Currently, there are 19,350 doctors in New Zealand; that’s one for every 264 people. According to Hon. Judith Collins, our Minister for Business Innovation and Enterprise (MBIE), we are all going to live longer and enjoy better health as a result of the massive deregulation contained in the Gene Technology Bill.

In this article, we are going to examine this claim very carefully. If passed, the Bill will change New Zealand irrevocably, we need a deep dive and a proper debate.

This article is also available as a PDF to download, print, and share.

Gene technology in our healthcare system is going to require some extra highly skilled doctors, but how many and how much will it cost us? High profile billionaire biohacker Bryan Johnson, 47, boasts that he only ages 8 months every year. So that is something we could all aim for. Bryan spends just $2 million a year on his health, he has 30 doctors and recently increased his pill intake to 91 pills a day. So the aspirational ratio is about 30 doctors for every person. We could probably accept a few less than that, but we might not live quite as long as Bryan. Probably best to go trial and error. Start with a modest 10 doctors per person and see how long we can all live. A lot of farmers will need to retrain and we might need to import more food. Most people would be doctors.

Joking apart, gene technology is insatiable when it comes to doctors and costs. The astronomical salaries of experts, expensive equipment, CRISPR patent fees and the constant need for testing associated with personalised genetic therapies all add up. If you think that the $10,000 estimate your builder gave you for a veranda renovation is too high, you might baulk at the multi-million dollar costs for your individual gene renovation. But don’t worry, the government is determined to foot the bill on our behalf. A clause in the bill REQUIRES that New Zealand automatically adopt any old gene technology as long as any other two countries have approved it. If it all works out, it is going to be like new dance moves in the 80s, everyone will be doing it. However published science shows this might just be a ridiculous dream, it is time to wake up.

Now let’s get serious.

We need an open public debate with published evidence not just misleading PR hype of the type the government is currently pumping out without supporting evidence. For example let’s look at an article in the prestigious journal Nature entitled “Four Success Stories in Gene Therapy“. Nature is absolutely in favour of genetic experimentation, so this recent article should contain the very highest level of evidence that Collins should be presenting to the public for debate.

Collins is very excited about using CAR T cell therapy to treat cancer in New Zealand. According to Nature, CAR T cell therapy costs about NZ$820,000 per shot. 85% of patients go into initial remission but only just over half of them are still in remission at the end of the first year. CAR T cell therapy is not without risk. It can cause severe side effects, including cytokine release syndrome (CRS), a dangerous inflammatory response that ranges from mild flu-like symptoms in less severe cases to multi-organ failure and even death. The article reports that with a combination of newer powerful adjunct drug regimes and vigilance, a TEAM of attending doctors can try to work out how far to push treatment without triggering CRS.

Currently there are about 30,000 new cases of cancer diagnosed in New Zealand each year. From the glowing publicity being pushed out, I suppose Collins wants us to believe that all of them will benefit from CAR T cell therapy. In which case the cost would be $25 billion, a figure that exceeds the current total cost of all healthcare in New Zealand.

So let’s for a minute remember the goal here—HEALTH and specifically less cancer. A report published in the UK Daily Mail based on official cancer statistics is entitled “Under-50s bowel cancer epidemic exposed: Shock figures reveal the exact age group for whom rates are growing quickest“. Bowel cancer rates have been on the increase for some time, but the latest UK figures published for 2022 show that the incidence of bowel cancer among men in their early 40s increased by a staggering 57% between 2019 and 2022. Women in the same 40-44 age bracket saw an increase of 50%. According to the article doctors are completely baffled and seemingly unable to identify a cause.

I know what you are going to say, but forget it. Despite the obvious temporal coincidence between the sudden dramatic rise in cancer and the pandemic, doctors have been quick to reassure us. Professor Pat Price, oncologist and chair of Radiotherapy UK, admitted the unprecedented rapid growth in bowel cancer rates among young people presented “a serious public health challenge,” but she added: “It’s also critical to dispel misinformation. Covid vaccines aren’t causing cancer” (no evidence offered). Phew, I was worried there for a minute. Instead the article offers this theory: “Experts believe poor diets packed with more ultra-processed foods, obesity and a lack of exercise could be responsible for the alarming cancer trend.” Let’s assume this is correct.

The article also reports that New Zealand has the second fastest growth rate of bowel cancer in the world, just behind Iceland.

If that is the case, shouldn’t our government be prioritising an education programme on lifestyle, exercise, healthy diets, fresh foods, etc.? Why would we want to pass a Gene Technology Bill, which allows even more tinkering with traditional foods without any labelling, traceability, safety testing, or liability for inevitable mistakes? It’s a real puzzle.

Studies show education about lifestyle changes would be a very cost effective approach whose effect sizes simply dwarf the meager and inconsistent results of biotechnology reported so far. Multiple studies show lifestyle changes including diet and exercise have a beneficial effect of reduced cancer incidence. Cancer is the number two cause of death after heart disease. A meta-analysis of nine studies entitled Association of Vegetarian and Vegan Diets with Cardiovascular Health: An Umbrella Review of Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies and Randomized Trials found very large effect sizes including a 29% risk reduction for cardiovascular disease (CVD). It reported a 14% reduction in CVD mortality and a 32% reduction in Ischaemic heart disease (IHD) mortality. One of the studies evaluated showed a significant 39% risk reduction for stroke incidence. It doesn’t stop there, we have reported extensively on the effects of meditation not just on cancer (one insurance study showed a 55% reduction in cancer incidence among practitioners of Transcendental Meditation), but also across the board of disease categories. None of this will require more doctors and very little expense. It could put our national health back on track. It should be a no brainer, instead we have the Gene Technology Bill.

So what else is the Gene Technology Bill promising us?

The Bill commits New Zealand to use all of the gene therapies of the future. CRISPR gene editing is another of Collins’ favourites that she is promising will revolutionise public health. There are ten thousand single gene mutation heritable illnesses so far identified by science. The so-called promise of CRISPR theory is that all of these should eventually be reversible via a single gene deletion or replacement. So what does the Nature article say about the best and most exciting results from the use of CRISPR so far?

Two of these diseases are sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia. At a recent conference, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics announced the results of a clinical trial of beta thalassemia and sickle cell patients treated with CTX001, a CRISPR-Cas9-based therapy. In all, 22 patients have received the treatment over a number of years at a cost of NZ$5 million per patient all of whom initially experienced increased levels of haemoglobin and reduced pain. After one year, only five of the patients had any residual beneficial effects. Vertex paid an additional NZ$85 million in patent fees for the licence to use CRISPR gene editing techniques involved in the treatments.

In summary: improvements are patchy at best, the costs are astronomical, the side effects are very serious and any benefits mostly don’t last very long.

Clearly these results are not going to bring about a revolution in New Zealand healthcare outcomes nor are they conceivably affordable for any but the mega-rich or a small number of beneficiaries of multi-million dollar New Zealand government grants presumably selected through a bruising lottery process. They are more likely to bankrupt our healthcare system and distract from viable proven paths that really could improve public health outcomes.

So what is the extent of the problems with CRISPR gene editing?

Is gene technology a healthcare revolution that has become affordable and actually works as Collins hypes? Or is it permanently just around the corner out of reach as it has been for the last 70 years? Or just perhaps, has something else gone terribly wrong as we know happened with biotech during the pandemic to everyone’s cost?

Well first of all, CRISPR gene editing is not as precise as Collins’ and MBIE PR claim. A paper in Nature published in October 2024 is entitled “Gene editing of NCF1 loci is associated with homologous recombination and chromosomal rearrangements” The paper describes attempts by scientists using CRISPR gene therapy to treat deficient chronic granulomatous disease, which is a rare inherited genetic disorder that prevents white blood cells from killing fungi and bacteria. It causes a primary immune deficiency associated with functional defects in neutrophils and macrophages. Mutations in any one of five different genes can cause this condition.

The study’s results reveal a central problem with CRISPR techniques. Most of us imagine that genes are somehow as solid and understandable as the world around us, made up of specific distinct identifiable objects which can be swapped if one becomes defective. Rather like changing a tyre when you have a puncture. Many genetic models or theories, and certainly all popular explanations pretend this is the case. In fact as you reach the very very small time and distance scales of DNA, you have reached an area completely foreign to the waking world of experience. The study revealed that many genes appear almost indistinguishable from one another or homologous. We can imagine that the situation is similar to repeated use of identical sub routines in a complex computer programme, but scaled up by a factor of one trillion. As a result, the CRISPR gene scissors begin to cut up, rearrange or delete other genetic chromosomal structures which were not the intended target, causing unintended consequences and health problems.

This is not because CRISPR has been incorrectly or inaccurately programmed or targeted, but rather the inevitable result of a fundamental property of matter at small time and distance scales—increased similarity in structure and function. The law of least action is in play. At this scale of matter, universal fields, quantum properties and unification play a greater role. Everything begins to look and behave in a confusingly similar fashion. CRISPR gene editing tools are based on the destructive properties of bacteria and when faced with an array of similar targets the derived CRISPR tools revert to type and embark on some random destructive cutting and pasting.

Because genes control all the functions of our physiology from the most fundamental level, the capacity for serious adverse effects is enhanced. This is one important reason for the mind boggling costs and high doctor to patient ratios of gene technology. A lot can go wrong and often does.

As we have reported extensively at GLOBE, in the microscopic physical world, consciousness plays a vital role. The observer enters into physical theory in multiple ways. In fact it plays an essential and leading role in triggering the outcomes of events at the atomic scale. DNA has holistic functions which are closely connected to its ability to support awareness or consciousness, including, in humans, self-reflective states of mind. No one in biotechnology understands how this delicate miracle of life happens, but like a bull in a china shop they are apparently determined to wreak havoc and see what eventuates.

The self-belief in the biotech community and the capacity for exotic experimentation are only matched by the determination to avoid any kind reasonable requirement for labelling, safety testing, containment or difficult ethical questions. Another requirement of the nascent biotech industry is freedom from any sort of liability and the permission to patent genes and genetic processes.

Judith Collins’ Gene Technology Bill concedes all of this to the bioscientists clamouring for the freedom to experiment on us.

According to Collins, New Zealand will become a world leader in biotechnology experimentation. Certainly we will end up to our detriment as guinea pigs subject to the most permissive regulatory regime in the world, where a government appointee will decide everything for us from what goes into our breakfast cereal to what goes into our pills, without any requirement to inform us on the labels, not even in the small print. Collins is repeating safe and effective and wants to push the Bill through with little or no public debate, but where is her evidence? According to current scientific assessments it is not safe or effective. Biotechnologies are dogged by poor results, serious risks and unaffordable massive costs. So is it Hey Ho and off we go with the Coalition into the brave new world of unrestrained gene editing, or do we, as we do in our personal lives, exercise some common sense. We just have one parting question for Minister Collins. Did she do her homework or did the dog eat it?

In this article we have covered just a few points. There are a lot of concerning provisions in the Bill. Find out more by viewing our YouTube video The Gene Technology Bill. What Kiwis Need To Know and then make a submission to the Health Select Committee by February 17th.

There are many reasons to reject the Gene Technology Bill. We have published suggestions for a submission template. Write to your MP. They need to be quizzed on this egregious Bill. They are trying to get this fast tracked during the holidays.

We do not live in a country where people are willing to let others take away their food choices, their rights, their beliefs and increase exposure to serious long term environmental and health risks.

Judith Collins is promising us an economic miracle if only she can deregulate biotechnology. According to Collins, gene technology research using CRISPR will be a money spinner. She is absolutely right, but it won’t benefit New Zealand.

This article is also available as a PDF to download, print, and share.

CRISPR techniques are subject to patents. They can be licensed for use by academic laboratories, but if you want to commercialise a product produced using CRISPR it comes at a cost, a huge cost. For example, in 2023, Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston, Massachusetts, secured approval to sell its CRISPR-based treatment for sickle-cell disease only after paying $50 million in up front fees to a licence-holder authorised by the Broad Institute, a genomic-research centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that holds the patents. It seems that any CRISPR money spinning largely takes place in America, which is why US trade negotiators are reportedly demanding biotech deregulation as a precondition of a free trade agreement with New Zealand.

Which brings us to another point. Will the Gene Technology Bill benefit public health as Auntie Collins tells us? Examples of benefits of gene technology are a rare animal indeed (disasters abound), but one has had its share of headlines recently. Gene therapy treatments for sickle-cell anaemia cost about NZ$6 million per person and they involve bone marrow transplants. The mortality rates after bone marrow transplants reported in the published literature range from a massive 74% to 10% depending on a number of factors including the pre-existing health of the individual. The massive costs and low survival rates are not going to impact New Zealand’s appalling public health statistics, only our balance sheet.

More and more as every day goes by Collins is beginning to sound like Bernie Madoff, but will gene technology allow us to live longer? You might have come across Bryan Johnson, the billionaire poster child for longevity via gene technology. He has a Netflix series devoted to his quest to live forever. Bryan’s every move is governed by the advice of his team of 30 doctors. According to some reports in glossy magazines, he believes he has succeeded in reducing the age of every one of his organs by upwards of 30%. The Netflix documentary lauds Bryan’s use of immunosuppressant rapamycin which, along with 54 other pills, is supposedly helping him to live forever.

What Netflix did not tell us: Johnson stopped taking the drug because he found the side effects were too severe including a rather icky looking skin rash on his otherwise trim frame along with “soft tissue infections, abnormal levels of fats in his blood, elevated blood sugar and a higher resting heart rate”. Johnson decided rapamycin just might have been making him age faster. His doctors sheepishly admitted they had been encouraging him to take the drug whose “side effects include very dangerous bacterial infections, and things like pneumonia or cellulitis or pharyngitis.” If I was Bryan, I’d change my doctors.

The devil is always in the detail, and there are a great many details about the risks of gene technology that the government has forgotten to tell us about. In 2023, the University of Auckland, to great fanfare reportedly identified a drug alpelisib that helped mice live 10% longer, but the side effects included weaker bones and higher blood sugar—a known cause of diabetes. A drug that helps you live longer is not much use if it makes you chronically sick and terminally ill. Which reminds me of something else.

If you are reading this, you are one of the lucky ones, you have lasted through five pandemic years, but studies show not all of us have been that lucky, including about 30 million worldwide unexpectedly no longer with us. In the light of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Wuhan Virology Lab, listening to Judith Collins lecture us about the safety and health benefits of deregulating biotechnology all helps to cement the Bernie Madoff impersonation. 

In an unlikely volte-face Mark Zuckerburg speaking with Joe Rogan has changed sides. According to Zuckerburg, Biden administration officials “screamed and cursed” at Meta executives to take down posts critical of COVID-19 vaccine safety. Specifically, any mention of vaccine side effects was censored by the US government. Anything, including human lives, that might come in the way of $100 billion US pharmaceutical industry COVID-19 vaccine profits was off the table in the White House. 

In an act of atonement, Zuckerburg has announced that FB posts will no longer be subject to ‘fact checking’. BUT this is only being trialled in the USA. So unfortunately none of this backtracking will have dented the enthusiasm of New Zealand mainstream media to persecute those shining a light in dark places. 

I received a polite email this week from Kiwi journalist George Driver who is an official ‘fact checker’ for Facebook who queried one of my recent posts. According to Driver, he is working hard for Meta “to mitigate misinformation in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.” He queried my claim that the Gene Technology Bill will “bypass the medical choice provisions of the New Zealand Bill of Rights”. He questioned whether the Bill was being fast tracked and required evidence that shows the Bill would remove a person’s right to refuse a medical treatment. I answered as follows and I am sending this out to you because I am not sure what the final outcome will be as far as FaceBook is concerned.

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Dear George

Thanks for writing. There are a number of points to consider here. In short:

I. Formerly, labelling of gene altered food was required via HSNO legislation. The Gene Technology Bill effectively rescinds the requirement for mandatory labelling. Thus some gene altered foods will enter the food chain without the public’s knowledge. This not only bypasses public choice but also has implications for individual health. For example it could affect individuals with food allergies.

2. My use of the term Fast Track was intended to mean that the coalition is making its passage a priority. In particular, contrary to usual practice, the public submission process is taking place over the holiday period. This appears to be designed to move the bill forward under the radar. Btw, your final sentence misquotes me ‘was “passed under fast track legislation”? Should be ‘is being’ not ‘was’.

3. The Mandatory wording in the bill is as follows “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.” The emergency use wording is as follows “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 (Judith Collins) will have the power to grant an emergency authorisation.”

The intent of these clauses (which is not made sufficiently clear in the Bill) is mystifying nor is the reason for their inclusion obvious or explicitly justified. The implications of the wording of both taken together are so general that the regulator and the Minister are granted very wide powers which could be used to legally justify mandatory public health measures involving the use of gene technology. This might include environmental and health measures that affect individuals generally. Because these measures involve gene technology, they may not be containable. For example the use of sprays to distribute gene technology can remove choice from the public.

Whilst the regulator will be required to seek public submissions, they are not obliged to act on them. It is hard to see any outcome for this position other that that of a biotech industry facilitator. In fact from Collin’s public pronouncements, this seems to be an intent of the Bill

These are short answers to your questions. IMO the Bill is very poorly worded and too permissive. I refer you to my video on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5b2skQADT4&t=432s which includes some references to recent cautionary public statements from highly qualified biotech insiders about safety. Also to the HatchardReport.com where I have written extensively about the Bill. I am happy to talk to you by phone at 094372012. 

FYI I was formerly Director of Natural Products at Genetic ID (now FoodChain ID). Genetic ID provided genetic testing and certification services to bulk food exporters like ADM and Cargill.

You introduced yourself as providing fact checking services for Meta. I understand from media reports that Meta is no longer requiring fact checking. Could you clarify your current role?

Best wishes

Guy

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Let’s hope we are not facing a renewed round of cancellation and government fawning from mainstream media on this topic. The cat is out of the bag on the Gene Technology Bill, the only people who will benefit seem to be domiciled in the state of Massachusetts, USA. New Zealand public health be damned.

For more information view our YouTube video “The Gene Technology Bill. What Kiwis Need To Know“.

Anyone living in New Zealand today will be aware of how much we, as individuals and as a people, value our identity and cultural values. We know from our everyday acquaintances, colleagues, family members or whanau that we must maintain respect for individual preferences and ideas. We have always known from the beginning that we need the space to live as we believe. This has been a vital part of Kiwi life stretching back to our forebears.

This article is also available as a PDF to download, print, and share and as an audio version.

The extraordinary provisions of the Gene Technology Bill, currently before Parliament, threaten to overturn these values. The Bill does so under the radar, deceptively posing as a matter of scientific verity and economic freedom when in fact it will change our way of life for ever. Biotechnology is all about life. It edits life from its most fundamental physical level—our genes.

From now on, a government-appointed regulator will have the power to make decisions about our life, our genetic heritage, for all of us. In one stroke sweeping away concepts of individual rights and choice. As a result of the last five pandemic years, we all know that this can go terribly wrong. Genetic material is highly mobile, it cannot be contained, recalled or remediated. That is not just a scientific fact, but has now become our personal experience.

In contravention of this fact, in an extraordinary step of deception, the Bill proposes that gene technology is so safe that many if not most gene altered foods, crops, microbes, and animals can be released into the environment or food chain without any special identification. For us, this means that novel foods will appear on our supermarket shelves without labelling or anything to distinguish them from what we and our ancestors have been happily eating for eons.

We have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with our traditional food sources for millions of years. Our physiology has co-evolved with the genetic structures of our foods. Multiple large studies show that diets rich in natural gene-based food sources including fruits and vegetables improve health outcomes, prevent cancer and support longevity. The detailed genetic structures involved are important, altering them is a door to uncharted territory. Removing labelling is a provision that involves forced relocation into this unhealthy territory.

To cap this egregious provision, the Bill removes any criminal liability for altering genes. A get out of jail free card for the Frankensteins of our generation.

If that doesn’t rock your boat, think about the vast areas of life that biotechnology doesn’t even begin to understand yet proposes to alter. First among these: our Being. Yesterday I had the tiniest speck of wood, about the size of a pin point lodged in the ball of my thumb, but it had registered its presence and needed to be taken out, the work of seconds. Immediate relief. Awareness ranges effortlessly from the microscopic to the majestic immensity of the Cosmos, yet how our genes support this ability is a total mystery.

One of our most read articles in 2024 was entitled “Can Biotechnology Control Human Behaviour?” It reported evidence that “gene editing, including any sort of editing of the chain of genetic functions within cells, could more or less automatically change our behaviour and psychological profile” in ways that no one currently understands.

Cultures around the world, hold sacred beliefs about the natural order of things, the divine status of human life and the continuity of our ancestral heritage:

• Judeo-Christians believe that “God created man in his own image” and “The Kingdom of Heaven is within”
• Hindus believe that each person is intrinsically divine and the purpose of life is to seek and realise the divinity within all of us. 
• Buddha taught that each one of us is divine in our very essence. 
• Islam considers human life more sacred than the holy Kasbah. 
• Taoism teaches that humans are part of the larger cosmos and should live in harmony with the universe. They believe along with countless other traditions and modern ecological philosophies that all living things are connected in a mutually supportive biofield.
• The Maori Whakapapa of the World speaks of Io Te Kakano—Te purapura i tupu ake ai nga mea katoa o te Ao (the seed from which all things in the universe grow) and Io Te Mauri—Te mea ora i roto i nga mea katoa o Te Ao (The living element in all things created in the Universe)

Only 7% of the world’s population are atheists, among them James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, and Richard Dawkins biologist who both reject the sacred views of the vast majority of the world’s population and believe that redesigning the natural order is the destiny of the human race. The New Zealand government apparently follows this path, since they are removing any ability of the public to know what has been altered by gene editing on our dinner plate or in our environment.

Moreover the Bill requires “Mandatory Medical Activity Authorisations”“Emergency Medical Use Authorisations” which grants the Minister responsible for the Gene Technology Bill (Judith Collins) special powers when there is in their opinion an actual or imminent threat to the health and safety of people or to the environment. A provision wide open to misinterpretation and misuse.

The rights and choices accepted as a normal part of everyday Kiwi life were hard won in the distant past. The New Zealand Bill of Rights was an attempt by legislators, not to grant new rights to Kiwis but to set down in stone the principles of natural justice and the constitutional rights that have been generally accepted and followed in our history. These include:

Clause 10 Right not to be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation—Every person has the right not to be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation without that person’s consent.

Clause 13 Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion—Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and to hold opinions without interference.

Clause 20 Rights of minorities—A person who belongs to an ethnic, religious, or linguistic minority in New Zealand shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of that minority, to enjoy the culture, to profess and practise the religion, or to use the language of that minority.

Make no mistake about it, the introduction of novel biotechnologies without specific requirements for identification, ethical evaluation, labelling or containment, instead devolving these powers to a regulator, is a very clear violation of all three of these clauses.

The regulator will be required to call for public submissions on each of their future rulings on hundreds of biotechnology projects, but the Bill does not require that they should take specific account of these submissions, merely consider them. In practice, almost no one will have the time to respond to these projects. In other words, of necessity our fundamental rights will be violated on hundreds of occasions and in hundreds of ways that will remain opaque to any scrutiny, assessment of effects or liability. And due to the nature of gene editing, these will remain without any possibility of recall, remediation or redress.

The risks of biotechnology are extraordinary. Of which, Professor Tim Spector OBE, Downing Street advisor and leading expert on gene editing at King’s College London, recently wrote in the UK Telegraph:  experimentation in “labs across the world should face more oversight and be treated with the same seriousness as a nuclear threat.” In complete defiance of this warning and that of many other leading biotechnologists waking up to the risks, the New Zealand Gene Technology Bill is setting out the most permissive gene regulation framework in the world—a clear prescription for disaster that sweeps away our personal preferences and traditional rights, as well as dearly held cultural, ecological and religious values.

The government holds up the prospect of improved public health and economic benefit as its justification, but is there sufficient sound scientific evidence of this? No, absolutely not. Our recent article “Waking Up From the Dream of Biotechnology” reveals the flimsy and unsubstantiated nature of the government justifications for a wholesale change in our way of life and cultural norms.

There are a lot of reasons to reject the Gene Technology Bill. Find out more by viewing our YouTube video The Gene Technology Bill. What Kiwis Need To Know and then make a submission to the Health Select Committee by February 17th. We have published suggestions for a submission template. Write to your MP. They need to be quizzed on this egregious Bill. They are trying to get this fast tracked during the holidays.

We do not live in a country where people are willing to let others take away their food choices, their rights, their beliefs and increase exposure to serious long term environmental and health risks.

Deep in a dream, our quiet consciousness suddenly realises that it is no longer a dream but has become a nightmare. The inner voice screams ‘wake up’ which is the only way out.

This article is also available as a PDF to download, print, and share and as an audio version.

The dream of biotechnology is a new age of health, happiness and human achievement. James Watson, who discovered the double helix structure of DNA 70 years ago, was full of hope:

“We used to think that our fate was in our stars, but now we know that, in large measure, our fate is in our genes,…recombinant DNA is likely the safest revolutionary technology ever developed, and we should not postpone experiments with clear benefits for fear of hypothetical risks….I want to see cancer cured in my lifetime” Watson has enthused.

Watson is now in a nursing home aged 96 and cancer is not cured. In fact it has become rampant. Somewhere along the way, did the dream of biotechnology become a nightmare? If so, it is time to wake up.

How did we get here and what does the future hold?

If you ask Google what are the biotechnology success stories, it comes up with slim pickings. First up is a list of patented genetically engineered crops like cotton, soy and corn. These types are paired with proprietary pesticide products. A March 2023 report from the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) says a consolidation trend within the agricultural seed industry began when the first genetically engineered traits were introduced to the market in the early 1990s. Since then, more than 200 US seed companies have been acquired or went out of business. The result is a concentration of market share among four seed companies. A June 2023 report by the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) found that when combined, AgReliant, Bayer, Corteva and Syngenta accounted for 83% of corn seed sales and 78% of soybean seed sales in the United States from 2018 to 2020. The trend is continuing, Bayer has just announced the consolidation of a further 10 regional seed brands in 2025. 

This so-called success story of biotechnology is not about more nutritious strains, increased yields, etc., these largely remain the stuff of myth. It is about the profits of transnational corporations who control a concentration of intellectual property (IP) in the form of patented genetics and traits. This has left farmers trapped in an unsustainable cycle of heightened input costs and depressed commodity prices. This is not a route for New Zealand farming to travel. Much of the allure of New Zealand produce is our pristine shores and clean green image. The GE route leads to corporate slavery, trade barriers, public rejection and rock bottom prices.

Next up on Google is a list of biotech startups who promise a lot, but do they deliver? BiomassProtein is a Danish company who invented a process to turn grass into food. Like all such companies they have required massive investment and government funding but have yet to turn any profit or generate public interest. The biomass industry wouldn’t be viable without renewable energy subsidies. In fact biomass projects are not generally sustainable environmentally or economically. Worldwide, governments have so far invested over $48 billion subsidising the biomass industry, much of it related to the dubious application of climate related tax credits.

As you go down any short list of biotech success stories, there is one feature that stands out above all else. The absolutely tremendous promise and ‘promise’ is the operative word. For 70 years, since Watson and Crick’s discovery, a lot of promises have been made and a lot of water has flowed under the bridge without actually generating any power. As we have reported on many occasions, you can make money in biotech by promising a lot, whether you deliver or not is largely immaterial. Along the way, government grants, speculative investment and intellectual property sales can make you into a multimillionaire without actually achieving, curing or selling anything. Third on Google’s list is Fibrotech Therapeutics, an Australian company sold for $75 million in 2019 after ‘promising’ phase 1 trials of a product to treat diabetic nephropathy. No further updates available.

So where does this all go to? There is only one answer to this question, and it is on everyone’s lips—COVID-19. COVID-19 is THE great success story of biotechnology. Not only is it possible to create a totally new deadly disease but also share it through a crack in the lab door with the entire world’s population. And it doesn’t stop there, you can also create, sell and profit from a vaccine which doesn’t work and actually harms a great many people. There is no liability whatsoever if you do so, even if you harm the economy. Learned papers have been written documenting the financial costs of the pandemic rated in hundreds of trillions of dollars and the human cost estimated to top 15-30 million excess deaths worldwide. If this hasn’t dampened your enthusiasm for biotechnology probably nothing will.

It is into this last category that the New Zealand government falls. It has introduced the Gene Technology Bill which contains by far the most permissive legislation of any country in the world. At last New Zealand really is leading the world (perhaps in cupidity and stupidity). Its clauses contain all the pips and whistles most needed by transnational corporates—no criminal or civil liability for facilitators, no labelling of products, foods, and medicines required (the public won’t even know), provision for government mandated approval (yes, it has that magic word ‘mandate” which is music to the corporate ears), ability to fiddle to your heart’s content with the DNA of animals, microbes plants, adults and children, no messy ethics, public watch dogs or testing requirements—simply apply to the one stop regulator for a rubber stamp.

What will happen to us?

A quick look across the ditch to Australia reveals they already have a Gene Technology Regulator. Dr Raj Bhula. He has announced that a period of 30 days of public submissions will be held starting in March before the probable approval of the release of genetically engineered mosquitoes in Queensland.

It doesn’t stop there, the idea of experimenting on Australians is catching on fast. Incredibly, Bhula’s office has just rated the following project at the Doherty Institute, University of Melbourne, as posing “negligible to moderate risk to human health and safety”.

“The initial aim is to evaluate the safety and infectivity of recombinant seasonal human influenza viruses in healthy volunteers. These GM viruses will then be used to assess the effectiveness of therapeutic drugs or vaccine candidates to prevent and control influenza infection.”

The lab is proposing to make gene altered versions of the flu and then test out various genetic drugs and/or vaccines on human volunteers over a five year period. Given the low risk rating by the regulator, the project, which creates new viruses, is likely to be a shoo-in for a rubber stamp. Does any of this sound at all familiar? It should.

Why is our government deregulating biotechnology at a time when the significant serious risks are becoming glaringly obvious even to children?

A little bird has told us the answer to this and it might be surprising—trade negotiations. The powers that be in the US have apparently decided to follow up on the massive profits that their pharmaceutical companies made during the pandemic by asking little New Zealand to deregulate biotechnology. I am not sure ‘ask’ is the right word, but it is the polite term when it comes to trade diplomacy. In a rush of enthusiasm our Coalition government is eager to comply and damn the consequences. If we give in, we will be providing a helping hand to our ‘friends’ in America who will then toddle off to Europe and ask them to follow suit. “See, New Zealand did it, now it’s your turn”. And if there are any projects that the American public, protected as they fortunately are by constitutional rights, believe to be a bridge too far, then New Zealand can step into the breach and pollute our hitherto pristine shores and clean green fields for them. There is a big pay day involved for someone, but not for the farmers or the honest Kiwi public.

There are a lot of reasons to reject the Gene Technology Bill. Find out more by viewing our YouTube video The Gene Technology Bill. What Kiwis Need To Know and then make a submission to the Health Select Committee by February 17th. We have published suggestions for a submission template.

Write to your MP. They need to be quizzed on this egregious Bill. They are trying to get this fast tracked during the holidays. We do not live in a country where people are willing to let others take away their food choices and increase exposure to serious long term environmental and health risks.

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Yesterday, the discovery of a oriental fruit fly in Auckland caused a panic and a ban on the movement of fruit and vegetables. Biosecurity New Zealand said that “if the insect was to establish itself in the country, the horticulture industry would suffer massive economic costs”. At the ultimate core of the problem is the particular genetic makeup of this foreign fruit fly, yet somehow, the New Zealand government thinks that deregulating biotechnology experimentation is a very good idea. Good luck with that.

This article is also available as a PDF to download, print, and share and as an audio version.

Many Kiwis have been writing to their MPs expressing concern about the Gene Technology Bill, which is being rushed through Parliament. A smattering of MPs have begun to reply to critics. How do they match up to science and experience?

Reportedly, Hon. Shane Jones, for example, welcomes the Bill and thinks there will be no problem because in his opinion we have all been eating genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for years with no ill effects (???). Hon. Shane Reti, Minister for Health believes the Bill will improve health, boost the economy and enhance farming. When he puts his Health Minister hat on he shouts that we have a national health crisis that urgently needs fixing. So which is it? Are we all eating or injecting biotech and feeling more healthy than ever before or are we all falling sick and dying in greater numbers? You already know the answer. Our hospitals are overcrowded, health insurers are worried sick and our funeral industry is posting record profits. Apparently, no one in Parliament knows why. 

The Hon. Scott Simpson, National MP for Coromandel, wrote that the provisions in the Bill for Mandatory Medical Activity Authorisations and Emergency Use Authorisations are only there to oblige the Gene Regulator to be ‘efficient’ (???). This he says will “give the public more choice not less”. I think the word he was searching for in this sentence was not ‘choice’, but might have been more aptly ‘prescriptions’.

I am not sure if MPs are suffering from amnesia or schizophrenia, but haven’t we the public just suffered through five pandemic years? Are we now expected to forget about this? Increasingly, international scientific opinion is shifting to extreme caution about biotechnology, precisely because of the probable origins of the COVID-19 virus and the lack of efficacy or safety of the vaccines. 

Here in New Zealand we might have escaped the worst health effects of Alpha and Delta variants because we closed our borders and applied the established principles of quarantine (suffering instead the economic, social and mental health fall out). Despite this, the long term health risks of biotechnology experimentation associated with COVID-19 are still haunting us today in our families, businesses, hospitals and morgues. In fact, policing our borders is precisely what Biosecurity NZ is doing every day to keep dangerous fruit flies and genetic oddities out. The Gene Technology is set to open them right up, the full monty. The wording of the Bill mandates that the New Zealand regulator must reciprocally approve any gene altered medicines and procedures within 30 days of their approval by any two countries overseas. 

At the weak heart of the justifications offered for the Bill is the idea that the risks of biotechnology experimentation are manageable and mostly minimal. Precisely the myth that the pandemic has overturned. Hon. Judith Collins, speaking to introduce the Bill to Parliament referred to gene editing as a “very predictable technology”. Not an assessment that fits at all well with events at the Wuhan Virology Laboratory. Collins summed up:

“A defining moment was the invention of the ability to precisely edit individual genes. The CRISPR process was announced in 2012, and it won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020. That changed everything, because it means that we’re not splicing together genes from different species but that we’re editing existing genes. And more medical therapies aren’t just nice to have; it means more effective and safe cancer treatments, and it means greater hope and quality of life for patients and their families.”

As with most things in science, it takes time to verify claimed benefits. The promises of 2012 have not held up to subsequent scrutiny. A paper published in 2022 in the journal Genome Research entitled “Target-enriched nanopore sequencing and de novo assembly reveals co-occurrences of complex on-target genomic rearrangements induced by CRISPR-Cas9 in human cells” found: 

“Extensive genomic disruptions caused by CRISPR gene editing, involving genomic duplication and inversion of the target region, as well as integrations of exogenous DNA and clustered interchromosomal DNA fragment rearrangements. Furthermore, these genomic alterations led to functional aberrant DNA fragments and altered cell proliferation.”

In other words, Collins’ claim of precise fail safe gene editing as a guarantee of safety is just rehashed PR hype and forlorn hope. It is representative of the outdated and incorrect popular science being used by the Coalition to push the commercial gene agenda on the public. Nor is Collins’ level of certainty shared by the recipients of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier who invented CRISPR editing. In a 2014 interview reported in Walter Isaacson’s book The Code Breaker Doudna worried:

“Have we created a tool box for future Frankensteins?…Emmanuelle and I, and our collaborators, had imagined that CRISPR technology could save lives by helping cure genetic disease. Yet as I thought about it now, I could scarcely begin to conceive of all of the ways in which our hard work might be perverted”.

This reads a lot differently from Collins’ speech to Parliament. The COVID-19 pandemic has only hammered home concern and tempered the 2012 initial enthusiasm a hundred fold.

In her speech to Parliament, Collins sought to reassure the New Zealand public that the Bill would not force anything on the public saying: 

“They can opt in. They do not have to opt out. They’d have to opt in in order to use them GMOs].”

This was Collins’ deceptive rhetoric at its height. Parliament was being misled. A key change that will affect the public was being kept well hidden. If you search the hundreds of pages of the Gene Technology Bill for the word ‘label’, it occurs precisely zero times, yet the Bill supersedes previous HSNO legislation which required labelling of GMOs. In other words, the public will be required to opt in because they will no longer be able to find out whether they are buying, eating or being prescribed biotech products. This is the dirty heart of the Bill which is being welcomed by academia and industry because they know that labelled products and identified procedures will be treated with caution by the public. Something they wish to avoid at all costs.

The Bill proposes that a government appointed regulator will be able to assess risks on our behalf, but it doesn’t specify how they will do so. Behind this sort of legislative vacuum, is an announced government intention that gene editing and experimentation in New Zealand involving crops, microbes, animals and medicines will be going full speed ahead. The regulator, whoever they are, will be well aware of this and if they want to keep their job, they will know what is expected. In the almost complete absence of guidelines, the regulator will become a facilitator.

So what are the risks? Is there such a thing as ‘low risk’ biotechnology? By definition gene editing crosses the cell membrane and edits the genetic command and control system of the whole organism. The complexity of intracellular processes is staggering and involves trillions of elements. The details are little understood. When it comes to human life, you can’t imagine anything that poses a greater risk than gene editing.

Before the pandemic, despite the lessons of smoking, thalidomide, laudanum, asbestos, etc (it is a long list), widespread use and prevalence of biotech experimentation were wrongly believed to be proof of inherent safety. This is no longer the case. As Professor Tim Spector OBE, a Downing Street Advisor and leading geneticist at King’s College London, put it in a November 2024 piece for the UK Telegraph “Labs across the world [undertaking biotechnology experimentation] should face more oversight and be treated with the same seriousness as a nuclear threat.” The Washington Post chimed in: “The nightmare of a biological holocaust is far from fanciful.”

This is not a field to be entered into with gay abandon and hurrah, like a gambler heading for the gaming tables, as Collins seems to think. Human health and life is ultimately at stake here. We are not exaggerating or doom mongering. This is not the time nor is New Zealand the place to open the flood gates to experimental gene editing. The Royal Commission on COVID-19 Phase II has just started to hear evidence on the safety and efficacy of genetically engineered COVID-19 vaccines. They will report in 2026. Collins and the Coalition want to jump the gun. To cap it all they don’t want the results to be labelled. Parliament needs to act on evidence not rhetoric. It should reject the Bill.

For more information view our video on YouTube “The Gene Technology Bill—What Kiwis Need To Know”.

Please make a submission to the Health Select Committee (deadline 17th February). If you feel you need help refer to our Submission Template.

Write to your MP. There are many articles discussing the issues in more depth with references available at HatchardReport.com and https://GLOBE.GLOBAL

This release contains template suggestions to make a submission to the Health Select Committee querying the provisions of the Gene Technology Bill which was introduced into the New Zealand Parliament on 17th December 2024. The deadline to make a submission is midnight 17th February 2025.

This article is also available as a PDF to download, print, and share.

To inform your friends, a video is available on YouTube entitled The Gene Technology Bill. What Kiwis Need To Know. For your information a short clip from a discussion between Dr. Guy Hatchard and Andrew Bridgen, former UK MP, about the international implications of the Bill, is available here. All or parts of the following template may be used as follows. 

I oppose the passage of the Gene Technology Bill for the following reasons:

Section 1: Justifications for the Bill are based on false premises

Economic necessity

The government has suggested that New Zealand’s successful and profitable participation in the global economy requires biotechnology deregulation. They promise a boost to our economy, but according to a study by the US National Center for Biotechnology Information, only about 18% of biotech startups make it to market. Even of those that do, only a small percentage are successful enough to generate significant revenue. Biotech bankruptcies hit a ten year peak in 2023.

The biotech industry relies on glossy PR, often making unrealistic promises to generate investment and qualify for government grants. The ultimate holy grail of the biotechnology sector is ‘government mandated use’ as happened during the pandemic, when excessive profits of pharmaceutical giants soared to record levels sufficient to create a negative effect on public debt which will last for generations. The Bill specifically reinforces the notion of biotech ‘mandates’ which can drain the public purse and create massive economic imbalance.

Increased precision and safety

Among the PR myths being used to convince the public of the need for the Bill is the government’s contention that gene editing using CRISPR has become more exact and therefore the need for testing, regulation, labelling, etc is reduced and in many if not most cases eliminated. This is not based on any valid scientific principle. Accuracy does not equate with safety. Just because you can achieve something more accurately does not guarantee its safety. A sniper trains every day to hit the target, but this does not make assassination a safer prospect or a right course of action. 

The government is assuming incorrectly that so-called CRISPR gene editing is somehow failsafe. On the contrary: September 2022 paper in the journal Genome Research describes:

“Extensive genomic disruptions caused by CRISPR gene editing, involving genomic duplication and inversion of the target region, as well as integrations of exogenous DNA and clustered interchromosomal DNA fragment rearrangements. Furthermore, these genomic alterations led to functional aberrant DNA fragments and altered cell proliferation.”

In other words CRISPR is not inherently safe or controllable which makes the Bill a frightening prospect. This is because research shows off-target adverse effects of gene editing and commercial manufacturing bio-contamination are inherent in the processes. A 2023 paper in the journal Chemosensors reports: “Most biologic products are characterized by fragile macromolecular structures that are heterogenous with a purity profile that varies with each batch making them susceptible to microorganism contamination…Bio-synthesis is more naturally variable than chemical synthesis, which makes it more difficult to characterize and manage properly”

Moreover such defects can appear over the longer term, surfacing even years later to the detriment of health. Since the Bill also removes the need for traceability, these effects will remain out of reach of detection and prevention before it is too late.

We have seldom seen a more brazen claim than the use of the word ‘safely’ with reference to biotech experimentation after 30 million excess deaths worldwide have been attributed, by multiple authoritative sources including the WHO, Our World in Data and Nature, to the pandemic during the last five years.

Regulatory catchup

The government maintains that we have fallen behind other countries because our regulations are too restrictive. In fact a 2023 study in the journal GM Crops and Foods reported, 26 countries including France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Russia, China, and India (19 of which are in the European Union (EU)) have partially or fully banned genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Another 60 countries have significant restrictions on GMOs. The study cited the weak agricultural benefits of GMOs compared to their potential risks. It also noted lack of trust and confidence by the public in the regulatory processes behind GMOs. 

In the EU, proposed gene technology legislation has stalled due to disquiet among member states and in any case includes the precautionary principle which says that new technology must be proved safe before use, something that our Gene Technology Bill rejects. Nor does it propose liberalising research on microbes or animals as our Gene Technology Bill does.

Section 2: Excessive liberalisation which ignores risk

Removal of labelling requirement

The Bill does away with any provision for the labelling of gene altered foods, We will no longer be allowed to know what we are eating. It grants an opaque and remote ‘regulator’ the power to alter the national diet without anyone being allowed to know what they are doing. This violates provision 10 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights which states “Every person has the right not to be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation without that person’s consent.” Gene altered foods have a novel genetic structure. Without labelling, their introduction becomes an experiment without any means to ascertain the effect on health.

Regulatory laisse faire

The Bill hands decisions to an inevitably naive government appointed regulator, without specifying any guidelines or protocols to assess safety. Inevitably, any decisions will contain arbitrary elements which can bypass the intent of any legislation. There is therefore no means to assess the safety or procedure of the regulator’s decisions. In this situation their actions are likely to become those of a facilitator.

Removal of the Precautionary Principle

The Bill removes the precautionary principle embodied in the current HSNO legisaltion which requires that products need to be proved safe before release. This runs contrary to the fundamental tenets of science.

Removal of Liability

Clause 187 of the Bill—‘Protection from civil and criminal liability’ removes any responsibility for mistakes, accidents and misjudgements. It protects persons involved from civil and criminal liability, however it may arise for any act that the person does or omits to do in the performance of their functions or duties under this Bill as long as they appear to be acting in good faith. This is a carte blanche to act irresponsibly and dangerously. It is so vaguely worded that it could be argued in a court of law that almost anyone conducting gene editing is free of liability as long as they attest that they did so ‘in good faith’.

The Spectre of Biotech Mandates

Two permissively worded clauses: “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.” and  “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 (Judith Collins) will have the power to grant an emergency authorisation.” These grant extensive powers to the government that can be misused and yet even so be justified within the framework of the Bill. Moreover they give away New Zealand sovereign control of regulations to foreign decision makers without qualification.

Risks to farming

There is a significant risk that New Zealand’s agricultural economy and exports will be damaged if we adopt biotech deregulation. It will devalue our clean green reputation and result in regulatory barriers. Our farm products could be subject to a consumer backlash as has happened in the UK over the introduction of dairy products from cows fed a methane-reducing bio-synthetic feed called Bovaer. 

GE farming is quite different from conventional practice, biotech farming relies on patents which favour higher costs for farmers and higher prices for the public in order to generate profits for the patent holders. This will encourage a style of corporate controlled farming distinctly different from the current diversified New Zealand practice.

Section 3: The Bill ignores the lessons of the pandemic years. Biotechnology experimentation needs more regulation not less

Eminent biotechnologists are warning that gene technology is far more risky than previously believed. For example Prof. Tim Spector, a Downing Street adviser and leading geneticist, in an article in the UK Telegraph dated 21 November 2024 points to an ‘obvious cover-up’ of Covid lab origins orchestrated by governments to hide the risks of biotechnology. Prof Spector said that the case had shown that labs across the world should face more oversight and be treated with the same seriousness as a nuclear threat. His view received solid support when a Wall Street Journal investigation published on Dec 26 2024 found that scientific evidence of a Wuhan Lab leak collected by the FBI was withheld from President Biden.

Lab accidents appear to be the norm rather than the exception. A 2022 study of the Prevalence of Accident Occurrence Among Scientific Laboratory Workers found: “Among 220 participants recruited in the study, 99 participants (45%) have had accidents during their lab works. 60% have been exposed once, 32% between two and four times, only 1.0% between four and six times, and an incredible 7% more than six times.”

A November 11 2024 article in the US Washington Post headlines “The U.S. could soon face a threat ‘more powerful’ than nuclear weapons“. And continues: researchers around the globe are tinkering with viruses far deadlier than COVID-19….The nightmare of a biological holocaust is far from fanciful.

Richard H. Ebright, Ph.D., is Board of Governors Professor of Chemical Biology at Rutgers University. He served for sixteen years as editor of the Journal of Molecular Biology.  He is a member of the Institutional Biosafety Committee, and he has been a member of the NIH Molecular Biology Study Section, the Antimicrobial Resistance Committee of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Working Group on Pathogen Security, and the Controlling Dangerous Pathogens Project of the Center for International Security Studies. So his words carry weight. In 2022 Ebright testified at US House and US Senate hearings on biosafety, biosecurity, and biorisk management (https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/doc/Ebright Testimony Updated.pdf) as follows:

“Researchers in Wuhan, as of 2018, had engineered SARS viruses to have a 10,000x increase in viral growth in lung, a 1,000,000x increase in viral growth in brain, and a 3x increase in lethality in mice that were engineered to possess human receptors for SARS viruses”

Professor Ebright asked why the Wuhan gain-of-function research, which was funded by the US National Institute of Health, was not stopped when its initial results were known in 2018. A similar question could be asked of the government: Why is the Gene Technology Bill which deregulates biotechnology experimentation being introduced at a time when a very high level of risk is becoming obvious?

The higher level of risk associated with biotechnology arises because by definition gene technology crosses the cell membrane and edits the command and control system of the whole organism. In the case of humans and animals this necessarily affects the conscious capacities of the organism. The seed of everything that we treasure in life is contained inside our first human cell—our immunity, strength, health, appearance, intelligence, growth, ambition, emotions and our unique personal identity.

See for example this 2024 paper from Korea entitled Psychiatric adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination: a population-based cohort study in Seoul, South Korea which found “COVID-19 vaccination increased the risks of depression, anxiety, dissociative, stress-related, and somatoform disorders, and sleep disorders”. This introduces a whole new class of serious risks which are little understood.

An editorial published in the prestigious journal Nature in 2021 entitled “Gene Therapy Needs a Long Term Approach” offered this precautionary assessment: “Gene-therapy trials are on the rise, but more needs to be done to understand the long-term risks associated with this type of treatment…..[there are];growing concerns about the late adverse effects.”

Among its many false justifications for the Bill the government suggests that similar legislation is working well in Australia. This is a laughable assertion. On 23rd Dec 2024, NSW lawyers P J O’Brien sent a letter to the Federal parliament cosigned by scientific experts entitled “Urgent Request to Present Evidence of Synthetic DNA Contamination in Blood to the Prime Minister“. It began: “We write to you with the utmost urgency regarding recent findings that significantly amplify the concerns surrounding the synthetic DNA contamination in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. This new evidence confirms the same synthetic DNA contamination found in Australian sourced COVID-19 vaccine vials is in the blood of South Australian participants in a peer-reviewed study.”

IN CONCLUSION, gene technology is a highly technical field with a risk profile that is not amenable to recall, containment or remediation.  Despite the efforts of significant commercial lobby groups heavily invested in biotechnology who wish to avoid any regulation, it is clear that government claims of safety, economic necessity and international alignment do not stand up to even superficial scrutiny. The lack of a labelling requirement speaks volumes about the disregard of public wishes. The idea that legislation protecting our food and medical choices can be removed and replaced with a regulator taking decisions for us is foolhardy and repugnant. It is entirely unsafe, not to say dangerous in the extreme, that the government is attempting to pass a Bill deregulating biotechnology at this time before even the Royal Commission on COVID-19 Phase II reports in 2026, with its broader terms of reference including risk and safety. We need more safeguards than those currently in the HSNO legislation, not their removal as this Bill proposes.

Advise your friends and colleagues to view our YouTube videoThe Gene Technology Bill. What Kiwis Need To Know and make a submission to the Health Select Committee by February 17th. Write to your MP. They need to be quizzed on this egregious Bill. They are trying to get this fast tracked during the holidays. We do not live in a country where people are willing to let others take away their food choices and increase exposure to serious long term environmental and health risks.

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A Long but Necessary Read – New Research Findings on Dangers of Gene Technology Reported

This article is also available as a PDF to download, print, and share.

Alarming Developments in Australia Following Their Gene Deregulation

To win the debate about the Gene Technology Bill, we have to expose the unscientific and misleading claims being parroted by politicians to gain public acceptance of an egregious takeover of our food choices and medical rights.

To do so, we have to not only make clear submissions to the Health Select Committee. But more importantly, persuade our friends, colleagues and contacts of the potential impact and the need for action.

Our task is made clear by a comment from David Farrar, prolific National supporter and Kiwiblogger-in-chief, that needs deconstructing and examination for misinformation. He quotes Judith Collins speaking at the first reading of the Bill as follows:

“Our current regulations for genetically modified organisms are some of the most backward looking in the world. New Zealand has lagged behind other countries, such as Australia, Canada, and England, which have safely embraced these technologies for the benefit of their people and their economies.

“Despite gene technologies having been in use in New Zealand since the 1970s, the restrictive rules and time-consuming processes we have imposed on researchers have made testing and embracing innovation outside the lab all but impossible. But no more. This Government has listened to our research, primary industry, and medical communities and the frustrations that they have felt over many years. Today, New Zealand moves into the present with a safe enabling regulatory regime. The legislation will enable the sorts of innovation that will benefit New Zealand while effectively managing risks to the health and safety of people and the environment.”

Farrar then adds his 25c “After 25 years of dithering, we finally have a Government that is not letting hysteria trump science. Amazing that this legislation has been introduced in the first year of office – rather than just another working group.”

Misinformation: ‘other countries have safely embraced these technologies for the benefit of their people and their economies’

The Gene Technology Bill is the New Zealand version of an international push by commercial interests to free up genetic experimentation from any last fetters of regulation. The massive profits made during the pandemic under emergency deregulation and government mandated participation have set a new benchmark for industry greed. Our Bill is far ahead of the rest of the world in terms of permissiveness. In a world of corporate giants from the food and pharmaceutical sectors seeking to push the envelope, New Zealand’s proposed out-on-a-limb laissez faire stance is a welcome development and something they have actually had a hand in creating.

We have seldom seen a more brazen claim than the use of the word ‘safely’ after 30 million excess deaths have been attributed to the pandemic during the last five years. Whether they come from a gene altered pathogen or a genetic vaccine is largely irrelevant here. As to citing England as a country accepting Gene Technology, a few days ago we pointed to the growing tide of public protest in the UK about the first use of anti-methane medicine Bovaer for cows and the sale of their milk and butter in supermarkets.

In the EU, proposed gene technology legislation has stalled due to disquiet among member states and in any case includes the precautionary principle which says that new technology must be proved safe before use, something that our Gene Technology Bill rejects. Nor does it liberalise research on microbes or animals as our Bill does.

Misinformation: ‘safe enabling regulatory regime’ that mostly classifies gene editing as safe, but supposedly can identify and mitigate any level of risk

A key plank of the government’s contention is the idea that gene editing has become more exact and therefore the need for testing, regulation, labelling, etc is reduced and in many if not most cases eliminated. This is not based on any valid scientific principle. Accuracy does not equate with safety. Just because you can achieve something more accurately does not guarantee its safety. A sniper trains every day to hit the target, but this does not make assassination a safer prospect.

As a result of serious adverse effects, the prospects for gene therapy dimmed in the 90s and early 2000s, but in 2008 new supposedly more exact gene editing techniques using CRISPR/cas gene scissors were developed. Research efforts stepped up and PR went back into overdrive—gene technology and medicine, according to this new narrative, now being promoted by our government, was going to be safe and effective. Today we know this to be false, as a paper published in November 2022 by the Karolinska Institute shows. CRISPR/cas techniques lead to unpredictable on-target genetic rearrangement which can interfere with vital cellular gene repair mechanisms.

During the pandemic, the supposed action of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines was outlined in great detail for the public and indeed, novel genetic instructions were ported into billions of an injected individual’s cells successfully by mRNA vaccines, but the outcome itself was not as predicted. The vaccines did not stop first infections, transmission or repeated infections. In theory the injected vaccine agents would be cleared up within days after having elicited the required protective immune memory. This didn’t happen. 

For example a peer reviewed study conducted by the US CDC and published in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society on Dec 5th entitled “Protection From COVID-19 Vaccination and Prior SARS-CoV-2 Infection Among Children Aged 6 Months–4 Years, United States, September 2022–April 2023” reports that COVID-19-vaccinated children had an increased incidence of COVID-19 infection compared to the unvaccinated. 

More worrying: investigative journalist Alex Berenson formerly of the NY Times reports scientists at prestigious Yale University have announced the imminent publication of a study that has found concentrations of COVID-19 spike protein in the blood of individuals two years after mRNA vaccination, suggesting the genetic sequences in the vaccine may have integrated into the DNA of recipients to the detriment of their health. 

These and many many other studies published during the last year in learned journals which we have reported reveal there are unexpected and unpredictable classes of serious risk to health with gene technology that can only be detected years after the event with careful research. Genetic material can reproduce and perpetuate itself in a way that chemicals cannot.

The misery of gene technology safety has been greatly simplified and altered for public consumption by corporations, scientists and politicians with vested interests. In reality the interior of the cell contains great complexity with trillions of elements involved. In this situation accuracy is not possible, always there are off target effects.

Moreover there are the ever present risks of lab accidents. A 2022 study of the Prevalence of Accident Occurrence Among Scientific Laboratory Workers found: “Among 220 participants recruited in the study, 99 participants (45.0%) have had accidents during their lab works. 59.6% have been exposed once, 32.3% between two and four times, only 1.0% between four and six times, and 7.1% more than six times.”

What sort of gene technology projects might be approved?

The Gene Technology Bill owes much of its content to Australian legislation so we decided to look over the ditch and see just how it all works or rather doesn’t work. The Australian Office of the Gene Technology Regulator has just issued an Invitation to comment on Clinical trials of controlled infection with seasonal influenza viruses (DIR 210). The project has been submitted for approval by the Doherty Institute, a subsidiary of the University of Melbourne. Its principal purpose is described as follows:

“The initial aim is to evaluate the safety and infectivity of recombinant seasonal human influenza viruses in healthy volunteers. These GM viruses will then be used to assess the effectiveness of therapeutic drugs or vaccine candidates to prevent and control influenza infection.”

In other words the lab is to make gene altered versions of the flu and then test out various genetic drugs and/or vaccines on human volunteers over a five year period. It does sound eerily similar to what went on at Wuhan Virology Lab for the five years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but then the Gene Regulator is there to put us right. They have already rated the project as posing ‘negligible to moderate risks to human health or safety’. In other words, whatever the public submits to the regulator, the project, which creates new viruses, is likely to be a shoo in for a rubber stamp. You might like to reflect that there is a big difference between the words ‘negligible’ and ‘moderate’. This points to the highly arbitrary and misleading risk classification process being used in Australia which is akin to pinning the tail on a donkey. You can dive into the details here.

The project at the Doherty Institute has at least reached the desk of the gene regulator. If you have enough money, it needn’t actually ever come near the regulator or his desk. An article in the UK Guardian on Dec 10 2024 is entitled “Moderna’s mRNA vaccines to be exempt from advisory committee scrutiny under $2bn Morrison-era deal“. It reports Australians will be offered respiratory mRNA vaccines from next year under a confidential $2bn onshore manufacturing deal struck with Moderna. The agreement exempts Moderna’s mRNA vaccines from assessment by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC), a government memorandum has revealed. The contract signed with the American pharmaceutical company commits successive Australian governments to buying locally produced Moderna vaccines for at least a decade. They will be manufactured at a specially built plant at Melbourne’s Monash University. The memorandum which is raising alarmed red flags even among researchers says the Moderna vaccines “will not go through the PBAC process and therefore will not be listed as designated vaccines on the National Immunisation Program”.

Our Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins no doubt realises what is going on in Australia and approves. She has cited Australian legislation as the lead we are following. The Gene Technology Bill sets the stage for our newly appointed government regulator to dust off his rubber stamp in a similar fashion and expose us all to unquantifiable risk.

Protection from civil and criminal liability

Despite the bogus claims of safety, the Gene Technology Bill seems to anticipate that there might be a few problems so they have included Clause 187—Protection from civil and criminal liability to remove any responsibility as follows:

This protects most persons from civil and criminal liability for any act that the person does or omits to do in the performance of their functions or duties under this Bill. It applies to the following persons:

1. the Regulator
2. an employee or agent of the Regulator
3. an enforcement officer
4. a member of the Technical Advisory Committee or the Māori Advisory Committee
5. a member of any subcommittee of those committees.

The person is protected from civil and criminal liability, however it may arise, for any act that the person does or omits to do under a requirement of this Act or simply if they are believed to be acting in good faith in the course of their duties under the Act.

Short version: the government is washing its hands of any liability.

Just reflect for a moment that the Consumer Guarantees Act (CGA) in New Zealand is part of the everyday fabric of our lives. We rely upon it. The CGA guarantees that products must be:

• Safe
• Of acceptable quality
• Fit for their intended purpose
• Match the description given
• Match the sample or demonstration model
• In acceptable condition when received

If a product doesn’t meet these guarantees, consumers can claim a refund, repair, or replacement. The Gene Technology Bill completely bypasses these provisions. Of course those damaged by gene technology will not be able to be refunded or repaired, perhaps the government envisions they will be replaced as happened with vaccine mandates.

So will we know what we are eating or being subjected to?

The Gene Technology Bill includes clauses which repeal and replace all provisions of previous legislation relating to gene technology. A global search of the Bill reveals that the word ‘labelling’ appears zero times. Any previous legal requirement that the presence of genetically modified content be identified on food labels is thereby rescinded. We won’t know what we are eating. This bypasses the need for traceability in the food chain which has formed a protective envelope over public health for a hundred years. No more.

I am sure many of you, like all of us at the Hatchard Report, are becoming more alarmed at the content of the Gene Technology Bill, but our hope lies with the vast majority of Kiwis who care about their food choices. This Bill has been rushed into Parliament without any clear understanding of its clauses. A sober look at the Bill reveals its glaring flaws and misconceptions. Our hope is that clear simple facts will create public pressure and sink the bill. We have until midnight on February 17th to make ;submissions to the Health Select Committee. More importantly, discussing the implications with friends and lobbying MPs directly can create a stir.

This will require steady hands, clear heads and a willingness to discuss the issues with our peers. The key points needing emphasis in submissions and discussions are as follows:

• Gene technology content in foods will no longer be identified in labels. We will not know what we are eating.
• Without labelling and traceability through the food chain any adverse effects cannot be identified or assessed overturning the lessons of food safety learned during the last 100 years. People with allergies are especially at risk.
• Gene technology is imprecise and subject to off target effects affecting health.
• Gene tech manufacturing processes are plagued by rogue genetic contamination.
• Genetically modified organisms can spread without limit and cannot be recalled or remediated as we found out during the pandemic.
• Claims of safety and effectiveness are totally misleading, gene technology is known to produce both short and long term adverse off-target effects.
• Genetic material is highly mobile, pathways for genetic recombination with human DNA are known to exist.
• The Bill provides provision for the government to reimpose vaccine mandates whenever it decides to do so.
• The Bill abandons the precautionary principle and allows for the implementation, release and consumption of experimental gene technology products before they are proven safe.
• The Bill does not specify how the regulator will assess any risk. The pandemic shows how far off such assessments can be.
• Claims of economic and health benefits from gene technology have been wildly exaggerated. Most projects fail. Projects will be mostly funded by the government and be a drain on the public purse. NZ’s economy will be better served by fostering our traditional strengths in farming. Overseas farmers have found patented gene technologies to be costly and no more productive than prior methods. Widespread implementation of gene technology in New Zealand is likely to face consumer backlashes and close our overseas markets.

In his comment, David Farrar believes that the existing HSNO legislation and the precautionary principle it enshrines have allowed ‘hysteria to trump science’. Nothing could be further from the truth, five COVID-19 pandemic years should have taught us the dangers of funding gene research while abandoning precaution.

Good luck with your submissions. This is winnable if we all stand together and speak out. People don’t just care about their food, they rely on it for health and well being.

More detailed information and extra scientific references are available in our articles here , here, here, here and here

The Gene Technology Bill currently being introduced into the New Zealand parliament and fast tracked will allow for the appointment of a regulator to categorise gene edited products by risk.

This article is also available as a PDF to download, print, and share and as an audio version.

The bill has already deemed a wide range of gene editing techniques as ‘low risk’ which will be proceeded, released into the environment, put into food or used in medicine without labelling, warnings or safety monitoring. In effect this will turn New Zealand into a laboratory for largely unfettered gene experimentation leaving the public at the sharp end of risk. So what are the risks and how do you assess them when it comes to gene editing?

In practice there are no standards for safety in biotechnology that actually work. The lesson of the pandemic is clear. Highly pathogenic gene edited products can escape the laboratory, they can spread without limit and can’t be recalled or mitigated. It is hard to escape the reality that no laboratories are completely secure. To err is human, mistakes are inevitable.

In contrast, the proposed New Zealand legislation reads like a gentleman’s club agreement:— We are all jolly fine knowledgeable fellows who have high aims and unimpeachable standing so we should be allowed to do whatever we want. The recent history of biotechnology experimentation points to the growth of this ‘anything goes’ ethic, extending to exotic clandestine projects and in some cases military involvement. Our government is naive if it thinks it can control local projects and foreign exploitation with its ‘regulation lite’. An article in the Guardian entitled ‘It’s game over for facts’: how vibes came to rule everything from pop to politics puts the post pandemic mood into context. If I feel its OK it must be. The Gene Technology Bill fits this criteria exactly.

At the moment, the global commercial gene editing industry is supposed to be self-policed by the researchers and corporates involved. The extent to which this doesn’t work is illustrated by an article in the UK Guardian on 12 December entitled ‘Unprecedented risk’ to life on Earth: Scientists call for halt on ‘mirror life’ microbe research. A 38 strong international group of Nobel laureates and other distinguished bioscientists have warned that “mirror bacteria, constructed from mirror images of molecules found in nature, could become established in the environment and slip past the immune defences of natural organisms, putting humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections that could spread without check”.

The DNA of all living organisms is made from “right-handed” nucleotides, while proteins, the building blocks of cells, are made from “left-handed” amino acids. Why nature works this way is unclear. Yet without beginning to understand what might be at stake, bioscientists have started programmes to construct mirror microbes with left-handed nucleotides and right-handed proteins. The concerns over the technology are revealed in a 299-page report and a commentary in the journal Science.

The report concludes “We therefore recommend that research with the goal of creating mirror bacteria not be permitted, and that funders make clear that they will not support such work.”

The most interesting feature of this concern is its origin. Dr Kate Adamala, a synthetic biologist at the University of Minnesota and co-author of the report, was working towards a mirror cell but changed tack last year only after studying the risks in detail out of curiosity. In other words, researchers have been busy starting projects without considering the risks. The scary side of this is the fact that tens of thousands of biotechnology projects are in progress around the world without any adequate assessment of risk.

The Gene Technology Bill calls for assessments of proportionate risk. I’m stumped, proportionate to what—the end of the world? Proportion is a mathematical concept, but even some of the world’s most recognisable bioscientists have been caught out and are now trying to play catch-up following a huge mistake themselves. They’ve had to resort to public appeals after the fact in journals and newspapers calling for bans, calls that will no doubt be completely ignored in some quarters. If they can’t get it right, what hope is there for our government appointed local regulator? A little person cast adrift in a wild sea. We need to go back to fundamentals and start to understand the risks in a broader context.

The biological sciences have misconstrued the nature of physical reality

The biotechnology paradigm has adopted a mechanical approach to understanding life. The model requires understanding life in terms of billiard ball chains of cause and effect—interaction and outcomes—by specific molecular structures. Ultimately the DNA is conceived as a blueprint, a repository of all that is needed to maintain the life of an organism. Simply put, DNA can receive requests and supply answers in the form of molecules which can be distributed through identifiable channels in the physiology.

An analogy will help make this clear. A vending machine contains a lot of different drinks. You can place money in the machine and identify the required drink by pushing a specific button. DNA in the cell nucleus is conceived as playing a similar role, it contains tens of thousands of genes which encode for thousands of protein types. DNA is interrogated by RNA in the cytoplasm (cell body) by a process known as transcription whereby the required protein is produced from specific genes, which then eventually fulfils a need in the wider physiology.

In practice, the processes involved are nowhere near that simple. There are forty million proteins in the cytoplasm. Information is transferred across and into and out of the cell not just by the chemical composition of protein molecules but by other processes including molecular shape resulting from types of protein folding, molecule vibrational modes, water soluble properties, energy levels, electromagnetic field properties, electrical conductivity, surface lock and key properties, etc. The total picture is not understood, far from it, This lack or imprecision of our knowledge about intra-cellular and inter-cellular processes is a great source of risk itself when it comes to gene editing.

Moreover a single gene does not encode for a single protein, Genes are multi-tasking. Multiple genes work together to form proteins in multiple different ways. In other words, editing one gene will have effects across multiple biological pathways. There are always off target and unintended effects of gene editing, no matter how precise the editing. The Gene Technology Bill completely ignores this by exempting some gene editing techniques from regulation.

More importantly, the biological sciences paradigm suffers significantly from the compartmentalisation of science and knowledge in general. Although we humans view life and nature from the different perspectives of physics, chemistry, etc…, life is one continuous whole governed by laws of nature working at different time and distance scales. Biological laws cannot be separated from the findings of other disciplines.

Laws of nature are hierarchical. At smaller time and distance scales there is more organising power and more connection over greater distances—in a sense space shrinks. Fundamental physical laws such as gravity apply equally at every point in creation. Curiously, at smaller time and distance scales there is also more uncertainty. Things that we tend to take for granted such as specific positions in space and moments in time, velocities and energies become subject to uncertainties. Moreover their behaviour is linked to the presence of an observer.

Biological systems are continuously tied into fundamental physical laws and in a very real sense emerge from them. Their properties manifest in biological systems. The 37 trillion cells in the average human being are not standalone, they are interconnected. Together they support a single observer. How this is achieved is not understood or even consistently investigated by the biological sciences. This implies that any risk to human life as a whole including our sentient and self-reflective characteristics cannot even begin to be assessed, as the warning reported by the Guardian article begins to hint.

We can push our analogy a little further if we like, imagine trillions of vending machines each offering millions of drinks all linked and networked together without the help of any drinks re-supplier, that are capable of acting in a way that supports and protects the network in every location simultaneously. You can see we are no longer describing a mechanical system, but an intelligent self-referral system—life.

Will our immune responses protect us?

Proponents of ‘low-risk’ categories of biotechnology experimentation support their arguments with reference to Darwinian notions of evolution. They say that life evolves through accidental or random gene mutations which turn out to be advantageous for an organism. It is true that damage to genes occurs readily. Studies showgenetic information is constantly being attacked by intrinsic and extrinsic damaging agents, such as reactive oxygen species, atmospheric radiation, environmental chemicals, and chemotherapeutics. This can cause cancer, neurological disease and premature aging. In fact every cell repairs DNA tens of thousands of times every day. The implication is obvious: gene editing is not inherently evolutionary, it is inherently destructive.

So can we rely on our natural gene repair and immune response mechanisms to protect us and clean up genetic damage or mistakes as proponents of low-risk biotechnology classifications suggest? The answer is no for very good reasons. An analogy will make this clear. Many countries have air defence systems to protect them from missile attack. These function tolerably well in the event of small scale attacks, but they break down if hundreds of missiles arrive simultaneously. A highly pathogenic viral organism can multiply without limit once it has escaped as happened during the pandemic. Injections of gene therapy components can affect billions of cells simultaneously. Mass substitution of feed or food ingredients can lead to illness as happened in the case of mad cow disease. To be commercially viable, biotech product research specifically aims for mass release and as quickly and universally as possible. This inevitably raises the risk profile. Life is naturally reproductive and biotechnology is aiming to alter what is reproduced. Remember cancer starts with a single-cell genetic mutation which then reproduces and grows.

All this means there should be no go areas for biotechnology research. Genetic interventions that cross the cell membrane have the potential to disrupt the whole organism in unpredictable ways. At risk is our fundamental connection with the underlying laws of nature, the underlying intelligence of nature. We are not independent agents, we are part of a whole system. As John Donne wrote in 1624 and which today rings just as true

No man is an island,

Entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less,

As well as if a promontory were:

As well as if a manor of thy friend’s

Or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

Biotechnology deregulation legislation coming to New Zealand is indeed world leading. As its government proponents including Prime Minister Chris Luxon, Minister of Business Innovation and Employment Judith Collins, Leader of the ACT Party David Seymour, and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters envision, but it is leading in entirely the wrong direction towards greater risk not away from it.

The fact that risky biotechnology experimentation is growing around the world is not something to encourage or normalise. Independently written recent articles in both the UK Telegraph and US Washington Post have reported scientists describing the risks of biotechnology experimentation as greater than the risks of nuclear war. Yet you can order deadly pathogens by mail in the US. Do we want or need that here?;

New Zealand has had a world leading precautionary legislative HSNO framework which has had some protective effects. In the light of recent developments in gene technology this legislation needs to be strengthened not abandoned. New Zealand has the advantage of geographic isolation and an efficient farming system that is the envy of the world. This is not something to be casually placed in the hands of a naive government appointed regulator by legislation that doesn’t understand, discuss or specify the risks, merely promising everything will all be OK if it is left to chance. What sort of encouragement of negligence is that? 

The 2001 Royal Commission on Genetic Modification published a 450 page report on the complex issues involved. The submissions are still relevant today. It endorsed the precautionary principle—the requirement for proof of safety before use or release which is now being abandoned by the Gene Technology Bill. In the meantime, the known risks of genetic modification of organisms have clearly increased in dimension severity and scope, not decreased.

No one needs to have a naive approach to these risks, farmers being sold on opportunities for enhanced productivity and profit should think again. They are the victim of public relations hype, the real aim is commercial exploitation controlled via plant and product patents and government mandated use, without consideration of risk or safeguards. Doctors and medical professionals need to learn the lessons of the pandemic. These lessons were bought with millions of human lives, they should not be ignored in the face of ministerial stupidity and cupidity.

Write to your MP and say no to the Gene Technology Bill. For more information see our report Response to Expert Opinions Issued by the Science Media Centre in Support of the Gene Technology Bill or go to the GE Free NZ website.

https://www.parliament.nz/en/mps-and-electorates/members-of-parliament

Formal Response to the Expert Opinions Issued by the Science Media Centre in Support of the Gene Technology Bill introduced to Parliament.

For the Attention of: Media, Biotech Researchers, Members of Parliament and Cabinet.

This document is also available as a PDF to download, print, and share.

A Public Resource

Author: Guy Hatchard PhD was formerly Director of Natural Products at Genetic ID (now FoodChain ID) a global food safety testing and certification company. He presented to the original Royal Commission on Genetic Modification in New Zealand during 2000 which helped to clarify the safety ground rules and labelling requirements for Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) which currently form a part of the New Zealand Hazardous Substances and New Organisms legislation. Dr. Hatchard is retired and has no financial interest in the outcomes of the current legislative initiative to deregulate biotechnology experimentation.

The Gene Technology Bill currently before Parliament introduces reforms to gene technology rules, reducing restrictions for scientists to work with biotechnology. It opens new avenues to commercialise the results of biotechnology research. It establishes a ‘low-risk’ classification for biotechnology research, applications and releases. Thereby it seeks to bypass the current requirement for labelling of GMOs. It devolves decisions about biotechnology safety to a government appointed regulator, rather than specific provisions of legislation.

The New Zealand Science Media Centre (SMC) is funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the same government department that is introducing the Gene Technology Bill. It has published two ‘Expert Opinion’ Media releases in support of the Bill see here (15 February 2024) and here (December 10 2024).

Since 2000 the safety considerations pertinent to biotechnology research, applications and releases have changed considerably. There has been much new research published. There have been advances in our understanding of genetic structures and functions, both in the human body and nature at large. There has been a proliferation of biosynthetic compounds in the food chain and in medicine. The global commercial biotechnology sector has grown exponentially. It has been estimated to be valued at NZ$2 trillion in 2023 employing considerably more than 1 million people. For all these reasons it is certainly time for a review of the biotechnology safety legislation. Therefore this is one of the most important reports we are publishing in 2024. It is intended to inform and update public opinion on many of the key issues.

Containment

We have arrived at an extraordinary crossroads in the field of public health. For the last five years, the COVID-19 pandemic has dominated the sector. There is a growing consensus that the COVID-19 virus was generated by a biotechnology ‘gain-of function’ research programme based in Wuhan China whose products subsequently escaped. The very obvious evidence of the pandemic has been that biotechnology cannot be 100% contained, inevitable mistakes can spread without limit and cannot be recalled. This is a very salutary lesson that must not be ignored. Biotechnology deregulation runs counter to the lessons of the pandemic.

Whether one supports the lab leak theory, as does the US government and a number of prominent biotechnologists, or whether one adheres to the idea of a zoonotic origin is largely irrelevant. The very fact that there is uncertainty and that no actual animal source has been discovered, reveals a great deal about the lack of certainty in our current understanding of the mobility and stability of novel genetic structures and pathogens.

Public Health

The rapid spread of COVID-19 was followed by the global roll out of a number of experimental biotech vaccines after an emergency suspension of regulatory safeguards. These vaccines did not meet the promised standards of efficacy or safety. Their use and the circumstances under which they were mandated is currently the subject of intense global scientific debate and public interest. The true extent of their impact cannot be assessed without the release of key public health data including mortality and hospital admission statistics tabulated by disease category, vaccination status, date, timing and age. The fact that Health New Zealand has ceased publication of many key health statistics during the pandemic including cancer incidence is both concerning and damning.

Epigenetics

There is now a fuller understanding compared to 2000 of the functioning of genetic systems. DNA does not act alone. The cell forms a whole system—Nucleus (containing DNA), Cytoplasm (containing RNA) and Membrane (two-way gate and protective shield). DNA cannot function or even exist without RNA and RNA relies on DNA. Moreover the extracellular environment also has a mutual reciprocal symbiosis with the cell and its genetic functions. Introduced genetic structures even outside the cell can ultimately influence the internal structure and function of the cell and the pathways for genetic expression. Fragments of genetic information can under certain circumstances reverse transcribe into the nuclear DNA itself. The complexity is staggering and still only very partially understood. The potential for mistakes and accidents is huge.

Precautionary Principle, Substantial Equivalence and Labelling

Many of the expert opinions published by the SMC suggest that the precautionary principle embodied in the current HSNO legislation is outdated and is in effect holding up research and scientific progress in New Zealand. The precautionary principle in essence states that new technology cannot be assumed to be safe before there is evidence of safety. In other words absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (or safety). The quoted experts argue that for many biotechnologies there has been sufficient use and improvements in method and precision to justify removal of regulation. In other words, some new applications and products can be presumed safe without testing or labelling to inform the public.

However, widespread use is not evidence of safety without testing and without traceability and labelling. Traceability is a foundational principle of the safety of foods and medicines. Any suggestion labelling can be removed without error is laughable and a regressive step.

The suggestion that some products of biotechnology are indistinguishable from their natural counterparts and hence ‘substantially equivalent’ is not tenable. There are always detectable differences. The fact that these could be minor does not prove safety. Minor differences in atomic structures can cause differences in protein folding and receptor binding, both known to be disease vectors.

Manufacturing

The exact conditions of production of certain biotech products in a lab is not reproduced in upscaled commercial production processes. Commercial biotech processes entail higher levels of contamination and fewer safeguards. Product purities are variable. This was the case with mRNA vaccines which for example are now known to have high levels of SV-40 DNA plasmid contamination—a recognised carcinogen.

Right of Choice

The existing regulatory structures have been inadequate, but not because the rules are too restrictive, rather too lax. During the last 25 years, there have been more than three thousand synthetic additives, flavours, colours, preservatives and processing aids approved by Medsafe for use in the food chain here in New Zealand. These include copies of natural foods produced via biotechnology such as rennets, yeasts, vanillas, etc. There is no requirement for labelling their origin. Many have been described as ‘natural’ on labels. Meanwhile there has been a rapid growth in the incidence of allergies, cancers, inflammatory conditions, etc. Without clear labelling, there is no way to trace the possible origins of such conditions in the food chain. Importantly, without labelling there is no way for consumers to reliably exercise their right of choice. They may be under the impression they are eating traditional foods, but may be consuming novel compounds. As a result some of our foods may now have a lower nutritional profile or hidden pathogenic potential. Without labelling, these effects will be untraceable.

Effectiveness

From its inception the potential benefits of biotechnology have been exaggerated. They have been consistently subject to manipulation in the hands of PR writers who are working under commercial imperatives. The actual achievements of the sector to date have been much smaller than the hype suggests. Biotech publicity almost universally suggests cures for cancers, inherited diseases, and a wide range of illnesses are just around the corner—a fanciful gross exaggeration.

The idea has also been erroneously implanted in the public psyche that almost all illness is caused by genetic faults which can be quickly corrected with properly funded research and applications which edit genes. Moreover it is suggested that human traits like height, strength, beauty, longevity or intelligence will soon be improved through biotechnology. These ideas are so far from the reality of our current knowledge as to be misleading in the extreme. Apparently the aim of such misleading claims is to secure investment capital, government grants, freedom from regulation and public acceptance of risky experimentation.

Economics

There have been unsubstantiated suggestions that our economy has suffered because our gene regulations are too restrictive. It is suggested that our successful and profitable participation in the global economy requires biotechnology deregulation. The experts cite the case of Lanza Tech, a New Zealand biotech company that relocated to the US to avoid the New Zealand regulations. However, during the last year, Lanza has not been a success story. Its share price has tanked. Moreover this is not an isolated example, many hopeful start ups have failed. Not the least because consumer acceptance of biotech foods and additives is not forthcoming. People like their traditional foods.

Nor have medical applications lived up to the hype. Insulin is an important part of the treatment of diabetes. Synthetic insulin, invented forty-five years ago, has been heralded as a biotechnology success story. It certainly made its inventors into billionaires, but during the ensuing 45 years the number of people with diabetes world wide has increased from 100 million to 600 million. Synthetic insulin is not curing diabetes. It is better prevented and actually treated by improvements in diet, exercise and lifestyle.

Another highly publicised success story—gene therapy treatment for inherited genetic illness sickle cell anaemia—has so far only been available to 100 people worldwide out of the 8 million suffering from the condition. The treatment is risky and doesn’t always work. Its long term efficacy is unknown. It costs about NZ$6 million per person. Whilst potentially life altering for a very tiny number of individuals, this is hardly a prescription for a global health revolution.

In fact there are very few commercial biotech success stories, unless products are supported by government mandates as happened during the pandemic. Worryingly, mandated biotech interventions in animal diets such as Bovaer for ruminants are now proposed. Don’t forget the disastrous run on effects of antibiotic feed additives which have helped to create untreatable infections from superbugs.

New Zealand’s agricultural economy benefits from our clean green image. Biotechnology deregulation may ultimately tarnish this image and have a negative effect on agricultural exports.

Higher Functions

Perhaps the most concerning feature of biotechnology deregulation is our lack of knowledge about the relationship between genes and the mind. Human life begins with a single cell. The promise of all that we cherish in life, our emotions, our aspirations, our intelligence, our joy is somehow contained in that cell, but no one understands how exactly that unfolds. Genetic pathway interventions inside and outside the cell alter cellular functions and could affect our capacity for those higher abilities which characterise the greatest achievements of human life. Those involved in biotechnology research are operating on the belief that our abilities can ultimately be enhanced. Given the current state of our knowledge, that suggestion is infantile. There has been a general principle in gene therapy—there will be off target mutative effects. How much genetic experimentation will affect human consciousness and its self-reflective capacity for mental health, sound and fair judgement is a total unknown, but a very real risk that biotech regulatory measures have so far completely ignored.

Conclusion

Those offering expert comment to the SMC are biotech industry insiders with admitted conflicts of interests. During the last 25 years, the biotech research sector around the world has sought to fend off regulation. The current New Zealand proposal for biotechnology deregulation is another example of this. In fact, the level of deregulation proposed by our government in the Bill is extreme. In practice, regulatory personnel inevitably become facilitators.

The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic should be hitting home some hard truths about risk/benefit balance. The tabling of the Gene Technology Bill at this time speaks volumes about an industry determined to ignore risks and override precautionary voices. In 2000, many of the potentially serious risks of gene editing cited at the Royal Commission hearings were ignored in favour of a ‘go ahead with caution’ recommendation. This approach is no longer tenable. Inevitable mistakes CAN spread without limit and CANNOT be recalled. The current Royal Commission Phase 2 will not report until 2026. Passing the Gene Technology Bill now jumps the gun and prejudges the issue. It imperils public health.

For more than three years our websites HatchardReport.com and https://GLOBE.GLOBAL have been publishing scientifically referenced articles covering the above issues in depth. We encourage everyone to closely review these resources. In 2000 some of the risks of biotechnology were theoretical, we now know them to be inescapable and world shattering. This is not the time for biotechnology deregulation, it is a time to take stock and strengthen public health protection.

The following experts wrote for SMC in support of biotechnology deregulation. You can access their comments here and here. The Science Media Centre release is encouraging people to send them comments and questions:

Associate Professor Josephine Johnston, Bioethics Centre, University of Otago:
Contact: +64 21 229 6695; josephine.johnston@otago.ac.nz

Alec Foster, Portfolio Leader – Bioproducts and Packaging, Scion:
Contact: +64 27 223 7000alec.foster@scionresearch.com

Dr Revel Drummond, Senior scientist, Plant & Food Research Ltd:
Contact: +64 9 925 8658 revel.drummond@plantandfood.co.nz

Dr Kimberley Snowden, Principal Scientist, Team Leader for Plant Development, Plant & Food Research, 
Contact: kimberley.snowden@plantandfood.co.nz. Or via Communications Manager Emma Timewell: +64 21 242 9365 Emma.Timewell@plantandfood.co.nz

Professor Kjesten Wiig, Deputy Director, Malaghan Institute of Medical Research:
Contact: kwiig@malaghan.org.nz, or via Head of Communications Gail Marshall: +64 21 360 432 gmarshall@malaghan.org.nz

Dr Andrew Allan, Principal Scientist at Plant & Food Research; and Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland:
Contact: +64 21 226 8224 Andrew.Allan@plantandfood.co.nz

Dr Sylvia Nissen, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Policy, Lincoln University:
Contact: +64 21 161 5550 sylvia.nissen@lincoln.ac.nz

Dr Richard Scott, science team leader – climate change and forage innovations, AgResearch:
Contact: +64 21 255 7062 richard.scott@agresearch.co.nz

Dr Hilary Sheppard, Senior Lecturer, School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland:
Contact: +64 21 175 8078 h.sheppard@auckland.ac.nz

John Caradus. Chief Executive Officer Graslanz Technology Ltd:
Contact: +64 6 351 8255 john.caradus@grasslanz.com

You may also like to write to your MP
https://www.parliament.nz/en/mps-and-electorates/members-of-parliament/