Hutchison Paul: Medicines (Specified Biotechnical Procedures)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hutchison Paul: Medicines (Specified Biotechnical Procedures)  Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:19759] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this very important bill the Medicines (Specified Biotechnical Procedures) Amendment Bill. 
Opposition Members 
: This is the next Minister of Health! 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: Those members are absolutely right. This bill is a serious indictment on this Labour Government’s integrity and its attitude towards science. In essence this bill is the continuation of a blunt instrument that the Labour Government put on science in order to stop xenotransplantation in New Zealand back in 2001—now the Government wants to continue it until 2006. 
This bill is a serious indictment on Labour. The Prime Minister her health Minister and her science Minister all say they are committed to science and are committed to economic growth. We have a classic situation in which they have said: “Let’s focus on biotechnology as one of the main strands of economic growth in New Zealand.” yet they have created in this country some of the most difficult hurdles to the carrying out of biotechnology in the Western World. 
We know that the Government’s own biotechnology task force has said exactly that—that the regulatory regime in New Zealand is very difficult and that it is forcing top New Zealand scientists to do their work overseas or to leave. I shall give two examples. The first is the Huntington’s chorea trial that was basically founded at the Auckland School of Medicine. The reason it did not continue in New Zealand was that it cost too much and would take too long. Consequently it has gone to Adelaide. That is a tragedy for New Zealand science a tragedy for New Zealand biotechnology. 
It is hugely important to have a complement of scientists in New Zealand who are capable in the new genetics. If we do not we will not even recognise the problems until they have got here and an example of that scenario was the varroa bee mite. We had only one bee scientist at the time and the disease was endemic in New Zealand before it was recognised. It is vital that we have a complement of scientists who are competent and capable in the various biotechnology techniques involved with genetics in order to be able to pick up on things at the time and also to be able to use the huge power of the new genetics and genomics to the betterment of New Zealand. 
There is no doubt that in areas such as agriculture and horticulture it is vital but also it is vital in the area of medicine. Yet we have seen this Government putting on a blanket stop using the crudest and only method it knows—that is a moratorium. In the order of six cases of xenotransplantation have been carried out in New Zealand until the abrupt stop was put to it by Labour and the Greens. I note that there was an application going through the process—a fairly stiff regulatory process that we had in New Zealand at the time—but it was turned down by an amendment of this Labour Government. As it turned out Mai Chen a very well-known lawyer and a submitter to the select committee at the time believed that the Supplementary Order Paper brought in by this Government was literally a constitutional outrage. The firm Diatranz did not even have the opportunity to have its application heard. 
It is extraordinary that only last week it was revealed in the newspapers that one of the individuals who had a transplant of pig islet cells intra-abdominally by way of laparoscope had of his own volition a further laparoscopy in February this year. It was fascinating to hear that the islet cells were still producing insulin. He was thrilled by it. The scientific community was thrilled by it but it has been deeply disturbed by the fact that right around the world other such cases have been replicated and are showing huge promise. The major problem this Government was worried about was the pig endogenous retrovirus which is inherent in the line of cells that was being used. We heard last week in Parliament through the Royal Society lectures on science that there is now a pig islet cell strain that is free of the retrovirus giving huge hope for this area. We also heard from Dr Bruce Scoggins the chief executive officer of the Health Research Council of New Zealand. He now says that there is undoubtedly a place for xenotransplantation in New Zealand. There is no reason why we should not at least have the opportunity for people to apply for xenotransplantation experiments in New Zealand where we do have a very rigorous regulatory regime so that at least we can get in place the decision as to whether the risk management is appropriate. But this Government has said that it is not interested in science; it will just put down a blank blunt instrument. I can see members of the Government over there shaking their heads. 
This is the Government that says it is interested in economic growth in biotechnology and in moving New Zealand along—and what does it do? It puts in place massive hurdles that have prohibited progress in one of the most potentially important areas for New Zealand and the recent Huntington’s chorea trail is not the only example of that. There was—I think it was in 2001—the AgResearch application for transgenic cows. That in itself cost AgResearch something like $600000 and took 2 years before it was finally able to get on with it. Again the Government has unnecessarily placed a huge inherent hurdle on New Zealand science almost certainly because it has listened to the Greens taken notice and taken an absolutely Luddite approach to an area that is so important for New Zealand. 
There is no doubt that the technology here is innovative clever and can be used for a whole variety of reasons. There is no doubt that New Zealand should be at the forefront of this sort of innovative clever biotechnology. The very wrong thing to do is to put in a moratorium. One would hope that any Government that professes to be interested in the knowledge economy would at least put in place a regime whereby any applicant can go through a rigorous risk management process and then have the experts decide—not politicians such as this Labour Government has produced—whether this very important technology can occur in New Zealand. 
What happened to Diatranz? It had to go offshore—it literally went to Australia. I accept the fact that the Australians have also had a somewhat Luddite approach to their regulatory regime in this particular instance. But in a vast variety of other areas their regime around biotechnology and genomic research is much more enlightened than what we have seen under this Labour Government. That is why many of our scientists are going over there. That is why the Huntington’s chorea trial has gone to Adelaide and that is why I am saying that this particular moratorium is totally unnecessary and an indictment on the Labour Government.