About
Providing scientific & medical information & analysis in the service of the public's right to be independently informed on issues relating to human & environmental health for twenty years.
Physicians and Scientists for Global Responsibility New Zealand (PSGR) works with qualified researchers and volunteers who work to produce transparent, high quality science information to educate and inform the public.
PSGR was established over twenty years ago by a group of medical and scientific professionals, who identified potential risks and uncertainty raised by the comparatively new technology of genetic engineering.
An initial concern lay with genetic engineering of crops. Members were concerned about the possible effects these crops could have on the environment and, through the introduction of new foods into the food-chain, the impact on human health.
Early expertise by qualified scientists were required to submit to the 2000/2001 Royal Commission on Genetic Modification, and PSGR presented a number of expert witnesses in this field. Other submissions have subsequently been made as Applications to New Zealand's regulatory authorities.
PSRGNZ operated as a registered Charitable Trust until June 2008 when a name change was made to Physicians and Scientists for Global Responsibility New Zealand Charitable Trust (PSGR) to better address important objectives.
Scientists have recently recognised that the production and release of technologies - as Anthropogenic emissions - are fundamentally under-regulated, and this produces an existential global risk.
Our work identifies recurring themes and regulatory processes that limit the capacity for governments and regulators to protect public and environmental health. For example, safety claims, safety testing and data used in risk assessment for most technologies - including technologies applied to food ingredients - remains primarily controlled by the industry that seeks approval for the new technologies.
Often many important considerations are excluded, such as the health risk from exposure to the formulation of a product, and added issues relating to how the product is deployed, either into the environment or as a food or medical product.
We have identified that a major barrier to knowledge is the difficulties public sector (non-industry aligned) scientists face in securing funding for science. Often funding schemes are poorly funded or not in scope, particularly if the science is interdisciplinary.
Lawyers and the judiciary struggle with the complex socio-biological relationships, particularly where legal principles such as the Precautionary Principle have been sidelined and downplayed.
For example, while the New Zealand Environmental Protection Authority must take into account the precautionary principle, the NZ EPA’s methodology document for risk assessment for pesticides does not discuss how staff might consider precaution in risk assessment.
This places policy-makers who must make decisions in the public interest in difficult positions, as they are required by law to be impartial and act to protect the health of the public, as well as our natural ecosystems. However, they lack a deliberation pathway to act precautionarily.
We also observe scientific and regulatory panels ‘stacked’ with scientists that transparently hold biased or predetermined positions on the safety of a technology or medication.
This has been the problem for fluoride, for decades, where experts in oral and dental health dominate panels, but there are no equivalent experts in neuroendocrinology and/or neurotoxicity who might counterbalance weight of evidence claims.
We see how old industry studies ‘lock-in’ so-called safe levels of exposure. This has been the case for glyphosate and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) ‘safe’ drinking water level, for decades. But a large number of so-called WHO ‘safe’ drinking-water levels for chemical contaminants are also based on ancient, private industry studies.
Research into the safety of biotechnology and genetic modification continues. PSGR considers that biotechnology and new gene editing technologies (also referred to as many documents as ‘new breeding technologies’), requires ongoing regulation - transparency - as uncertainty prevails. New technologies scale quickly into the environment. While natural alterations in biology take decades and centuries, biotechnology can be released at global scale in less than 12 months.
New biologic drugs, including drugs using mod-RNA/mRNA technology risk being contaminated by batch, not merely with synthetic additives, but with unknown and/or undeclared genetic substances. Mandating such drugs carries with it extraordinary risk, and this is why regulatory agencies refer to these technologies as high-risk medicines.
The scalability of technology, and the capacity of these technologies to stress biological systems can be assessed and understood utilising state of the art technologies, including data analysis technologies.
All too often these technologies are deployed for product development or directely into the environment, but governments elect not to fund local scientists to apply these same technologies, and others, to assess the extent to which they present a risk.
This is the case for electromagnetic radiation and new 5G technologies.
Transparency (sunlight) and regulation can help to manage this risk. Issues of unforeseen and unintended consequences remain.
New technologies positioned as ‘precise’ appear instead, to be imprecise, raising further questions of risk (Latham 2016) (Heinemann et al 2013). Previously considered ‘safe’ traits appear not so safe (Then & Bauer-Panskus 2017).
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