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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: 3, Interesting) by EJ on Wednesday October 30 2019, @02:13PM (4 children)
Malnutrition is evolution's way of saying you shouldn't have made those children. I know people think it's sad that children have to suffer, but it's the way nature works. Little bunny rabbits are cute, but eagles need to eat.
I get so pissed off at all these fertility center commercials here in the USA. If you can't make a baby without extreme medical intervention, then that is the universe telling you to adopt.
People will never stop wanting what they shouldn't have. That's why we have the obesity epidemic. That's why we have major drug addiction problems. That's why we have massive overpopulation.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 30 2019, @03:39PM
Capitalism in action. People have wants/desires, some of these people also have money - trade the people what they want for their money at a profit, period, end of analysis. Everything from drugs, to cryonics clinics, to flashy clothes and jewelry, to wrinkle cream, it's all about giving the people what they want in exchange for the most profit possible.
If only there were a reliable wants vs needs metric, that would be a key foundational element of a sensible tax/incentive system. If only.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @04:44PM (2 children)
Your argument is the same argument used to oppose every form of technological progress ever.
e.g "If god had wanted us to fly he would have given us wings."
There are lots of valid and supportable reasons to oppose golden rice, but yours isn't one of them and it has no place on site that claims to be for thinking people.
(Score: 2) by EJ on Thursday October 31 2019, @01:46AM (1 child)
I'm not sure you're replying to the post you think you're replying to. At the very least, I'm pretty sure you didn't comprehend the meaning of my post.
I don't care about golden rice or technological progress. I'm talking purely about people having kids they can't feed. The goal of science isn't to allow us to feed an unlimited amount of people. The goal of science should be (aside from having a better understanding of the universe) giving a better quality of life to an appropriate amount of people.
Basically, just like feral animals, people need to be spayed and neutered. Then they can f*ck everything in sight without destroying the Earth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @08:55PM
Oh I responded your post. You are a reductive fuckwit. The fact that you don't understand the full implications of your own bullshit is on you.
Your dumbfuckery about what the "goal of science should be" and "an appropriate amount of people" is just another version of religion. Who exactly defines those things?
You?
Some ineffable law of the universe?
Religion - its exactly what you are doing. You are just too far up our own ass to see it.