SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 4, Informative) by NotSanguine on Wednesday October 30 2019, @02:11PM (6 children)
Except the license [goldenrice.org] for Golden rice ensures (among other things. Read it for yourself):
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @03:05PM
Not to mention that these patents will expire before anybody uses the rice.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday October 30 2019, @06:22PM (1 child)
So basically it's trapping farmers in poverty. If they get a bumper crop (even from an unrelated cash crop) pushing their total earnings above $10,000 the license is invalidated and they're suddenly open to a GMO tax. Luckily the rice has many reasons for being unattractive to farmers, not to mention being nutritionally almost pointless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @02:47PM
And don't forget about the licensing requirement that all farmers must give the inventors "drilling" access to their wives and daughters too.
Then there's the requirement that anyone who touches even one grain of Golden Rice is liable to pay USD 80,000,000,000,000.00 to the CCDTP (Capitalist Conference for Death To the Poor) every six hours or they will be tortured to death.
Wow! Now I understand why you do it. Making wildly inaccurate, unsupported claims is fun! You go girl!
Do you have any other uninformed bullshit to spew about this? We're all excited to hear it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @01:15AM (2 children)
Don't you understand? It's a Troy horse. It's a way to expand the use if modified crops by farmers. Even if the patent expires they can make a modification and file a new patent.
And even if they don't have t7pay the "tax" they will only sell sterile seeds so farmers will have to buy seeds every year.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Thursday October 31 2019, @01:37AM
Trojan Horse.
"only a few patented technologies, all of which have been made available for humanitarian purposes free of charge."
These are not terminator seeds, they continue to grow and germinate generation after generation. It is also worth noting that terminator seeds or 'GURT' "has never been introduced commercially"
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @02:58PM
Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit, eh?
Eating Golden Rice may or may not provide the levels of vitamin A to assist folks with the lack of that needed nutrient.
However, your "analysis" ignores the facts.
Facts! Bah! They are irrelevant to the important work of blathering [merriam-webster.com] and making false claims. Good show!