RCGM Witness Brief Bernard Conlon

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Witness Brief Royal Commission on Genetic Modification

1. Name of Witness: Bernard J Conlon

My name is Bernard Joseph Conlon. I hold a medical degree (MB.,BCh.,BAO.) from Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. I also hold diplomas in child health, obstetrics and gynaecology, and geriatric medicine. I attained full membership of the UK Royal College of General Practitioners in 1987, membership of the NZ Royal College of General Practitioners in 1994, and attained fellowship of the NZ Royal College of General Practitioners in 1999. I have worked in a variety of hospitals in Northern Ireland prior to completion of General Practice training in 1987. I emigrated to New Zealand in April 1991 and have been a principal in rural general practice at Murupara since.

Name of “Interested Person” (on behalf of whom the witness will appear): Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics (PSRG)

1. It is clear that there is a strong difference of opinion in the scientific community as to the safety of genetic engineering. Until further independent research clarifies the situation it is my opinion that no open release of transgenic organisms should occur in New Zealand.

2. Review of the basic principles of Genetic Engineering reveals an obvious capacity for profound disturbance of normal cellular reactions and homeostasis. This unplanned and unpredictable consequence of any Genetic Engineering is unfortunately not being freely acknowledged by its proponents. The assumption that normal metabolic pathways carry on unaltered in Genetic Engineered organisms then is translated into using the concept of ‘substantial equivalence’ as the keystone of regulation. Adequate screening tests for unplanned toxins and allergens are ignored, and Genetic Engineered food has thus been allowed access to our markets. Public health is not well served by this stance. Despite the debacle of the U.K. governments’ mishandling of BSE it appears that the safety of a nations’ food supply is again subordinated to the interests of vested lobby groups.

3. Recent insights into the various multinational companies indicate that the scientific process has been profoundly corrupted for business interests. E.g. the triage database -----Various agrochemical companies used an amnesty with the USA EPA during 1991 - 1994 to hand in over 10,000 studies or reports of adverse health effects from chemicals already on the market; these had never been reported despite the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) making it a statutory requirement --- some studies had actually been on company shelves since 1960.

The present chorus of scientific opinion (invariably with financial ties to industry) needs to be critically appraised with this in mind. The prerogative should be given to scientists clearly independent of industry and they should be given the role of devils’ advocate. Public health and environmental health would be better protected in this way.

4. The present acceptance of medical uses of Genetic Engineering should not be used as a precedence for open releases. Medicines produced by Genetic Engineering are the product of closed systems with filtration and purification providing protection against unpredicted toxins and allergens. Furthermore they are for individuals with existing medical problems with consequently unique risk / benefit considerations.

Their relative success contrasts with the failure of gene therapy which uses live GE organisms.

Review of recent gene therapy trials indicates an apparent conflict of interest compromising clinical standards. However, historical review of the introduction of even GE insulin provides pertinent criticism of commercial interests overriding public health issues. .....The U.K. Insulin Dependent Diabetic Trust was formed as a breakaway group from the British Diabetic Society to better represent those diabetic patients intolerant of GE human insulin. Strong criticism was levelled at the inadequate pre-marketing clinical trials. In 1980 the first study was published with 17 non-diabetic patients and by 1982 GE ‘human insulin’ was licensed. Within 8 years without any large-scale trials, 84% of U.K. diabetic patients were switched to GE human insulin. Between 1986 and1989 the British Diabetic Association received nearly 3,000 letters from families upset with problems associated with GE human insulin. (26) In 1989 attention was drawn to the apparent increase in sudden unexplained deaths occurring in young insulin-dependent diabetics, going to bed in apparently good health and later being found dead in an undisturbed bed. The BDA professional Advisory Committee investigated the 50 deaths that happened in 1989 and were unable to give a satisfactory explanation for 22. Poor hospital records meant that insulin batch numbers were not able to be correlated. All however had been switched to GE ‘human insulin’.

5. There is no denying that genetic research has captured the direction of medical research over the past two decades. It would however be pertinent to compare the monies invested to the results achieved in terms of actually addressing morbidity / mortality figures, then ask whether such research is actually ever likely to? Eg USA women have now about a one-in-eight chance of contracting breast cancer. Although all cancer is the result of genetic damage, inherited genetic mutations account for less than 10 percent of breast cancer. Genetic damage caused by the environment -- including everything both within and without the womb -- accounts for the rest. Nobody is born with breast cancer. Even among women who have an inherited predisposition, where their risk is very high, 50 percent never get breast cancer. Something has to happen to make the genes go haywire, to trigger the process that leads to breast cancer. But we're not spending a lot of time doing research on this...... Since 1980 the number of people with asthma in the United States has increased 75 percent. This magnitude of change is impossible to attribute to changes in genes. Yet the NIH funds research into the genetic causes of asthma. The tiny genetic differences scientists discover pale in magnitude alongside three national surveys showing asthma to be roughly twice as high for individuals in households below the poverty level as for those above it. Research on environmental toxins rather than genes offers the real hope of addressing morbidity and mortality.

6. The precarious adversarial role held with the microbial world is well illustrated with the worlds’ experience of Aids and Ebola, and New Zealand’s experience of Meningococcal Meningitis and MRSA. Universal use of antibiotic resistance marker genes and vectors in commercial crops is reckless in this regard. Horizontal gene transfer and recombination undermines the reassurances of safety and introduces a level of uncertainty not able to be adequately calculated. Erwin Chargoff’s last paragraph of his "The dangers of Genetic meddling" written to the journal Science 192: 938 - 940 is prophetic in this regard: "Bacteria and Viruses have always formed a most effective biological underground. The Guerrilla warfare through which they act on higher forms of life is only imperfectly understood. By adding to this arsenal freakish forms of life - prokaryotes propagating eukaryotic genes - we shall be throwing a veil of uncertainties over the life of coming generations. Have we the right to counteract, irreversibly, the evolutionary wisdom of millions of years, in order to satisfy the ambition and curiosity of a few scientists? This world is given to us on loan. We come and we go; and after a time we leave earth and air and water to others who come after us. My generation, or perhaps the one preceding mine, has been the first to engage, under the leadership of the exact sciences, in a destructive colonial warfare against nature. The future will curse us for it."

7. Allowing GE organisms to be released in the absence of liability is probably the final insult to public interest.

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