Expert opinion from Victoria University Wellington - Te Herenga Waka
Comment: The Government is introducing legislation that will widen and expedite the use of gene technology in Aotearoa. The proposed changes, modelled on Australia’s approach, will establish a regulator that employs a risk framework to approve or regulate specific uses of gene technology. According to the announcement about the changes, gene technology ※has the potential to deliver enormous benefits§ including yielding new medicines, helping us address climate change, and increasing agricultural productivity.
Unsurprisingly, the proposed changes have their detractors. The Green Party supports gene technology if used in contained environments and for medical purposes, but it’s still against introducing genetically modified crops into the environment. Whether such concerns will have any effect is another matter. Aotearoa’s most significant policy response to gene tech, the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification, entailed extensive consultation. In contrast, the Government has promised to introduce its new legislation this year. It is soliciting input from a technical advisory group, Maori and industry focus groups, and will take public submissions at select committee stage.
At this early stage, I find myself interested less in the law change itself and more in how it is being talked about by its proponents.
Veering from any pretence at objectivity, advocates invoke ※progress and innovation§ like a kind of magic spell that, if you simply repeat it often enough, will surely become true. To quote Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Judith Collins, ※modernising§ the law will ※enable us to improve health outcomes, adapt to climate change, deliver massive economic gains and improve the lives of New Zealanders§.
These are fairly bold claims. No doubt relaxing regulations around gene technology will allow new lines of research on health and environmental issues, and in the medium to long term, that research might result in human medicines, animal feeds, or crops that help mitigate certain agricultural problems.
However, those who have watched the Government repeal smokefree legislation, reinstate prescription charges, remove environmental protections, and roll back emissions reduction targets may be surprised to see health and climate suddenly front and centre of its agenda. It seems we do want good population health and climate action - we just want to find a molecular silver bullet for it.
It is also worth noting this law change comes at a time when universities and their researchers are struggling to sustain their research activity after years of chronic - and continuing - underfunding. That’s not a reason not to update this law, but it does raise the question of priorities and capacity.
Act party spokesperson Parmjeet Parmar described the law change as ※bringing New Zealand into the 21st century§. But shockingly, time did not stop when, in the early 2000s, we decided to take a cautious approach to genetic technology. We are, like everyone else, in a 21st century increasingly defined by severe weather events and rising oceans, a global economic system that relies on mass exploitation to provide middle-class comforts, and, in Aotearoa, declining health and environmental outcomes thanks to 40 years of neoliberal policy that have tried to treat health and environment as products or assets.
One of the early arguments in favour of genetic modification was that, by increasing crop productivity and disease resistance, it would allow us to combat world hunger. This hasn’t happened, because world hunger was never a problem of not having enough food, but rather of a political and economic system that makes food unaffordable or inaccessible to so many. We don’t have to look far for an example: one in five New Zealanders experiences food insecurity, yet nationally we waste some $3.2 billion of food every year. The problem is that food is a commodity that not everyone can afford; the solution is not different food, but different socioeconomic arrangements.
This, ultimately, is why there is no silver bullet: because the products of innovation so often end up becoming commodities rather than public goods. A truly innovative revision of our gene technology laws may include considering how to ensure availability and equitable access to the products of research, and how to balance the promise of innovation against the almost guaranteed benefits of funding and regulation that makes the most of existing medical and environmental goods.
Science gives politicians a powerful vocabulary - a toolkit of terms, claims, and norms that seem unquestionably good. It is time to revisit how we regulate gene technologies, but promises of future innovation should neither distract from nor justify regressive policy choices in the present.