Excess deaths roll on in NZ uncommented by the government or media

The week ending June 2nd 2024 deaths totalled 815, that is a rate 24% higher than 2019.

This is a preliminary figure only, the final total will be higher. Of the first 29-weeks of 2024, 18 have had more deaths than one of either 2022, or 2023. Between 2019 and the present our population has risen by only 4.7%, which means that the high excess death rate is real and not a statistical fluctuation as some pretend. We are in the midst of a growing health crisis which was underlined this week in my home town when Whangarei Hospital ED went Code Black which occurs when 150% of capacity is reached. In one hour alone, 21 new cases arrived at ED. 

Just imagine if we were living on an island and after we started eating an imported fruit the death rate rose precipitately. We would be very worried indeed. The newspapers would be telling us to avoid the fruit. Wait a minute, we are living on an island and 90% of us were injected with a novel imported substance and almost no one seems to be worried. That is solely because the government, the media and the medical establishment joined forces to ensure that we would never hear about it. Everything is OK, go back to sleep. 

Incredibly, the government is preparing to deregulate biotechnology experimentation, the very thing that seems to be driving excess deaths. The picture this week of Judith Collins, Minister of Science and Technology and Chris Luxon, Prime Minister, donning white coats and telling us that biotechnology deregulation is going to be the best thing that ever happened to the nation tells us a story. Neither Collins nor Luxon have any science qualifications. Collins is a Lawyer and Luxon has a masters in commerce. 

It is very hard indeed, if not impossible, to escape the notion that human life is not valued very highly by our current government. They seem to be firmly in the grip of a philosophy that places a high premium on biotechnology experimentation. This is apparently viewed as the means to develop an elixir of eternal life along with projected unprecedented profits for which the sacrifice of thousands of lives here in NZ and millions around the world is fully justified.

Realising that this kind of blunt statement of psychopathic intent might not find favour with the public, Luxon and Collins this week decided to don their white coats to emphasise the elixir of eternal life whilst quietly hoping that no one in the media would notice the continuing deaths. Well the media swallowed the ruse and fulsomely praised our biotechnology future on cue. However some very distinguished international scientists are quietly beginning to sound alarm bells.

A book How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology by Philip Ball is reviewed by Nature magazine under the headline “It’s time to admit that genes are not the blueprint for life. The view of biology often presented to the public is oversimplified and out of date. Scientists must set the record straight.” It should be compulsory reading for Judith Collins, Chris Luxon, Shane Reti and all the other MPs who plan to deregulate biotechnology based on the outdated paradigm that genes are the building blocks of life.

The review reports: “Ball grapples with the philosophical question of what makes an organism alive. Agency — the ability of an organism to bring about change to itself or its environment to achieve a goal — is the author’s central focus. Such agency, he argues, is attributable to whole organisms, not just to their genomes. Genes, proteins and processes such as evolution don’t have goals, but a person certainly does. So, too, do plants and bacteria, on more-simple levels. Dethroning the genome in this way contests the current standard thinking about biology, and I think that such a challenge is sorely needed.”

It continues “In fact, most genes don’t have a pre-set function that can be determined from their DNA sequence. Instead, genes’ activity — whether they are expressed or not, for instance, or the length of protein that they encode — depends on myriad external factors, from the diet to the environment in which the organism develops. And each trait can be influenced by many genes. For example, mutations in almost 300 genes have been identified as indicating a risk that a person will develop schizophrenia. It’s therefore a huge oversimplification, notes Ball, to say that genes cause this trait or that disease.”

Ball is a distinguished commentator, he is a former editor of Nature. The book is intended as a wake up call for scientists, governments and the public. Many of the projects being funded by governments are chasing after fools gold, life is far more subtle than the gene paradigm pretends. In fact diseases such as schizophrenia, cardiovascular diseases and cancer, that  mistaken government funded gene editing projects are aiming to cure, are in most cases the result of holistic physiological processes gone wrong.

Ultimately, Ball concludes that “we are at the beginning of a profound rethinking of how life works”. In the reviewer’s opinion and mine, ‘beginning’ is the key word here. Scientists must take care not to substitute an old set of dogmas with a new one. It’s time to stop pretending that, give or take a few bits and pieces, we know how life works. Instead, biotech scientists must admit to some humility and allow new ideas to evolve. If you want a layman’s exposition of how much we don’t know (it’s huge), Bill Bryson’s very well researched book The Body—a guide for occupants is a great place to start.

Ball’s ideas about Agency are not foreign to more ancient systems of health care such as Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, etc.. Ayurveda recognises abstract holistic processes rooted in the fundamental laws of nature which are at work everywhere in physiology. It outlines three qualities at work in every process, every organ and the physiology as a whole. These are known as Vata (transport and information), Pitta (transformation and energy) and Kapha (structure and stability). I discuss these in my book Your DNA Diet.

Dig even deeper into the Indian traditional literature, and you come across three fundamental qualities (or gunas in Sanskrit) regarded as common to all processes in the cosmos—Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. Tamas is that which checks or retards, Rajas is the spur to activity, and Sattva is the emergent state.

To explain how these gunas function in the simplest possible terms, imagine a flower bud. It must be firmly anchored to a hard stem (Tamas), there must be a spur to unfold the bud (Rajas) and the fully blossomed flower emerges (Sattva). The bud itself no longer exists, it has been destroyed but in the process something new and useful has emerged. 

In physiology we find most elements are multitasking. The liver for example has more than 300 routine functions. There are processes which simultaneously maintain, promote and create health. Platelets for example which comprise about 1% of our blood, are not only responsible for the clotting of blood if we have a cut, they are also involved in immune processes and the regeneration of tissue.

If you look at immune functions, these are not mechanical processes, but rather flexible responses which not only maintain homeostasis whilst identifying and eliminating pathogens, but also lay the groundwork for recovery and future immunity. Allopathy has failed to recognise the interlocking nature of these processes. Biotechnology goes one step further, it crosses the cell membrane and tears them apart with tragic, destabilising consequences.

There are trillions upon trillions of processes going on automatically in our physiology which conform to the fundamental agency of life expressed through three simple qualities. Understanding these is the task that Ball places at the door of science, rather than the editing of genes which, because of physiological multitasking, is proving not only ineffective, but inherently mutagenic and consequently fraught with risks that cannot be remediated or recalled. Unchecked, biotechnology will destroy the integrated nature of life, our life.

This article began by reporting a recent spike in excess deaths. This is a very serious and tragic matter indeed which is being completely ignored by the government, the media and the medical establishment. Confronting this display of ignorance cannot be postponed or side-stepped. 

This points to a compelling need for the International Genetic Charter. Its simple terms spell out in a few sentences the safeguards necessary to protect human life from genetic degradation driven by government ignorance, corporate greed and academic hubris. Please take a couple of minutes to sign up to The International Genetic Charter here. It needs to be incorporated into our NZ Bill of Rights.

Image credit: Pavel Danilyuk

Guy Hatchard PhD was formerly a senior manager at Genetic ID a global food testing and safety company (now known as FoodChain ID). You can subscribe to his websites HatchardReport.com and GLOBE.GLOBAL for regular updates by email.

He is the author of ‘Your DNA Diet: Leveraging the Power of Consciousness To Heal Ourselves and Our World. An Ayurvedic Blueprint For Health and Wellness’.