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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 30 2019, @07:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the "grain"-of-truth? dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @09:56AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @09:56AM (#913640)

    "Hi.. this plot was in a movie, so why did you ever mention it"?

    No.. this isn't about Gattaca. Gattaca wasn't about genetic engineering, but instead about genetic selection. And using DNA to identify 'flawed' people.

    I'm referring to something entirely different, which is 'the forces behind the eventual entire human race being genetically engineered'. Again, Gattaca wan't that.. it was just invirto selected offspring + prejudice.

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  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 30 2019, @03:30PM (3 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday October 30 2019, @03:30PM (#913741)

    Gattaca wasn't about genetic engineering, but instead about genetic selection. And using DNA to identify 'flawed' people.

    Ummm...yeah it was? The entire driving plot point was that the protagonist's parents declined to have him genetically modified while he was in the womb.

    I think you're splitting hairs here

    --
    "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 Wednesday October 30 2019, @04:50PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @04:50PM (#913785)

      No, it wasn't.

      In-vitro != genetically engineered, at all. Instead, unchanged sperm fertilize unchanged eggs, they are allowed to divide a time or two, then they are inspected for .

      Bad embryos are discarded. We've been doing this for decades, and it has nothing do to with genetic engineered DNA. It's like you're claiming that since you picked the colour car you want, out of 20, you actually painted it.. or, even better, mixed the paint.

      And I'm not splitting hairs. Gattaca was about genetic discrimination, something that was big in 1997, when insurance companies first started to ban people, or up people's rates, for genetic pre-conditions.

      What I'm talking about is GMO as humans.

      In-vitro = the same with we've done with plants forever. See desirable traits, and let them breed. See bad ones, kill them / or just eat them without allowing the seed to propogate.

      • (Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Wednesday October 30 2019, @08:22PM (1 child)

        by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Wednesday October 30 2019, @08:22PM (#913859)

        Bullshit.
        Gattaca was totally about genetic engineering.
        I'm not going to repeat tangomargarine (667) because he was totally on point.
        The protagonists parents wanted to make a natural baby and not select traits, how is that NOT genetic engineering?
        Yes society used genetics to discriminate, but the discrimination was very much against the natural born over the engineered.

        Nice summery of that fact:

        Dr. Lamar: Jerome, never shy, pisses on command. Beautiful piece of equipment you've got there, Jerome. I ever told you that?

        Vincent: Only every time I'm in here.

        Dr. Lamar: Occupational hazard. I see a great many on the course of any given day. Yours just happens to be an exceptional example. Don't know why my folks didn't order one like that for me.

        --
        Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @12:43AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @12:43AM (#913956)

          The big difference between GMO, and genetically *selected*, is where the genes come from.

          In-vitro selection takes all the possibilities that a set of parents could have. It's literally taking sperm, 100% natural from the parent, combining it with eggs, 100% natural from the mother, gestating them, and then throwing away ones without the desired traits. As far as I recall, and the IMDB and wikipedia summaries of the movie, all indicate in-virto was discussed as the method.

          This is 100%, period, no matter what, absolutely not genetic engineering. Saying 'it's the same thing' is completely, and totally wrong.

          Why?

          Genetic engineering involves taking an organism, like a fertilized egg, and *modifying it*. Something that in-vitro selection DOES NOT DO. Modifications can be repairing genes that are damaged, adding new genes found in others of the same species, or! even adding in genes from other species, or genes we create from scratch!

          There is no comparison. They are entirely different things. Selecting traits is NOT genetic engineering. In-virto selection is NOT being engineered, merely selected.