Labour’s head-in-sand attitude to xenotransplantation
Labour has once again demonstrated its anti-science colours by extending the moratorium on xenotransplantation until
December 2006, says National’s Health spokesman, Paul Hutchison.
Xenotransplantation in human medicine means using living non-human animal cells, tissues or organs to treat humans.
Last week the head of the Health Research Council, Dr Bruce Scoggins, noted there was important promise for using
xenotransplantation techniques.
The Labour Government stopped a New Zealand company, Diatranz, from having their application for a technique to
potentially cure Type 1 diabetes heard. The company was forced overseas.
A top New Zealand lawyer, Mai Chen, described this action by Labour as a “constitutional outrage”.
“Labour claims that biotechnology is one of three main drivers of growth in their innovation strategy and yet they have
created some of the most onerous hurdles to carrying out research in biotechnology in any Western country,” says Dr
Hutchison.
“Labour’s own biotechnology taskforce says the regulatory regime must be fixed. This has led to scientists and their
work going overseas, and is a tragedy for science and research in this country.
“It is important to allow applications to go through the approval process based on scientific evidence and judged on
merit.
“Labour’s extension of the moratorium is the head in the sand actions of a Government that does the opposite of its
rhetoric.
“Labour’s action will not only hold up medical science and research in New Zealand, but also imposes nonsensical hurdles
over the biotechnology industry as a whole,” says Dr Hutchison.
Ends