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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: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 19 2014, @01:49PM
while it is nice that gmo for once is not used to make crops stand more poison or include poison, wouldn't it be easier to grow normal carrots instead?
(especially bananas is a bad choice to grow more of... a more fragile species that needs more poison is hard to find)
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Thursday June 19 2014, @06:17PM
Yeah or sweet potatoes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_potato#Cultivation [wikipedia.org]
Bananas aren't that nutritious compared to sweet potatoes or potatoes, so what's the point of doing all that work modifying banana to have carotene when it's still going to be inferior to other crops in other nutrition stats, plus higher in sugar (not so healthy):
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1846/2 [self.com]
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2667/2 [self.com]
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2770/2 [self.com]
Yield per hectare isn't really better than potatoes or sweet potatoes either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 19 2014, @06:50PM
When you're suffering from malnourishment, higher sugar content isn't a concern. Also bananas are quite tasty when raw, I can't say the same for (sweet) potatoes.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday June 19 2014, @11:45PM
I expect it's a matter of what the climate and soil will support. Frex, potatoes are actually quite picky about their growing conditions, being intolerant of heat, drought, and poor drainage.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday June 20 2014, @12:41AM
Yams, however, do quite well in the same areas that bananas do.
If I trusted that the patents would be "dedicated to the public", however, I'd be all in favor of these new bananas. As it is...
And that, in a nutshell, is my real objection to most GMO products. They are an intentional trap, intended to trap the weakest and most vulnerable in society. (So if the seeds were only sold to and enforced on other large corporations I'd have much less of a problem with them.)
That said, I am skeptical about the inclusion of non-species specific poisons in plants. That I consider a danger no matter WHO the customer (or vendor) is. Poison resistance is something rather else.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.