Promised diabetes treatment review shelved

By SIMON COLLINS

The Government has abandoned a promise to review a diabetes treatment involving transplanting insulin-producing pig cells into patients.

Ministry of Health senior medical adviser Dr Stewart Jessamine has told the Auckland company that wanted to trial the procedure, Diatranz, that the review has been dropped because Diatranz has withdrawn its appeal against an earlier ministry veto on the process.

Health Minister Annette King told Cook Islands Prime Minister Dr Robert Woonton in March that the review would be completed in April.

Dr Woonton agreed to defer a proposed trial of the procedure in the Cook Islands until the New Zealand review had been done.

Diatranz has now withdrawn its appeal because it is seeking approval to conduct trials in Australia instead.

Diatranz founder Dr Bob Elliott accused the Government of breaking its promise to the Cook Islands.

"It's political skulduggery really, to fob people off until the election was over," he said.

But Annette King said she had only ever promised that the review would take place when the Diatranz appeal was heard by the Medicines Review Committee.

"What I did was to ensure that I took through cabinet the appointments to ensure that we had a review committee," she said.

"I had to appoint two new members to the committee. I did it immediately. I have done my part.

"What happens after that is then up to Diatranz. We are ready for the party and they haven't come to play."

Diatranz director David Collinson said it was forming a company in Australia and preparing an application to conduct trials there.

He said in July that the company was being kept afloat only by personal contributions from directors and was negotiating with an Australian investor.

Last week he said: "We have got some new investors in Australia that we are talking to."

Cook Islands Health Minister Vaevae Pare, who was in Auckland yesterday on his way to a World Health Organisation conference in Japan, said he was not aware that the New Zealand review had been dropped.

He said he would discuss the issue with Ms King at the WHO conference and take it to the Cook Islands Cabinet when he returned.

Diatranz announced in January that it had achieved a breakthrough in a trial in Mexico, where a teenage girl with diabetes was able to stop taking injections of insulin completely after receiving transplanted insulin-producing pig cells.

However, the Government changed the law before the election to ban transplants of animal cells into people except by special ministerial approval, because of the risk of animal viruses infecting the human population.

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