Anna Petley
NZDSOS
Welcome to our new Weekly SOS newsletter. We aim for this weekly email to be your go-to update for tracking critical issues impacting our freedoms, health, and rights as we move through 2025 and beyond. At NZDSOS, we’re committed to providing clarity and expert analysis in a world where rapid government and global changes often outpace the ability to have proper public awareness and clear consultation.
Now, as a nation, we are back off the beach, it’s pertinent that we bring these three urgent issues requiring your attention to you. Hitting the ground running, this week we ask you to act by making statements to parliament on three critical issues.
Issues We’re Tracking And Want You To Know About
1. Puberty Blockers review – Feedback Due 20 January
The Ministry of Health has launched a review of puberty blockers used in ‘gender-affirming care’. While these medications have been positioned as reversible, growing research demonstrates long-term negative effects on bone density, brain development, sexual response and fertility.
Why is this review critical?
It presents an opportunity to demand more robust (or even any) evidence, more precise guidelines, and transparency about risks for young patients and their families. This is about fighting societal engineering, ensuring informed consent and safeguarding the sanity and autonomy of current and future generations.
Rethinking Puberty Blockers: Why Evidence and Your Voice Matter
2. Gene Technology Bill – Feedback Due 17 February
This proposed legislation aims to expand the use of gene editing technologies in agriculture, medicine, and other fields. While cautious innovation is always welcome, the bill presents the serious likelihood of unintended consequences, corporate ownership of genetic material leading to patentable foods and medicines, and tramples bioethical boundaries.
Why is it critical to stop this bill?
This is another nuclear moment for NZ. David Lange will be spinning in his grave. It could lead to corporate control of our food systems and irreversible environmental impacts.
We are facing genetically modified organisms in our food and our medicines without labelling. Once GMO products are released, the effects are irretrievable and they will be in our environment forever, infiltrating air, food, water, soil and us.
Deadline – Speak Out About the NZ Gene Technology Bill
3. Biometrics Code – Feedback Due 14 March
The purpose of the code is to help agencies implement biometric technology.
Biometric technologies, such as facial recognition, fingerprints, iris or retina scans, voice recognition, emotion analysis, and digital identification, are being increasingly integrated into daily life. This new code seeks to allow their use, but does it protect our privacy?
Examples include: facial recognition for building access and school cafeteria payments, fingerprint scans for secure information, and voice recognition for behavioural analysis.
Without stringent oversight, these tools could easily be misused, leading to mass surveillance and erosion of privacy across the entire population. While having everything attached to your phone and payments from a wave of your watch may seem convenient, what is your FaceID actually giving away to gigantic corporates? Information that could lead to total control.
Why is it critical to regulate immediately?
A democratic society depends on freedom of movement without constant monitoring. This is your chance to advocate for robust safeguards because once your biometric details are captured and in the system, you won’t be able to erase them.
Privacy Consultations in New ZealandNew Zealand Releases Biometrics Code for Public Consultation
Why this matters to you
The common thread across these issues is the rapid encroachment on personal freedoms, often under the guise of progress or safety. The dates for submission are very soon, sneakily; while many of us have been on holiday relaxing, they are pushing bills through.
These consultations give us the opportunity to influence policies shaping the future of our health. Without you and your friends and families’ constant input, we risk losing the ability to make autonomous decisions about our bodies, our data, and our way of life.
What you can do
The only way to safeguard our freedoms is to remain informed and engaged. Here’s how you can help:
- Provide feedback on the issues above – your voice matters, it doesn’t have to be perfect to be heard. Please have your say at the links provided.
- Share this with friends, family, and colleagues who value informed decision-making. Make it your mission in 2025 to help keep your loved ones informed.
- Make it your New Year’s resolution to encourage at least two people a week to subscribe to The Weekly SOS.
Together, we can ensure our collective future reflects the values of transparency, freedom, and ethical governance. It takes more than hope; it needs concerted action from all of us!
This article was originally published by the New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out With Science.
