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Block on GM rice 'has cost millions of lives and led to child blindness'
Stifling international regulations have been blamed for delaying the approval of a food that could have helped save millions of lives this century. The claim is made in a new investigation of the controversy surrounding the development of Golden Rice by a team of international scientists.
Golden Rice is a form of normal white rice that has been genetically modified to provide vitamin A to counter blindness and other diseases in children in the developing world. It was developed two decades ago but is still struggling to gain approval in most nations.
"Golden Rice has not been made available to those for whom it was intended in the 20 years since it was created," states the science writer Ed Regis. "Had it been allowed to grow in these nations, millions of lives would not have been lost to malnutrition, and millions of children would not have gone blind."
[...] [Many] ecology action groups, in particular Greenpeace, have tried to block approval of Golden Rice because of their general opposition to GM crops. "Greenpeace opposition to Golden Rice was especially persistent, vocal, and extreme, perhaps because Golden Rice was a GM crop that had so much going for it," he states.
For its part, Greenpeace has insisted over the years that Golden Rice is a hoax and that its development was diverting resources from dealing with general global poverty, which it maintained was the real cause of the planet's health woes.
Nevertheless, this opposition did not have the power, on its own, to stop Golden Rice in its tracks, says Regis. The real problem has rested with an international treaty known as the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, an agreement which aims to ensure the safe handling, transport and use of living modified organisms, and which came into force in 2003.
Previously: Where's the Golden Rice?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @08:47AM (6 children)
There's an even more simple refutation than most of what you just said: carrots. Carrots, unlike rice, are utterly trivial to grow, grow pretty much anywhere, and provide exactly what 'golden rice' is supposed to be except in substantially larger quantities.
So why do the lobbyists want golden rice instead of carrots? Because golden rice, or genetically engineered consumables in general, can be patented enabling a supply side monopoly. Should a genetically engineered foodstuff become a staple of a nation, even a quite poor nation, it would be a never-ending source of extensive revenue that, thanks to said monopoly, could be exploited to no end. Carrots by contrast are just a vegetable. And you can't patent a natural vegetable.
Genetically engineered foodstuffs should be used only as a last resort. They introduce substantial unknowns and meaningful testing isn't really viable. The standard 6 month 'did you get sick or experience allergies' testing is mostly pointless for things where you're concerned about long-term macro level effects. 6 month tests would, for instance, show cigarettes to also be mostly harmless. And so we should only really push for these products in cases where there is simply no natural alternative whatsoever. In this case carrots brilliantly emphasize just how much of a corporate ploy 'golden rice' is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @12:33PM (1 child)
Some quick searching suggests that boiling carrots lowers the Vitamin A content slightly (some goes into the water), but at the same time makes other changes that improves Vitamin A absorption. Didn't find anything scholarly, but this was reassuring. Boiling them in soup (where the liquid is consumed) could be the best choice?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 30 2019, @02:17PM
Actually, no. Close, but no. Please, SIMMER that soup!!
https://www.jessicagavin.com/simmering/ [jessicagavin.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Wednesday October 30 2019, @01:56PM (1 child)
I don't think that's the case. Firstly, the patent [wikipedia.org] for Golden Rice (GR) [goldenrice.org] was granted in 2000. This means that the patent expires next year.
What's more, as the licensing of patented and proprietary technologies (the GR patent is the most important, but other tech is needed to create a viable product) required to produce the stuff is *free* and always has been.
I'm not claiming that GR is good or bad. But given the status of the IP involved, your assertion about lobbyists doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Am I missing something obvious?
AFAICT, this isn't a scam like Roundup Ready [wikipedia.org] crops.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Tokolosh on Wednesday October 30 2019, @02:26PM
As long as there are carrots, there is no monopoly. As long as golden rice is banned, carrots have a monopoly.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 30 2019, @03:41PM
Not to mention the whole "my neighbor got the GMO, it cross-pollinated into my fields without my permission, now they're suing my ass off with their team of ninja lawyers" thing.
Enjoy these GMO strains cross-breeding and out-competing all the natural strains, then good luck if it turns out they're more susceptible to some disease or something.
Invasive species is already a major problem just with naturally-occurring ones.
---
Now time to make a fool of myself... ;)
I know it's silly to cite fictional TV for arguments like this, but there was an episode of Leverage [fandom.com] where a GMO company tried to purposely expose the world's wheat population to a disease that would wipe out all strains except their own GMO resistant strain, then there's a couple layers of double-crossing and the disease "accidentally" gets released in the process.
A) They've said that most episodes of the show are based on real-life stories, and in many cases they actually had to *tone down* how evil the bad guys were because they didn't think the audience would believe it.
B) If you ask me, this idea is just such a monumentally bad idea for some sociopath to actually try it. Don't underestimate how dangerous powerful people with no ethics can be.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 02 2019, @03:07PM
Yeah I was thinking about the same thing. If the target group just ate some leafy greens or carrots they could easily get more vitamin A than they'd get from the rice.
Carrots have about 80 micrograms of beta carotene per 1g.
Spinach has 50 micrograms of beta carotene per 1g: https://www.nutritionvalue.org/Spinach%2C_raw_nutritional_value.html [nutritionvalue.org]
10 times more than golden rice which has 5-6 micrograms per 1g. And spinach is also high in lutein and zeaxanthin (which are good for the eyes too). I doubt the golden rice has much lutein. Other existing candidates that aren't very expensive = sweet potatoes(80mcg/g) and pumpkin (30mcg/g).
Spinach, carrots, pumpkin and sweet potatoes aren't 8-10x the price of normal rice per kg even in India (which I believe was one of the target markets or comparable to the target market).
So if they can't afford enough of those vegetables they are unlikely to be able to afford the golden rice. And so that's where the gov subsidies come in and where the golden rice bunch will make their money?
And the kids will just be malnourished in a different way (since golden rice is a one-trick pony right?) and so another bunch of "white knights" will come up with yet another scheme to save the kids... High B12 and vitamin C rice?