Articles by Dr. Guy Hatchard PhD [Hatchard Report]

Guy Hatchard argues that New Zealand’s latest mortality figures should be treated as a warning sign, with deaths rising in the year to June 2026 while birth and fertility rates continue to fall. Pointing to excess mortality, cardiac and cancer concerns and unprecedented pressure from winter illness, he calls for Health NZ to investigate health outcomes by age, vaccination status and disease type, and make the findings public. The year ended…

Biotechnology is transforming medicine, agriculture and scientific research at an unprecedented pace, while raising important questions about safety, ethics and public oversight. In this opinion piece, Dr Guy Hatchard argues that the risks associated with genetic technologies and gain-of-function research deserve greater public scrutiny, and that lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic should prompt a reassessment of current scientific and…

Much loved Kiwi actor Sam Neill has died suddenly. · In March 2023 Neill announced he had been diagnosed with Stage 3 angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma (a rare form of blood cancer) the previous year. Neill underwent chemotherapy which failed to stem the cancer progression so he switched to bi-weekly infusions of a rare specialised anti-cancer drug which initially showed promise, until it too failed. · In 2025–2026 Neill enrolled in an…

On the 25th January 2026, two men stepped off an arriving plane at Detroit Metropolitan Airport en route from the Congo carrying a black case. At the border they declared that the case contained instruments, but customs officials found it contained vials of Monkeypox virus and human DNA in violation of federal law. Both men worked at the National Institute of Health (NIH) Rocky Mountain Laboratory where one of them was Chief of the Virus…

You have probably heard computer analogies used to explain how DNA works. Computers have properties that are fixed by precise programming and hardware. In these analogies, DNA is characterised as a set of complex instructions which are transcribed into proteins which in turn perform physiological functions that are specified by the genetic sequences stored in the DNA. Thus the public have come to think of DNA as a set of instructions or a…

This article addresses some of the most profound philosophical and spiritual questions that we ask as we seek to understand our existence. It challenges some popular notions that have derived from the discoveries of Darwin and modern genetics, from the perspective of an interdisciplinary comprehensive scientific understanding. On June 5 a paper was published by the prestigious journal Cell entitled “Replaying germinal center evolution on a…

Given NZ’s vulnerability to natural disasters, this article raises questions about new legislation that should be of concern to everyone. · Two weeks ago we had a flood in our house after a water pipe burst in the ceiling cavity. Within 2 days our insurance company had assessed and settled the claim. We were able to start work immediately to remedy the damage. In contrast, on January 18th we suffered a devastating rain event. Over 300mm of rain…

By Guy Hatchard · A bill containing amendments to the HSNO (Hazardous Substances and New Organisms) Act passed its first reading in Parliament on May 14 with the support of Labour and the Coalition. It is hard to escape the notion that this bill is simply the Gene Technology Bill Mark 2. There are provisions in the amendments which allow for fast tracking of genetically modified organisms if they are approved overseas. It seems the government…

In our latest release “The Fall of the House of Biotechnology”, I began by saying it was among the most important articles we have published. One subscriber wrote back saying “If it is so important why can’t you say it in one sentence?”. This was an interesting question, because I realised that we live in a one sentence age, where our leaders and multinational corporations entrap us with empty slogans like “safe and effective” which are…

After the failure of the Royal Commission on Covid-19, we are all wondering ‘where to from here?’ We are not alone. The entire biotech industry is now planning future expansion bolstered by the ‘findings’ (???) of pandemic inquiries in multiple countries which have failed to criticise biotech experimentation. Bucking the trend of ‘all systems go’, Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and…