Wellington

Date: 5 March 2004
Venue: Te Wananga o Aotearoa Campus, Heriot St, Porirua

Economic Implications

What are the implications for the New Zealand economy and the local economy?

• Economic implications are secondary to the primary questions of what does this mean, what are the implications for individuals, families, groups, communities and New Zealand society.
• The range of questions in the Council's process and background material addressed useful questions to focus dialogue.
• There may be opportunites and economic implications certainly - so who would invest and what "security" is needed to make any progress. Going forward without "consent" and dialogue for common interests is difficult.

Scientific Implications

What are the implications for science in New Zealand and internationally?

• The scientific sector and incumbent ideology needs to find a way and a language for dialogue around the common interests.
• That larger considerations of biodviersity, through to genetic engineering and the biotechnology being explored need to find a fit with each other.
• The dynamic of Tane and Tangaroa and the mana and connectedness of those domains for Māori have relevance in the debate over biotechnology.
• Each is about mana and diversity.
• Where is the common good? How can the council and the scientific community dialogue with communities and interests not especially scientifically literate but holding valid ideas? These communities are able to identify values and ethics and how those affect us in change.
• Ideas that could find a way to secure an individual's ownership of the intellectual property derived from genetics and genetic materials could be acceptable, as opposed a biotechnology that separated an individual from genetic materials.
• Echoing other concerns, Māori could paradoxically resist change to the genetic legacy for the future generations and yet agree to 'customised' biotechnology solutions when facing family disease traits.
• Some care is needed where ownership and extending care considerations are present. For example, looking after the future generations by owning the biotechnology outcomes for their descendants.
• A sense of intergenerational "whanauising" for positive benefits
• "Gene switching", for example the Tauranga Māori family who suffer from stomach cancer, a hereditary matter. They may want to "switch it off" for a generation.
• Using the analogy of the volumes of an encyclopaedia with chapters and pages to explain genetics is an excellent example of finding a way for people to see the complexity of the subject more simply and from their own experience.
• This is a good model for science to communicate better (refer to Waiora Port and Helen Bicham- Bioethics Council members).
• Asking questions about taking responsibility in reaching decisions.
• A possible framework to seek the greater good could ask: Is it good for me? Is it good for those directly affected? Is it good for this community? Is it good for the world? Where is the greater good?
• Seeking responsibility for that all the time.
• Scientific ideology can be seen to say "anything is possible". The question needs to be, do we want it?
• Māori contribute a range of views and korero over the years and those views are at risk as each new agency, contemporary agenda, set of ideas and developments dismiss and belabour them or miss their values because government staff change.
• Institutional knowledge moves on.
• Yet Māori culture is based upon longitudanal matters and thinking and configured to last and to be dynamic.
• The paradox of increasing change and complexity and the need for simplicity.

Ethical Implications

What are the ethical considerations of the use of this technology in New Zealand?

• Getting close to God in life, an open notion of god.
• Respect for the taonga in the genes, and in what it is to be human.
• Don't mess with the whakapapa.
• What is it to be a donor of organs or genetics for Māori?
• The "politics" involved may eventually stymie the Bioethics Council's work as the vested interests "outplay" - and also make unpopular via media - the results from these dialogue sessions with Māori and others.
• current Māori-focussed antagonism in the political sector is of concern. Where does the balance lie and what are the Council's "risks" in their process and work?

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