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Every year, vitamin A deficiency inflicts between 250,000 and 500,000 helpless and malnourished young people with early-life blindness and in half of those cases, it also brings death. Now the Washington Post reports that, backed by nearly $10 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, scientists are now working to genetically engineer "super" bananas that are fortified with crucial alpha- and beta-carotene, which the body converts to vitamin A. "There is very good evidence that vitamin A deficiency leads to an impaired immune system and can even have an impact on brain development," says James Dale. "Good science can make a massive difference here by enriching staple crops such as Ugandan bananas with pro-vitamin A and providing poor and subsistence-farming populations with nutritionally rewarding food."
The Gates Foundation has a history of supporting GMO research and technology at least since 2010, when the non-profit invested in a low amount of shares in biotechnology giant Monsanto. Gates has amped up support for GMOs so that "poor countries that have the toughest time feeding their people have a process," adding that "there should be an open-mindedness, and if they can specifically prove [GMO] safety and benefits, foods should be approved, just like they are in middle-income countries." Such support has resulted in criticism and suspicion of the foundation's agenda. As for the worry that GMO seeds are increasingly consolidated in the hands of major agribusiness powers, Gates said in February 2013 after his foundation reportedly sold the approximately $23 million in Monsanto shares it owned that there are "legitimate issues, but solvable issues" with GMO technology and wider use. Gates added that one solution may be offering crops already patented but requiring no royalty dues.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hoochiecoochieman on Thursday June 19 2014, @11:15AM
Will I have to sign a EULA before eating one of these super-bananas? Will they be licensed to me? This means that, after I digest it and a part of it becomes a part of me, I myself will fall under the license, too?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 19 2014, @11:27AM
The EULA forbids you from installing more than one banana at a time, so you have to take a shit before eating another banana.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Thursday June 19 2014, @11:51AM
That normally takes about three days, by which time the super banana magically returns in transformative form from opposite hole. You just need to put it back in the package and it is ready for another go.
(Score: 3, Funny) by jimshatt on Thursday June 19 2014, @12:10PM
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Thursday June 19 2014, @01:24PM
It uses the Advanced Edibility Standard and Compost Recycling Computing to ensure Digestive Rights Management. Only licensed nutrients are released through the Tract Control Path/Ingredient Planner system with Unified Diarrhea Prevention messaging.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fliptop on Thursday June 19 2014, @04:34PM
I think Soylent needs a mechanism for marking a whole thread funny all at once.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday June 19 2014, @02:21PM
Your momma likes my super-banana in all three of her holes.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday June 19 2014, @11:32PM
You hit something here, everything is about control. I don't think that the same system who made those country poor in the first place is going to save them. It is not about GMO vs organisms modified in other ways, it's about who can get his own seeds from his own field.
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