OPINION
Meeting the post-pandemic challenges facing the nation
I am writing to you on a matter of urgency that affects us all. Following on from the circumstances of the pandemic, the nation is facing new challenges on multiple fronts: with finances, the provision of healthcare, and regarding social and geopolitical relations. How we meet these in the coming months and years will define us as a nation going forward.
This open letter is not seeking to assign blame for past mistakes, nor does it expect that the government alone is responsible for meeting these challenges. We must all recognise that our circumstances have radically changed during the last four and a half years. In some key cases, the values and practices in common use before the pandemic have become inappropriate or obsolete today. This is due to significantly altered circumstances.
It may well be that some of our past ideological standpoints are now outdated, our preconceptions about what is right and reliable may be mistaken and in need of reconsideration. Discovering what will be in the best interests of both the nation and the individual is a task requiring deep thought and the consideration of comprehensive evidence.
Government decisions are being made daily in an effort to chart a course ahead. The pandemic years have taught us that a wrong step now may have catastrophic consequences, even in the near future. We consider two of these in a spirit of scientific caution and common sense.
Constitutional challenges
The current parliament is proposing to deregulate biotechnology. This is an extraordinary step to be taking at this time. During the pandemic, biotechnology applications were de facto deregulated. The government of the day invoked Clause Five of the NZ Bill of Rights: Justified Limitations thereby setting aside basic human rights in the process of approving and enforcing novel mRNA vaccinations on the public. In addition, Covid-19, which is now widely understood to have originated in a laboratory, proved impossible to contain, In effect, it introduced itself into our nation without government approval or regulation.
Since 2021, New Zealand has suffered an excess mortality rate, which is continuing week by week up to the present time. Official figures reported to the OECD are conservatively in excess of 10 per cent above the historical trend. Once population rises are accounted for, in excess of 50 people are dying each week unexpectedly. Fifty lives lost to families, industry and the nation.
Having invoked the exception clause in the New Zealand Bill of Rights, it is incumbent on the current government to prove that this decision was in the public interest, not with rhetoric, but with facts and figures. Increasingly, evidence is being published in the scientific literature which strongly supports an adverse health effect of mRNA vaccination. To decide the issue, the only vital source of relevant evidence is a comparison of health outcomes between the vaccinated and unvaccinated segments of the population by age and condition. The fact that this information remains out of public view in New Zealand is a violation of our constitutional principles which state:
- The Rule of Law
Legislation should be consistent with fundamental constitutional principles, including the rule of law. Officials should carefully consider the impact of fundamental constitutional principles on proposed legislation or regulation, particularly when the legislation will:
- change the relationship between citizens and the State in a fundamental way (for example, by encroaching on the operation of democratic processes, individual dignity or liberty, equality before the law or access to the courts);
- modify or remove safeguards and limitations imposed on the exercise of State functions (for example, the rule of law, human rights, the spirit and principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, or natural justice).
The scope of the rule of law has at its core the following principle:
- Everyone is subject to the law, including the Government – People and institutions that wield power must do so within legal limits, and be accountable for their actions; everybody is equal before the law and is subject to it. The application of legislation to the Government itself is a cornerstone of a fair and free society.
2. The Principle of Legality – the dignity of the individual and the presumption in favour of liberty
All law is made (and, when enacted, should be construed by courts) against a matrix of values and principles that are regarded as fundamentally important to our legal system. These values and principles can be expressed at differing levels of abstraction. Fundamentally, they concern human dignity and liberty but these terms embrace a broader set of rights and freedoms that include:
- the right not to be deprived of life;
- physical integrity of one’s body, including freedom from medical treatment or scientific experimentation without consent;
- freedom of conscience, religion, expression, association, assembly, and movement;
- liberty, in the sense of freedom to make fundamental personal choices as to how one lives one’s life; and
- procedural fairness, often referred to as natural justice.
The expectation of our constitution is that legislation and regulation will be construed and applied in light of these abiding values. As long as the government omits to release mortality data comparing the health outcomes of those who received mRNA vaccines with those who did not, it cannot reasonably deregulate biotechnology without violating our fundamental constitutional framework as outlined above.
It is of particular concern that a major priority of the government’s biotech deregulation plan is the creation of a NZ mRNA Platform. This programme is already funded and in progress without any assurance of the safety of the platform, in fact with clear scientific evidence to the contrary. There are reasonable expectations and available evidence that the experimental outcomes of such a programme, on humans, animals and plants, will not be able to be contained. It may contaminate our food system and impact public health.
It is our contention that serious mistakes and omissions were made during the pandemic, creating risks of such concern that they cannot be allowed to be repeated.
Therefore any deregulation of biotechnology should be paused until Phase 2 of the Covid-19 Royal Inquiry is able to report its findings on risk and safety.
Public Health Measures
The government has announced the appointment of a Commissioner, Professor Lester Levy, to oversee the operation of Health New Zealand. According to Health Minister Dr. Shane Reti’s announcement, Health New Zealand is overspending its budget by $130 million per month. Reti said “The issues at Health New Zealand stem from the previous government’s mismanaged health reforms…. Our intention is to secure a better future for health in New Zealand.”
Whatever the causes, Health New Zealand’s problems far exceed financial shortfalls or overspending. Leaked figures show there has been a surge in cardiac admissions, cancer incidence, and other health conditions. For example an 83 per cent increase in cardiac hospital admissions in the Wellington Region.
Professor Levy in accepting the appointment revealed his family had experienced health issues during the past year. In this he is joined by hundreds of thousands of families across New Zealand. The potential causes have been masked by the pandemic education programme undertaken with cross party support which rammed home the “safe and effective” mantra in the complete absence of long term health and safety assessments. This cloaked the nation with an extraordinary blanket of misinformation. As a result, the possible causes of a very large number of individual cases and family tragedies have been obscured. It is time to rectify this situation.
Moreover we are overdue for facts and figures which detail the massive growth of illness by category. Without this crucial evidence, no government attempts to improve the service of Health New Zealand will be successful. The health problems are too large and too unprecedented. They have novel causes.
Deep scientific and integrity issues
The issues surrounding biotechnology deregulation and public health are deep scientific issues requiring specialist assessment. Because of this, parliamentarians have become vulnerable to commercial lobbying. This influence comes from the pharmaceutical sector and the academic community, both have unreasonable expectations of continuing funding for biotechnology experimentation and implementation in a deregulated environment.
Much of the lobbying effort for biotech deregulation, and the government’s response to it, is based on unsubstantiated hype about the efficacy and safety of products and their economic prospects.
The suggestion that our trading partners will eat up ‘sustainable’ biotech food doesn’t hold water. Tebrito, a Swedish firm producing food from mealworms, has just filed for bankruptcy following low consumer demand, despite millions of investment. Beyond Meat is currently in talks with bond holders to restructure its finances following disappointing sales. The stock price of biotech giant Moderna, an mRNA vaccine maker, is down to $120 as of yesterday off from its high of $484.
Therefore I am writing to urge caution, careful consideration of prior outcomes and research, and full public disclosure of up-to-date health data.
This should be assessed along with the benefit of expert advice that is free of commercial interest. The links embedded in this letter are there to provide you with the details of a precautionary view. Without such a probing risk assessment, we will be destined to perpetuate and repeat the same pandemic mistakes.
In closing I have to point out that this letter does not revolve around dry points of constitutional procedure or administrative efficiency. Nor is it about the judgement of history at some future time. It concerns the current health and life of individual citizens today, this week and every week, and the well being of the nation as a whole. At this time when past abuse in state care is receiving so much attention, we must remember a government and its members stand or fall on the integrity of their actions.
There are very deep principles of democracy and legitimacy at stake – the duty of care for its citizens that a government must evidence. But more than this, every week human life is ebbing away from families and the nation sooner than in the past. It is the task of politicians to face this squarely. If we continue to turn our back on relevant facts, refuse to investigate and ignore the plight of those affected we will continue to suffer the dire and growing consequences into an uncertain future, or with courage the present time can be a turning point in the history of our nation. It is in your hands.
Yours sincerely
Guy Hatchard PhD
Principal at GLOBE and the Hatchard Report.
