Guy Hatchard
Guy is an international advocate of food safety and natural medicine. He received his undergraduate degree in Logic and Theoretical Physics from the University of Sussex and his PhD in Psychology from Maharishi University of Management, Iowa. He was a senior manager at Genetic ID, a global food safety testing and certification laboratory.
ChatGPT founder Sam Altman has joined a clutch of tech billionaires contributing to the US$30 million funding of a biotechnology business called Preventive which aims to “correct devastating genetic conditions for future children”. The US company has plans to edit the DNA of babies before they are born, a process known as human germline genetic engineering which is currently banned in 70 countries. Preventive is seeking a country which will give them permission to carry out their experiments. No doubt the Gene Technology Bill, currently awaiting its second reading in parliament, which will liberalise decisions about gene technology experiments and place them in the hands of a single regulator, will have brought New Zealand to the attention of Preventive.
If such research projects were ever given the green light here, it would not be the first time that New Zealand hosted germline genetic engineering. For the last two decades New Zealand scientists have carried out genetic experiments on animals with disastrous results. Reports of adverse outcomes of GE germline experiments on animals at AgResearch’s Ruakura facility document spontaneous abortions, cancers, deformities and sterility, requiring animals to be euthanized. Currently there are no surviving GE animals at Ruakura. The experiments have been terminated after repeated failures. You can understand why such experiments on humans have been banned so far, the prospect of euthanizing ‘human mistakes’ echoes the worst extremes of Nazi medical experimentation.
The alliance of tech billionaires pushing to allow risky experiments on humans is just one example of the huge pressure building to allow the wholesale editing of human DNA. The three largest countries in the world, India, China and USA alone are graduating more than half a million students each year in the biological sciences, all of whom have been trained to edit DNA and sold on the naive idea that they will be improving the health, happiness and intelligence of the human race.
The rapid spread of the likely engineered Covid-19 virus around the world, the vaccination of 5.5 billion people with experimental Covid-19 gene shots and the 30 million excess deaths that resulted provides a salutary example of what will happen to the world when the biotechnology regulatory dam finally breaks, as is being proposed in NZ.
After reading the above you may imagine the motivations of some in the biotechnology industry are overly ambitious, possibly reckless but thankfully altruistic. Think again, aside from mouth watering financial incentives and career prestige, the motivations behind some biotechnology research projects are only just being exposed to the light of day. Senator Rand Paul has published emails showing that Dr Ralph Baric – a North Carolina virologist who worked closely with the Wuhan lab that is the likely source of the Covid-19 virus – held extensive discussions with the CIA as far back as 2013 about the possibility of “human adaptation” of coronaviruses.
History tells us there are certain situations which are so extreme that an extraordinary effort and depth of understanding is necessary to grasp the enormity of what has begun to happen and is about to engulf everyone.
There are hard truths and stark limitations to our knowledge about biological systems which are being kept well away from public view lest they halt the relentless advance of the biotech juggernaut. Among these is the popular but false idea that DNA is the source of life. In fact, the life of any and all living systems begins not with DNA on its own but with a whole cell of which DNA is but one part, albeit a very important part. This should be well known to everyone who has gone to school and studied basic science, but its implications are being conveniently forgotten in the biotech gene-editing frenzy.
You may have seen media reports of projects to de-extinct the woolly mammoth or Peter Jackson’s venture to bring back the giant NZ moa, both being undertaken in conjunction with US firm Colossal Biosciences. You might think a Jurassic Park style future will soon be possible because ancient remains have yielded remnants of their DNA. But this is a misleading story because DNA does not act alone, it can only work in conjunction with RNA, which transcribes the information in DNA in order to produce proteins essential to life. De-extinction scientists need ancient species-specific RNA in addition to DNA. RNA is less well preserved than DNA and therefore harder to find.
A recently discovered mammoth carcass preserved in the Swedish permafrost has just yielded some partial information about its RNA. This is necessary to begin to find out which mammoth genes were expressed and which were silenced, but even that is not all that is required to re-create an extinct species. It is also necessary to know how the RNA is dynamically functioning within the framework of millions of cellular components, the cell membrane and the wider physiology. At which point we have reached the edge of current understanding of living organisms. Exactly how genetic information translates and regulates its progress across the cellular space is still only vaguely understood. As we have discussed previously, multiple pathways are involved, including molecular shape, vibration, water soluble properties, electromagnetic resonance, etc.
This all goes to show the magnitude of the risk to health and life that was hazarded when biotechnologists blithely edited human RNA and injected their guesses into whole human populations under the guise of vaccination. The risks of germline genetic engineering are of a greater magnitude again because inevitable mistakes will be passed onto future generations. The suggestion which underpins the Gene Technology Bill – that some techniques of gene editing are inherently safe and effective – is without merit and misleading in the extreme. As we have reported previously, CRISPR gene editing is falsely being described as accurate and safe, but actually induces off-target effects with downstream consequences for health. The complexity of genetic function within the cellular matrix including the multitasking of genes which inevitably results in unintended consequences.
Physical health is not all that is being risked: no one understands how physiology supports the expression of consciousness. If you think the risk that GE poses to mental health can in any sense be safely ignored or put on the back burner, think again. Spare a thought for the strange case of Sonny Graham who had a transplant in 1995 when he received the heart and hence about six billion cells containing the genes of a 33-year-old donor who had committed suicide by shooting himself.
Subsequently, Graham’s friends noticed some subtle changes in his personality: he developed a taste for beer and hot dogs, his donor’s favourite foods. Although happily married for almost 40 years with two children, he became restless and decided to meet his donor’s widow Cheryl, with whom he began a relationship. Graham admitted he fell madly and irresistibly in love with her the first time they met. Graham divorced his wife and married Cheryl in 2004. In 2008, 13 years after receiving a new heart, Graham committed suicide, shooting himself in circumstances remarkably similar to those of his donor.
Graham’s transplant journey was certainly extreme but the extensive influence a donor’s organ can exert on the recipient is not unusual. We have reported scientific research on this previously under the title Can biotechnology control human behaviour? (You can read more extensive information about memory and transplants here.) Along with DNA, RNA, multiple distinct organelles contained in the cytoplasm and 42 million proteins of 10,000 different types, cells contain memories capable of shaping personality and controlling behaviour in ways that are not understood. Editing DNA and/or RNA can certainly mediate mental states. Crucially, as we have reported previously, effects can include a loss of self or the development of mental illness.
This close connection between our mind and body is not speculative, it is a well established phenomenon. Its source is buried deep in our genetic makeup. Yet the Gene Technology Bill is proposing to deregulate many facets and types of genetic editing without understanding the scope of the interaction with our capacity for higher human thought and emotion. It is long past time for a public discussion of the limits of what is actually known about DNA and the risks to human life that are being recklessly hazarded.
This article was originally published by the Hatchard Report.
