Open Letter To the Hon. Winston Peters, Party Leader and NZ Foreign Minister, and NZ First MPs

Open Letter To the Hon. Winston Peters, Party Leader and NZ Foreign Minister, and NZ First MPs

Dear Winston Peters and NZ First MPs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours sincerely

Guy Hatchard PhD

Formerly Director at Genetic ID, a global genetic testing and safety certification company

Guy Hatchard PhD

Website: HatchardReport.com

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