Support for GM animal medicines

A father of twins with a rare genetic disease has called on the Environmental Risk Management Authority to allow research into genetically modified animals that could cure disorders like the one which has afflicted his children.

John Forman of the New Zealand Organisation for Rare Disorders backed a proposal to put human genes into goats, sheep and cows to try to get the animals to make medicinal human proteins in their milk.

Speaking at the first day of the Erma public hearings on plans by AgResearch to breed and keep genetically modified animals at its Ruakura research facility, near Hamilton, Mr Forman said up to 180 New Zealanders with rare diseases could be helped by medicines that could be produced if the experiment worked. His 35-year-old twins Timothy and Hollie suffer from alpha-mannosidosis, a rare lysomal disorder that kills many of its sufferers in childhood.

The disease has left them significantly intellectually and physically disabled.

There is no known cure. He said the existing treatments for sufferers of lysomal diseases and other rare disorders were in short supply and costly. "Pharmac doesn't like paying $500,000 per patient per year to treat a relatively young child."

He said if scientists were in a position to do something to help sufferers there was a "moral imperative" to do something about it.

Earlier in the day, AgResearch's applied biotechnology head Jimmy Suttie said scientists were morally obliged to try new ways of genetically modifying animals if it might help heal human diseases.

Groups opposed to the submission said AgResearch had not told Erma or the public what medicinal proteins it wanted to make.

Without that, there was no way to weigh the expected benefits with the risks, said submitter Jon Carapiet.

Speakers for GE Free New Zealand said that without more information about the type of material to be used there was no way to be sure genetically modified DNA would not escape into the environment.