may remember that EcoHealth Alliance is the company that initiated the gain of function research at Wuhan Virology Laboratory that almost certainly resulted in the creation of COVID-19. The new alliance between A.I. and biotechnology experimentation means that tens of thousands of experiments investigating novel genetic combinations can be rapidly and simultaneously initiated. Dwarfing previous research and multiplying the risks. The current global push of the biotechnology industry is to ensure these projects can go ahead without obstructive regulation. In other words, we are entering an era of unfettered experimentation on human populations.

The PREP Act empowers the U.S. government to secretly administer such drugs and vaccines, biological products, and medical devices to the public during a declared emergency—without consent, geographic limits, legal accountability, or any obligation to disclose such actions.

The New Zealand Gene Technology Bill has a parallel provision:

“Emergency authorisations: when there is an actual or imminent threat to the health and safety of people or to the environment, for example, threat from a disease outbreak, or an industrial spillage,the Minister responsible for the Gene Technology Act will have the power to grant an emergency authorisation.”

From this you can see just how quickly alarming invasive biotech medical and agricultural products approved in the US, such as the above, will be reciprocally authorised in New Zealand if the Gene Technology Bill passes.

How is this happening to us and why do the general public appear to be unconcerned?

Let’s take a breath, step back for a moment and consider that the potent combination of A.I. and biotechnology has assumed a central role in a new political, quasi-scientific, medical and social ideology that during the pandemic elevated itself to the status of a faith. The acceptance it enjoys and the control it exerts over populations is not due to the kind of totalitarian measures that Hitler or Stalin wielded, but rather to the projection of a captivating but false narrative of a bright future if you comply. Something worthy of the dystopian visions of the wholly compliant technological societies described by Orwell and Huxley.

In essence, the central mistake in the new faith involves the confluence of two completely false ideas:

1) the origin and meaning of life is entirely contained in a sequence of genetic letters in a single molecule (DNA) which can be safely edited and manipulated to make all aspects of life better. This is an impoverished vision of life that fails to account for either consciousness or the known real world adverse effects of gene editing.

2) Computers which are unconscious and only have access to data and algorithms that have been inputted during the information age can make better and safer decisions than wakeful human minds. An absurdly uninformed dismissal of human genius and potential.

This new faith involves leaving common sense behind (as well as reason and rationality) whilst rushing towards the flame like a moth.

An article in the UK Guardian entitled “Demand for weight loss drugs is becoming unsustainable, say pharmacists” illustrates just how many people have adopted the new religion. A survey found that in addition to the one million Brits currently paying privately to take weight loss injections Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy, a further 21% have tried to get hold of them during the last year (that’s 10 million people). This figure spirals to 35% among 18-35 year olds. Capping that, the survey found that a staggering 65% of 25-34 year olds would use them if they were free on the NHS.

The vast majority of these people are not clinically overweight, they are simply ‘worried well’ and apparently unaware of the very common and very serious adverse effects of the injections.

Equally alarming is the rapid adoption of A.I. in education. An article in the NY Times entitled “A.I.-Driven Education: Founded in Texas and Coming to a School Near You” reports that a method of schooling children solely through Artificial Intelligence is set to be replicated across the country this fall. This is the latest facet of educational computerisation that is putting children in front of screens rather than human teachers and denying them crucial socialisation skills while suppressing their ability to think critically. The move in part reflects the lobbying by Big Tech companies which is cutting red tape surrounding the implementation of AI technology. Something that has the full support of Trump’s A.I. Action Plan.

A couple of years ago I was talking with the teenage son of a neighbour who told me that everybody in his high school uses A.I. to write their assignments. Just how damaging this can be is illustrated by an investigation undertaken by the Guardian. A business school professor from Sweden confirmed to the Guardian “While companies are using AI to reduce costs, students are using it for all uni work and to replace thinking, and are subsequently de-optimising themselves for future jobs.”

“Being able to write well and think coherently were basic requirements in most graduate jobs 10, 15 years ago,” said a senior recruitment professional at a large consultancy firm from London. “Now, they are emerging as basically elite skills. Almost nobody can do it. We see all the time that people with top degrees cannot summarise the contents of a document, cannot problem solve.”

Various employers and professionals in HR and management positions interviewed by the Guardian reported that university leavers they encountered often struggled to speak on the phone or in meetings, take notes with a pen, relay messages precisely or complete written tasks without internet access. In other words, they are all but unemployable and unsuited to the jobs they aspire to.

Fortunately, acceptance of new technology is not universal, at least there is some dissent. Following the pandemic, those with doubts and reservations are certainly a significant minority. Unfortunately, there are ways of bypassing or fooling the noncompliant. The prophets and guardians of the new religion are not only from technology fields but also from the media, politics, and health who between them control the mainstream narrative and take decisions on behalf of the many.

Whether they can rise to assume totalitarian control depends on provisions in the Gene Technology Bill which aim to prevent the public knowing what they are eating or being exposed to. It will do so by falsely classifying most gene editing as equivalent to natural processes and also failing to mandate gene product labelling. In other words, the Bill is promising us the earth but denying us information about what will actually happen to us and the known serious risks involved.

The dangers should be obvious, but the new faith is blind to the truth

That COVID-19 vaccines were neither safe nor effective should have been obvious to those who received them and then contracted COVID-19 time and again. COVID-19 mRNA injections were clearly undeserving of the title ‘vaccine’, they prevented little or nothing and left millions of people sick or dead, but the WHO public narrative turned these simple personal experiences and assessments on their head, wrongly assuring us that 14.4 million people escaped death as a result of COVID-19 vaccination.

Last week a paper published by JAMA reduced the WHO estimate to 2.5 million, but it still wasn’t anywhere near the whole truth. Examine for a moment the cumulative excess deaths in Japan for example, as reported by Our World in Data.

There is no inkling here that biotechnology saved any lives whatsoever, it took lives. Whether these were the result of a biotech generated disease or a biotech generated vaccine is immaterial. 350,000 Japanese excess deaths up to February 2024 and rising steeply. If the trend has continued since, the total will have pushed up towards 600,000 by the present time. Around 0.5% of the population swept away, greater than forty times the toll of the 2011 tsunami. A press conference called this month by a large group of concerned scientists pointed out that peaks in excess deaths among 21 million official health records correspond neatly to a period of 90-120 days following COVID-19 vaccination and boosters—a times series approach to data analysis which offers the strongest statistical proof of causality yet.

The risks to the whole structure of western civilisation should be obvious, but somehow we are sleepwalking to disaster. We need to wake up. I’ll say that again, we need to wake up from a nightmare. Waking up has become a vital survival strategy in the modern world. When the communist dream became an obvious economic and social failure, those in charge prioritised their personal comfort and wealth at the expense of their people. We have reached a similar stage, the biotech research programs we cited earlier show that the failed mRNA technology is being repackaged in a way that ensures everyone’s exposure whether we assent or not, whether through the food we eat or from the skies. Since the technology doesn’t work and provably takes lives, the whole endeavour must be solely to satisfy a voracious appetite for profit or possibly an apocalyptic urge to spread suffering and death. Neither of which are strangers to the technological world in which spiritual endeavour and experience are undervalued. In the modern technological world we should not forget that there are people seeking to defraud us by editing and degrading the precise natural holistic genetic structure of our DNA which supports the capacity of our body to maintain health and our mind to know and value the truth. A nightmare which must be ended.

Dear Winston Peters and NZ First MPs

I understand the Health Select Committee is due to report on the Gene Technology Bill in the next few days. It appears that there have been vested interests lobbying NZ First to support the Bill. It is entirely premature to vote ‘yes’ to gene technology deregulation prior to the report of the Royal Commission on Covid Phase Two which is considering the safety of Covid vaccines. Almost daily there are studies being published which have found long term adverse effects of experimental medical uses of gene technology.

For example a group of scientists in Japan just released an analysis of 21 million vaccine and health records which demonstrates that around 610,000 people died in Japan unexpectedly subsequent to the Covid shots with a peak death rate occurring after 90-120 days. The time interval to the death peaks shortened if you received boosters. This massive effect size was missed until now because few among the medical community believed that deaths occurring 3 to 4 months after the shot could be related to the vaccine. The analysis puts this fallacy to rest. Covid vaccines have prolonged serious adverse effects. 

In fact the application of simplistic models to gene technology medicine has already led us to a world with serious problems resulting from interventions that are sold as solutions. A paper entitled “Evaluating Vaccine Effectiveness During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Insights from Statistical and Machine Learning Methods“, has found that contrary to expectations, vaccinated individuals lost 40% more working days due to Covid infection than their unvaccinated counterparts (p<0.0001). But the vaccinated were not just taking a higher number of days off work, they were also dying in greater numbers as a study entitled Paradoxical increase in global COVID-19 deaths with vaccination coverage: World Health Organization estimates (2020–2023) published in April of this year concludes: “The Americas (39.8%) and Europe (34.1%) accounted for  more than 70% of global COVID-19 deaths despite high vaccination”. Moreover Covid deaths increased when Covid vaccination began belatedly on continents like Africa.

These figures point to increasingly faulty modelling of the potential effects of gene technology medical interventions when compared to actual outcomes. A narrow focus on a highly simplified effect pathway of a biotech medicine has led evaluators to ignore physiological and genetic complexity which is highly likely to lead to long term adverse effects. The Annual Results Summary by Southern Cross insurers up to 30 June 2024 reports that in 2019 33% (one third) of its members made a health claim under their policies. In 2024, 50% (half) claimed. That represents a whooping 50% increase in sickness or to put it more starkly, 158,000 more sick Southern Cross clients. Since Southern Cross only covers 20% of the New Zealand population, this figure scales up to a massive 788,000 more sick Kiwis in 2024 compared to 2019. That is an extra 15% of the population getting sick in 2024 who wouldn’t have been ill in 2019.

I hardly need to point out to you that it is now virtually certain that Covid escaped from a biotechnology lab in China. This means that both the Covid vaccines and the disease itself were a result of biotechnology experimentation. The implications of the failures of biotechnology medicine have not been lost on investors whose decisions provide us with advance notice of risk and effectiveness. 

According to authoritative pharmaceutical industry online Endpoints News “The opening months of 2025 have offered no respite to the chilly biotech market of the last few years, biotech correspondent Kyle LaHucik reported this week. Despite the comeback everybody seems to want, there’s been a steady drumbeat of restructurings, pipeline cuts, layoffs and short-lived pivots. Kyle highlighted iTeos Therapeutics, once a darling of the anti-TIGIT class of biotechs, as an embodiment of the current struggles. iTeos had a clinical failure and lost a partnership with GSK this spring. It’s now shut down.”

In another example Sarepta Therapeutics’ gene therapy, Elevidys, for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) has faced setbacks, including a second patient death and a trial failure, leading to a significant drop in the company’s stock value. The deaths, both involving acute liver failure, occurred in patients receiving the therapy in clinical trials. This has prompted Sarepta to pause dosing for non-ambulatory patients and review its cost structure. 

I am writing to urge your NZ First Health Select Committee member to vote to postpone approval of the Gene Technology Bill as it relates to both medical applications and crop releases. It is sensible to await the consideration of the Royal Commission before taking steps which will enshrine automatic approvals and emergency use of gene technology in NZ law. These and other provisions of the Bill threaten to override the protections contained in the  NZ Bill of Rights and ignore the results of research on safety and risk assessment of gene technology.

Yours sincerely

Guy Hatchard PhD

Formerly Director at Genetic ID, a global genetic testing and safety certification company. Author of ‘Your DNA Diet: Leveraging the Power of Consciousness To Heal Ourselves and Our World. An Ayurvedic Blueprint For Health and Wellness’.