We're viewed as criminals says scientist

Environment reporter ANNE BESTON hears of the frustration medical researchers are feeling.


A medical researcher has threatened to quit the country because of barriers to importing genetically modified mice.

Dr Mark Hampton, of the Christchurch Medical School, said New Zealand risked becoming "one large hippy commune" with scientists replaced by astrologers and conspiracy theorists.

He told the royal commission investigating genetic science that researchers were being hamstrung by unnecessary red tape and "minority ideological elements" were portraying scientists as criminals in the debate over genetic engineering.

As a young medical researcher newly returned from postgraduate training in Sweden and at Harvard Medical School in the US, Dr Hampton said that he wanted to work in New Zealand.

But he would return overseas if this country rejected gene technology.

He also said he had stopped one branch of his research into stomach cancer because the rules on importing genetically modified mice needed for the work were too strict.

Dr Hampton was giving evidence to the four-member Royal Commission on Genetic Modification, which has resumed formal hearings in Wellington after a month's break.

His evidence was part of a submission from a group of 30 New Zealand medical researchers who use genetically modified animals, known as "transgenic" or mutant animals, in their work.

They told the commission that this year alone 25 million mice would be raised for medical research, many of them new "lines" with altered genes.

One US laboratory, which sells the transgenic mice around the world, has built a $US23 million ($52.8 million) facility to house and breed them.

They are also bred in New Zealand at the crown institute AgResearch in Hamilton and Lincoln University.

The mice have genes added and genes "knocked out" so their genetic makeup mimics that of human beings with genetic disorders which cause rare and often fatal diseases.

Researchers use the mice to search for treatments and cures or to identify whether diseases such as stomach cancer are inherited.

Transgenic mice are used in New Zealand to investigate neurological disorders, kidney disease, stomach cancer and obesity, among others.

Dr Hampton said his university had general approval to import transgenic mice from a commercial laboratory in the US but only one type of mouse he wanted was on that laboratory's list. He would have to go through a new application to import the other one.

He had dropped a branch of his research into gastric cancer because the expense and time involved getting approval to import the mouse meant it wasn't worth it.

The transgenic scientists group, made up of medical researchers from Otago and Canterbury Universities, said New Zealanders had a poor understanding of the importance of transgenic animals in medical research because some members of society had "extreme views."

"Rather than a technology to be shunned or feared, GM animal research offers enormous hope in the battle against disease," they said.

The scientists said strict containment rules meant there was only a small chance transgenic animals could escape and they would not survive well in the wild.

The commission has been asked by the Government to investigate where New Zealand should stand on genetic engineering of both food and animals.

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