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Waking Up From the Dream of Biotechnology

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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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The Gene Technology Bill Has Exposed a Knowledge Deficit at the Heart of the NZ Parliamentary Process

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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

Submission Template: The Gene Technology Bill

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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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Analysis of Misinformation in the Gene Technology Bill and Suggestions for Submissions and Discussions

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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

Major Alert: New Zealand Government is Enshrining ‘Medical Mandates’ in Law

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There is a revolution in progress, and it is not a bloodless revolution.

The Gene Technology Bill introduced to Parliament this week includes the following provisions:—

  • 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.
  • 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 (the Minister) will have the power to grant an emergency authorisation.

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

These clauses bypass the medical choice provisions of the New Zealand Bill of Rights. 

They violate the conclusions of Phase 1 of the Royal Commission on the pandemic which found that vaccine mandates hurt people and the economy.

They pre-empt the findings of Phase Two of the Royal Commission which has yet to examine the safety of COVID-19 vaccines produced via gene editing.

It empowers the Minister to make health decisions affecting all Kiwis on the say-so of foreign gene regulators of his choice.

The Bill is being passed under Fast Track legislation designed to prevent public discussion of its controversial provisions and adequate understanding of its impact by MPs. There is no time sensitive need for this.

The Bill ignores the experience and lessons of the last five years of the pandemic which has been a gene technology disaster responsible for 30 million deaths worldwide. Its logic is therefore incomprehensible even to well-informed observers, but it appears to find echoes in a dark history:

“The sun shines” wrote Christopher Isherwood in his 1930s Berlin Stories “and Hitler is the master of this city. The sun shines, and dozens of my friends are in prison, possibly dead.” As are too many of my friends recently, young and old alike.

Following the 1933 Nazi acquisition of power, Germany underwent a rapid and sweeping revolution that reached deep into the fabric of daily life. At the beginning, it occurred quietly and out of sight of most of the population. At its core was ‘enabling’ legislation that empowered the government and its appointees (read: regulators) to take far reaching decisions on behalf of the whole population. Its core aim was Gleichschaltung—coordination—designed to bring citizens, government ministries, universities, cultural and social institutions inline with Hitler’s extreme beliefs and attitudes.

Today we are facing efforts aimed at global coordination of technology, including biotechnology, food tech and information technology. The New Zealand government appears very willing to play a leading role in this revolution, whatever the implications. We have reported on these previously at length (hereherehere and here). 

In addition to the prospect of government reimposition of medical mandates, the Bill does not require labelling of gene altered foods. As this flies in the face of all the canons of food safety and traceability established over the last 100 years, the only possible motivations are either a desire to deny consumers any right to preferences, or a wish to avoid any safety monitoring or culpability. Not only will we be unable to exercise medical autonomy, but we will no longer know what we are eating. This is an extraordinary and frightening prospect and not just for those who struggle with allergies. Food choice is not the prerogative of the government or bioscientists no matter how sure of themselves.

Something absolutely fundamental and personal is being taken away from us

This Bill is being promoted and steered by Judith Collins, with the full support and encouragement of the Prime Minister Chris Luxon and the leader of the ACT Party David Seymour. Collins is a lawyer and long time Parliamentarian, she will fully understand the import of the Bill. As a previous leader of the National Party who lost an election, it is hard to escape the suggestion that Collins may be taking satisfaction from the imposition of her will on those who rejected her leadership. We have all heard stories of waiters who piss in the awkward customer’s beer and laugh behind their backs. I am sorry to draw such a gross comparison, but my sense of outrage demands it.

The Gene Technology Bill seeks to institute a revolution, it spits in the face of the public who suffered during the pandemic and who voted in a new government with the thought that things might change. Instead we appear to have more of the same or worse. The refusal of Health New Zealand to publish up to date health statistics such as those for cancer incidence, speaks volumes about a government determined to avoid any accountability, even at the expense of public health. For the record, US insurance data reveals that cancer incidence has had a steady and unremitting upward trajectory since the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines. Ignored by our government and worse: covered up.

There is a time for everything and a season for every purpose under Heaven. A time to be born and a time to die, Now is the time to lobby your MP and let them know exactly what you think. Time to make our voice heard.

Please write to your MP before the summer break brings consideration to a close and put a note in your diary to follow up afterwards. This fight is winnable.

The Risks of Biotechnology Deregulation are Unquantifiable

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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

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

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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/

The Truth Will Out

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For millennia humankind has been plagued by a succession of people and groups who thought they knew the secret of life. Their views have been forced on populations often with the threat or actuality of violence. This is still going on today but with a new twist. The biotechnology paradigm has attained cult status as the secret of immortality, but it is actually killing people.

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

A paper published in Science, Public Health Policy and the Law entitled “BioNTech RNA-Based COVID-19 Injections Contain Large Amounts Of Residual DNA Including An SV40 Promoter/Enhancer Sequence” concludes: 

“Our results raise grave concerns regarding the safety of the BNT162b2 vaccine and call for an immediate halt of all RNA biologicals unless these concerns can be dispelled.”

Meanwhile, ABC News Radio Australia reported on Sunday morning: 

“The new Moderna production facility in Australia, would be able to produce a maximum of 100,000 doses of mRNA ‘vaccine’ per annum. These would not just be for covid, but seasonal influenza and h.p.v.. Also, it would produce mRNA ‘vaccines’ for certain cancers.”Further, it erroneously and misleadingly stated, that“during the ‘pandemic’, Australian lives were lost due to the delay in importing the covid ‘vaccines’.”

In Britain, the Labour government has just committed to giving ALL cows in England controversial Bovaer feed by 2030 – amid an ongoing dairy boycott over the ;unlabelled toxic biosynthetic additive.

Richard H. Ebright, Ph.D., is Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University. He served for sixteen years as editor of the Journal of Molecular Biology. He has served on the National Institutes of Health Molecular Biology Study Section. He is a member of the Institutional Biosafety Committee, and he has been a member of 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. He has testified at US House and US Senate hearings on biosafety, biosecurity, and biorisk management. So his words should carry weight (you can find his full 2022 testimony to the US Senate here: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/doc/Ebright Testimony Updated.pdf):

“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”

Although the research process at Wuhan has been shrouded in secrecy and obfuscation by governments and scientists alike, according to some commentators, to achieve this degree of pathogenicity, biotechnologists spliced genetic sequences onto the COVID-19 spike protein that are recognisably related to other feared virulent pathogens, plagues and toxins. So perhaps now it should be more obvious why the effects of COVID-19 linger for so long including lung weakness and brain fog. Moreover mRNA vaccines teach our cells to produce COVID-19 spike proteins, an extraordinary step which has only proliferated and worsened the toxic effects.

Moreover, among microbes and pathogens, genetic variation and sharing of sequences is the norm, raising the possibility, if not certainty, that the enhanced virulence of COVID-19 will be acquired by other microbes and disease vectors, something that might already be having an effect on our public health disaster. The effects of gene editing cannot be contained, they spread without limit and cannot be recalled.

Professor Ebright asks why the Wuhan gain-of-function research, which was funded by the US NIH, was not stopped when its initial results were known in 2018. No doubt you will join me in asking similar questions of our government. Why are you planning to deregulate biotechnology? Is it not madness and folly in the extreme, running counter to the known facts?

So as we lurch towards an uncertain future controlled by misinformed government directives, the whims of modern day Frankensteins and biotech corporate interests, we can only ask: Where did it all go wrong?

Politicians today cannot even answer the question “What is a woman?” let alone “What is life?”. Yet they are willing participants in the mad schemes of bioscientists divorced from everyday truths.

The biotech paradigm assumes that life consists of a lot of impossibly tiny bits and processes thrown together over billions of years by supposedly random evolutionary forces. These are described in mechanistic terms to the exclusion of any understanding of consciousness. A genetic and epigenetic system that according to this view can be redesigned to work better over a matter of weeks by clumsy human hands working with incredibly complex biological systems with trillions of trillions of elements invisible to the human eye or even microscopes. Well it didn’t work. It all went terribly wrong over the last five years and appears all set to get worse over the next five.

Life is our most intimate experience, it is our WHOLE SELF and we are awake.

Living systems defy the second law of thermodynamics, the law of universal decay. Living systems grow and share information. Every part of an organism is capable of learning from experience and from other organisms. Living systems have a ‘part and whole’ structure. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. LIVING WHOLENESS is awake, conscious, its expression supported by the harmonious operation of trillions upon trillions of parts, all fulfilling individual roles crucial to the projection of the WHOLE. Mind and body participate in a symbiotic relationship where consciousness is the senior partner.

Living systems are characterised by five fundamentals of progress—Stability, Adaptability, Integration, Purification and Growth.

For example:

  • Stability is evident in homeostasis
  • Adaptability to environments including climatic and dietary conditions
  • Integration is the primary focus of digestion
  • Purification is a focus of immune responses
  • Growth is evident in the life cycle of all living systems 

Yet bio engineering, such as that employed by mRNA vaccines:

  • Upsets the Stability of cells by repurposing their functions
  • Upsets the Adaptability of cells by fixing their functions to produce an alien protein sequence 
  • Upsets Integration by destroying the uniform genetic expression of cells
  • Upsets Purification by teaching cells to self-produce toxins
  • Upsets Growth through proliferation of rogue cells

By now it should be evident why we are seeing the daily reports in our newspapers of rapid onset cancers, heart disease, and other serious and tragic illnesses among young and old alike with an unprecedented frequency. A New Zealand Herald article “Senior emergency department physician warns hospital bed block is worst it’s ever been” puts the crisis in perspective. Bed block is an expression which simply means there are too many sick people and not enough hospital beds. Whilst admitting that overcrowding and wait times are worse than they have ever been, the article manages to dance around the topic at length without asking the obvious question: Why are so many people falling sick and what with?

No wonder, because our government and Health New Zealand, presumably fearful of discovery, have stopped publishing such statistics. Where are people brave enough to face the truth? Truth is the essence of WHOLENESS. Truth is simple, natural, real and life supporting. Truth brings certainty and the capacity to face the future whatever it offers. Without truth, we are adrift in an endless sea of nothing. The health crisis has a cause, but without the data, our government can waffle about targets, administrative efficiency, overcrowding, funding and bed block to their heart’s content. All the while confusing the public and concealing the truth.

The gene editing paradigm and the public relations promotional dream of disease-free life has turned out to be just that: a dream or rather a nightmare. It needs to go: lock, stock and smoking barrel. Right now we need scientists brave enough to change course, politicians brave enough to admit to error and correct mistakes, journalists with the capacity to ask probing questions and doctors who refuse to do any harm. People who can acknowledge the simple and obvious truth: that the capacity of consciousness is the essence of life.

Where are you? Please stand up and be counted. You could be walking on the right side of history.

Coming to the Breakfast Table Unannounced

Governments don’t mind exposing people to health risks as long as it appears they are doing something about climate change (even if they aren’t)

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

The New Zealand Government is deregulating biotechnology. As we have previously reported, the PR logic (if you can call it that) underpinning their bold (idiotic?) move says: 

  • Biotechnology is generally safe, so testing may be minimal or not required
  • There is no need to label gene altered foods (presumably because the US doesn’t)
  • Biotech tech measures aimed (rather inaccurately) at reducing climate change will be welcomed by the public here and overseas
  • Kiwi biotech will produce an economic miracle

None of the above are remotely true or plausible. Here’s some more evidence:

The UK Daily Mail published an article today entitled “Expert’s verdict on Arla Foods’ ‘Bovaer’ following alarming claims that milk from Tesco, Morrisons and Aldi is packed with ‘cancer-causing’ additive“. It reports:

“Shoppers threatened to boycott dairy products like milk and butter (Lurpak) made by Danish food firm Arla and sold in TescoMorrisons and Lidl, after the company announced a trial that would involve giving a feed additive to its cows called ‘Bovaer’ made by Dutch-Swiss multinational DSM-Firmenich. The chemical, which will be introduced to cattle’s food, is designed to reduce the amount of methane they produce during digestion, a gas that [the Mail understands] contributes to [recent] climate change“.

All this despite the fact that ruminants have roamed the earth in their billions for thousands of years. Reportedly a quarter teaspoon of Bovaer a day reduces methane emissions by 30% (there’s an advertising jingle hiding somewhere in there).

Bovaer is a synthesised powdered chemical feed supplement that blocks an enzyme involved in methane formation reducing the amount of methane emitted by each animal. It contains silicon dioxide, propylene glycol and the main active ingredient 3-nitrooxypropanol, or “3-NOP”. Test results submitted to the UK Food Standards Authority by the manufacturer have shown that 3-NOP can be harmful to humans if inhaled. It is also a skin and eye irritant. Tests showed that 6-8% female rats fed higher doses developed Mesenchymal cell hyperplasia (a known precursor to cancer) as well as developing benign(???) tumours.

EU FSA tests using standard OECD safety protocols found accumulations of 3-NOPin the liver, kidneys, and adrenal glands of male rats along with traces in the brain. Leading to the conclusion that the genotoxicity of 3-NOP is not fully understood. Genotoxicity is the capacity of a chemical to damage the DNA and cause cancers. The long term effects of Bovaer are therefore unassessed. A US FDA advisory says the product is not for human use and warns it can damage male fertility and reproductive organs. Thank goodness they won’t be putting it in cornflakes, just in the milk. 

Cows apparently haven’t raised any objections, despite the fact that the tests showed that Bovaer reduced their heart and ovary size—an effect the UK FSA decided could not be classified as adverse (???). In one study at higher doses, 3-NOP was detected in the milk in 3 out of the 4 cows involved. Two of the cows had to be euthanized early.

UK consumers, who take milk with their cereal and tea, and spread butter on their bread, are understandably concerned. A boycott movement has taken shape influencing farmers and dairy markets. No worries though, because an expert interviewed by the Mail, Professor Gunter Kuhnle, a nutritionist at the University of Reading says:

“Additives used in farming must undergo rigorous testing by food safety authorities both in the UK and in Europe in order to be permitted for use. If something is in use by a major brand you can generally trust that it is perfectly safe for consumption.”

Manufacturer DSM-Firmenich assured the public that “provided it is used as recommended, Bovaer never enters into milk and therefore does not reach consumers.” There is a false premise being applied here—trace or low concentrations of toxic chemicals can be safely ignored. Note that the word ‘never’ in the DSM statement is carefully and legally conditioned by the word ‘provided.’ It has to be because 3-NOP has been detected in milk if administered to cows at higher doses than those recommended.

Phew! Of course, no one would ever do anything that silly, would they? In any case, you can always follow the FDA advice and wear protective clothing when eating your breakfast and handling toast and jam which would most likely also reduce your chance of catching COVID-19.

In October, we reported on methane reducing pills for cows being researched by a New Zealand firm whose ingredients are being kept secret (you can see why can’t you?), under the title “Do White Coats Make You More Intelligent?. It appears that a Swiss-Dutch firm has beaten us to it. Bovaer is now approved for farm use in 55 countries. New Zealand’s Environment Protection Authority (EPA) gave the green light to register Bovaer in our country back in August 2023. Although any current New Zealand use is not documented, if biotech deregulation goes ahead, it is unclear if the public will ever be allowed to know about it.

So, given the alarming red flags in the test results, why are food safety regulators approving Bovaer? They are doing so because of the political priority to appear to be addressing climate change. It appears as if it doesn’t matter that public health is put at risk as long as woke political correctness is satisfied.

Summing up: Bovaer is a synthesised product whose long term outcomes are unknown, which is being introduced into the global food chain without labelling. There are preliminary indications that it may cause cancer. Consumers in the UK are incensed. People like their traditional foods unadulterated. The claim of the New Zealand government that consumers will flock to such so-called climate-reducing biotech products which will drive our farm exports into the stratosphere appears to be unfounded. The opposite may even be the case, overseas consumers may reject our products. Finally, as we reported two years ago in our article “It’s the cows, stupid“, cows are not the problem, but blaming them for climate change might just deflect criticism away from the great and good travelling in fuel-thirsty private jets many of whom are heavily invested in our biotech future. 

So, what are the financial incentives helping to drive biotech experimentation on our food chain? It is quite simple. There are about 35 million ruminants (cows, sheep, deer and goats) being farmed in New Zealand, seven ruminants for every one of us. A product that is required to be administered every day or at regular intervals will make the inventor and patent holder billions. Money talks, if the long term effect of this product on public health is unknown and already under suspicion, so what? In the balance of things we all want to be billionaires. It is a gold rush, but not one that will result in any net public good, quite the reverse. It is one more dire risk that our government is happy for us to shoulder on their behalf. The biotech sector has a growing appetite for wealth, power and deregulation. Hundreds of other projects affecting us directly are already in the regulatory pipeline. Under biotech deregulation, no one will be required to ask us if novel food is wanted or acceptable. It will just show up unannounced at breakfast. Please write to your MP.

FYI the UK Soil Association says that organic standards prohibit the use of Bovaer, so it can be avoided by shopping for certified organic products.

Fed Up With Hearing About COVID-19? Think Again, There is More to Come

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New information reveals the truth is a lot darker, but there are also paths to healing.

Have you noticed a proliferation of websites promoting ‘cures’ for long COVID-19 and vax injury? These talk in terms of compromised immune responses that need readjusting often through dietary formulas or supplements or even medicines that are sold via the sites. No doubt you have the same questions as us, do they work and if not what might?

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

To answer this question we need to review the historical fundamentals of what has gone wrong with public health and then understand what has happened recently. Only then can we start to identify the directions pointing to possible solutions to the unique medical challenges created by mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

During the twentieth century improvements in nutrition, housing, hygiene, sanitation, work conditions, medicine, surgery and neonatal care boosted our health and longevity. In 1900 the global average life expectancy at birth was 32 years rising to 64 years in 2000, a relentlessly positive rise.

Yet it was also a century characterised by chemical proliferation. As the decades wore on, more and more largely unregulated chemicals entered our daily life via food additives, synthetic foods, chemical agriculture, the environment, the air we breath, housing, industrial processes, the oceans, the water we drink and medicines. A paper published in November 2021 entitled “Chemical pollution: A growing peril and potential catastrophic risk to humanity” reported: 

“Recent analysis of global inventories of chemicals estimates humans have synthesised over 350,000. New synthetic chemicals are constantly being developed: recently, the USA alone produced an average of 1500 new substances a year. Many of these substances are known to be toxic in small doses, sometimes in combination with other pollutants, or as breakdown products after release into the biosphere and geosphere.”

Many are forever chemicals which accumulate in the environment or in human and animal tissues posing a long term threat to health and life. As a result, even as longevity was increasing, our immunity and health were declining. We were becoming more vulnerable to disease. As the century drew to a conclusion, the growth in mental illness, cancers, heart disease, life threatening allergies, respiratory illness, disabilities and autoimmune conditions was eroding longevity. Fortunately this was almost balanced by further improvements in healthcare protocols and quality of life measures, that is until the current century dawned, when something truly novel and frightening began to take its toll—a longevity killer. But this was not just the result of unfortunate mistakes, nor was it due to lack of precautionary testing or foresight, there was planning involved.

An article in the UK Daily Telegraph entitled “Lab leak most likely source of Covid, says Prof Tim Spector” begins to spill the beans. Prof. Spector is not someone speaking from the sidelines nor is he in any way under qualified. He is a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College, London, a world leading centre for gene therapy research. He was awarded the OBE for his work advising Downing Street during the pandemic and for his role in creating the Zoe virus tracker. Prof. Spector told a Zoe podcast that it was:

“Obvious” there had been a cover-up about the origins of the pandemic…I don’t think there’s any doubt that this virus emanated in China, in a place near Wuhan……and that the most likely source of this was a lab leak from Wuhan.”

Prof. Spector said there were scientists experimenting with hazardous viruses at the Wuhan Virology Lab that got out of control rather than it being a plot, but he points to a trail of shredded documents and email exchanges between the US and China at the time, saying:

“There was a very obvious cover-up very early on by various governments saying we have to get a report out there saying this is all down to bats so people aren’t going to blame labs and scientists” He continued: the aim was to keep the credibility of biotechnology research going in the public’s mind.

Back in 2021 I was in touch with a leading researcher at King’s College. He held much the same precautionary opinion as Spector and told me this was generally held by his colleagues. He also indicated caution concerning COVID-19 vaccine safety, pointing out that the biotechnologies involved were risky and had unpredictable effects. However in 2021, my contact was too frightened to go on the public record with his conclusions. Prof. Spector’s broadcast indicates that the tide of concern at King’s College has risen enough to speak out.

Prof. Spector concluded by warning that the gain of function research to increase the potency of viral pathogens undertaken at Wuhan was dangerous. Ongoing research of a similar nature was still occurring at labs around the world.“It should be treated with the same seriousness as the threat of nuclear war. It could all happen again starting in another lab if we’re not careful,” he said.

The research at Wuhan was funded in part by the Chinese military. From the outset, serious money backing biotechnology research has been tied to the development of bioweapons. These programmes are highly secretive and kept out of public view, but there is no doubt that a cat and mouse game of pathogen and vaccine research is being played out privately in government funded labs around the globe. An article published in Health Security during 2022 entitled “Next-Generation Biowarfare: Small in Scale, Sensational in Nature?“, makes no bones about it, calling for:

“Closer collaboration between frontline civilian scientists and national security establishments to build rapidly scalable networks of expertise…which will enable tactical versatility and more precise [bioweapon] attacks.”

All this adds up to a very powerful reason for governments to hide the origins of COVID-19. In fact the dangers and risks of biotechnology research have been kept well hidden from the public for years. Gene editing is inherently mutative, but all of the public messaging emphasises imagined benefits from procedures which don’t yet fully work, nor are likely to in the future. As I am writing this report, evidence of the reluctance of the New Zealand government to admit any error surfaced remarkably enough in the New Zealand Herald (at last) under the headline “Covid-19 inquiry: Vaccine mandates ‘undeniably’ eroded trust, harmed some New Zealanders“. Our government was apparently reluctant to release the findings of a Royal Commission which is critical of the actions of the New Zealand parliament and the Health Service during the pandemic. 

On the morning of 28th November Commission Chairman Prof. Tony Blakely hinted at the contents of their report saying Vaccine mandates caused huge pain to a “substantial minority” during the pandemic and Government should consider whether their benefits outweighed their harms”. Blakely urged the government to reverse its decision not to release the report until 2026 saying “there is no reason why the report could not be released today and its key recommendations acted on immediately.”

By the afternoon, the government gave in to the pressure and released the report. It is no wonder that our government wanted the report kept under wraps, they are currently introducing legislation to deregulate biotechnology which will expose our whole population to the hazardous outcomes of novel genetic experiments affecting our foods and medicines. As part of this process, the government has saturated the media with fanciful reports about the economic and health benefits of biotechnology that are unsubstantiated by science. They have also latched on to the PR fiction of ‘safe’ gene editing.

These glossy PR pieces of unscientific fluff do not disclose that key sectors of government-sponsored biotech research in many countries around the world are actually designing ways to kill people, as apparently happened by mistake (???) at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The pandemic has made one thing absolutely crystal clear—inevitable biotechnology mistakes cannot be contained, they will spread without limit.

Millions of people have died during the pandemic. A paper published in Nature puts the number of excess deaths up till the end of 2022 around the world at 15 million. Two years later the figure is now close to 30 million. The colossal tally of excess deaths includes some among our friends and relatives, as well as public figures like sports stars, politicians and entertainers. So how has it been possible to hide from the public the deadly contribution of biotechnology experimentation?

No doubt governments and medical authorities have been able to censor the content of science journals, mainstream media and even social media platforms sticking closely to a PR narrative, but there are other factors. The rigid paradigm and methods of medical orthodoxy dictate the terms of discussion when it comes to illness and death. There is a limited list of possible causes of death and this list does not include biotechnology or gene editing. Diagnoses of cancer or heart disease etc. are labels that dictate paths of treatment and if fatal are intended to bring a sense of closure to the victim and the family.

The news that someone died suddenly following a cardiac arrest is nothing unusual and it closes the door to further scrutiny. But what if 30 million people die unexpectedly including young people before their time from a wide array of supposed causes, as has happened? You would think it is time to call in Sherlock Holmes, but unfortunately Sherlock has been confined under house arrest and gagged from speaking by the powers that be.

The twenty-first century is becoming the century of biotechnology experimentation in which we are unwitting guinea pigs, closely segregated from the reality of our dire situation.

Many of the proposed ‘cures’ for COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccine injury are tied to orthodox medical diagnoses. They describe the injuries as caused by cardiac toxins or autoimmune illness for example, but is this the whole picture? Unfortunately not. The root cause of COVID-19 vaccine injury is mRNA vaccine interference with genetic, cellular structures and functions, including genomic effects caused by plasmid DNA contamination. This is capable of causing system-wide malfunction in the human physiology which research confirms has shown up during the pandemic in various guises in all eleven human organ systems. 

It is not at all the case that medical interventions designed to alleviate specific symptoms and conditions caused by vaccine injury can address the root cause—genetic disruption inside the cell membrane.

Examination of a consciousness-based approach to health

At the beginning of today’s article we promised to explore avenues of remediation. As the structure of DNA was being discovered, Queen Elizabeth was crowned and Everest conquered in 1953, something far more ancient was stirring and coming to the attention of the West that today should offer some hope—consciousness-based medicine. To understand its relevance and importance we will draw an analogy. Suppose you owned a Patek Philippe watch and for some reason it was damaged. Perhaps you dropped it in the bath or ran over it. The protective case is breached and the mechanism damaged. There are more than 200 tiny moving parts in such a watch and given its immense value, your only option is to send it back to the maker in Switzerland for repair.

Inside the cell membranes of each of our 37 trillion human cells there are over 100 trillion atomic components that are invisible to the human eye and working together at a dizzying speed to keep us healthy. In each cell our DNA suffers between 10,000 and 100,000 damage events each day which are repaired by elaborate self-interacting mechanisms intrinsic to the entire internal cellular structure and function. Without these repairs, the genetic transcription processes and routes which maintain our health in its widest possible sense would become abortive and leave behind DNA breaks that can drive genome rearrangements, instability, or cell death. In other words, our health depends on the exact coordinated arrangement of trillions of cellular components in trillions of cells.

Modern experimental gene technology such as that employed by mRNA vaccines invades the cell membrane and repurposes the hugely complex internal mechanism of the cell on which our health depends. The enterprise is foolhardy in the extreme and the accumulating evidence of excess death and illness during the pandemic confirms this. The complexity involved is staggering and little understood by modern biology. Any suggestion that further primitive invasive medical interventions breaching the cell might fix the problem are ludicrous. Once mRNA vaccine injured, the human body is like a very expensive watch that needs to be sent back to its maker for repair. But what if we don’t know who made it or the address of the place of design and manufacture?

As we have discussed frequently in our reports, our physiology is intimately paired with our consciousness. Physiology supports awareness, but what if consciousness creates physiology? If we are going to repair the damage caused by the biotechnology experimentation that characterised the COVID-19 pandemic, we are going to have to begin to understand consciousness, the missing piece of the equation of life. This is going to take us on a journey that may be very foreign to some or more familiar to others, but wherever we are starting from, we are going to have to go deeper. Investigation of consciousness has been the peculiar preserve of the ascetics and saints in cultures around the world, it now has to become the common coin of public health.

As an example we take a remarkable discovery made by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in conjunction with Western scientists which pertains to the ancient Vedic literature and its deep relationship with human physiology. The discovery is published in a 640 page book which details an extraordinary correspondence between the structure and functions of the human physiology and the forty branches of the Vedic literature entitled “Human Physiology – Expression of Veda and the Vedic Literature. Modern Science and Ancient Vedic Science Discover the Fabrics of Immortality in the Human Physiology“. 

So what are the Veda and Vedic literature and where do they originate? Veda is a Sanskrit word that means ‘knowledge’ or more specifically ‘total or holistic knowledge’. It is closely identified with consciousness or Atma as it is termed in Sanskrit. Maharishi is adamant that Vedic literature has been widely mistranslated by westerners who often wrongly dismiss its expressions as the poetic or religious fancies of a primitive civilisation. He teaches that translation can never capture the significance of the Vedic literature, only mislead the reader. In fact it is not the supposed meaning, but the vibrational quality of the sequence of Vedic sounds and pauses between sounds that are important.

Western scholars have variously dated the extensive Vedic literature to between 1000 to 3500 years ago. Indian tradition and historians paint a very different picture. In this view, the Vedas originated as an oral tradition of recitation begun in great antiquity by highly adept ascetics. According to the Vedic literature itself, the Vedas are not man made, they are sequences of vibrations or sounds which correspond with fundamental laws of nature. They arise from a process known as Vedic cognition during which they zoom forth or appear in the awareness of enlightened sages or rishis. Thus the Vedic literature presents itself as timeless knowledge or science that was acquired through the subjective means of gaining knowledge—self exploration. They contain sequences of sounds true for all times, places and for all people carefully preserved by pandit families until the present day. If you wish you canlisten to short segments of the sounds from all forty branches of the Vedic literature along with a graphic indication of corresponding bodily systems affected. Sit in a quiet place and listen.

A very recent discovery has confirmed the antiquity of the Veda. The Harappan civilisation in the Indus Valley began around 9000 years ago. Archeological excavations 100 years ago uncovered a large and orderly city with sanitary water supply and drainage indicative of urban planning, all set out on a grid of roads facing the cardinal directions. Among the many finds were a small number of seals written in an unknown script that seemed to predate any other known writing, whose meaning has eluded understanding until now. A cryptographer working in the US has now deciphered the script and thereby rewritten history. He discovered that the Harappans invented a script to write down Vedic expressions that had hitherto been solely preserved through countless ages in an oral tradition.

The book Human Physiology Expression of Veda and Vedic Literature demonstrates that the extensive Vedic Literature presents the step by step sequential unfoldment of the structure and function of the entire physiology. Maharishi and scientists discovered that as it unfolds, sound by sound, word by word, chapter by chapter, book by book it comments on itself, explaining itself, it is self referral—an essential characteristic of consciousness and biological systems.

Within its many books, the Vedic literature contains its own key—instructions how to experience or know consciousness in its pure state. If this is properly understood, as was explained by Maharishi, it sets out a comprehensive system to reset the physiology in full health by handling the physiology from the side of the holistic nature of consciousness—the originator of physiology. Vedic sounds are prescribed to initiate this process.

In an legacy archive interview Maharishi explains this is not based on intellectual scholarship or translations, it is based purely on the experience of the holistic sequence of Vedic sounds. The Vedic techniques are designed to be easily acquired, disarmingly simple to practice for anyone once taught person to person by a traditionally trained teacher. We cover the proven results of some of the techniques in our book Your DNA Diet. They are intended to set up a cosmic harmony or resonance with the laws of nature governing the physiology thereby resetting it to the ground state or source of natural law which is experienced in an expanded state of consciousness.

If you are thinking this is too esoteric for me, think again. Hundreds of published studies document the benefits of yoga, meditation, herbal remedies, and Ayurveda which are included in the approaches of the Vedic literature. There are many similar approaches discovered by saintly souls and deep thinkers which are preserved by cultural traditions around the world still available today. You may already be following one of these. These may be foreign to the largely pharmaceutical perspective we have been taught to respect and accept without question, but they are not foreign to the Self (Atma) of all. Our consciousness is NOT a foreign concept, it is our most intimate SELF, It is who we are, the familiar partner of our entire bodily lifespan crying out to be explored and understood.

The pandemic outcomes have presented a stark choice to mankind. Do we continue to blindly trust a cabal of so-called experts who are pursuing reckless biotech experimentation and count bioweapon killers among their number or do we start to learn how to fully understand and use the capabilities of our self-referral consciousness to heal? Once started and with persistence, paths to enlightened consciousness can rapidly become a royal road to health.