Posted on 10/28/2013 4:51:58 PM PDT by Vince Ferrer
A 2009 study concluded that golden rice is effectively converted into vitamin A in humans.
A 2012 study that fed 68 children ages 6 to 8 concluded that golden rice was as good as vitamin A supplements and better than the natural beta-carotene in spinach.
Recently, scientists gathered evidence from Mozambique and Uganda that vitamin A enhanced sweet potatoes are, in fact, improving people's lives. Children who are eating them do have more vitamin A in their blood. Based on other studies of the effects of vitamin A, nutritionistsare confident that the boost is big enough to improve the health of those children. The researchers involved in the HarvestPlus effort are now trying to duplicate this success with other crops. Just this year, they started distributing new to farmers in Rwanda and a new kind of in India. Both are high in iron. In Zambia, they are starting to distribute a type of that has deep orange kernels, high in beta carotene.
Yet farming changes slowly in Africa, and it probably will take at least a decade before anyone knows whether these crops are doing as much good as the orange sweet potato.
Vitamin A capsules are already being given through programs of the World Health Organization and charities such as Hellen Keller International. They've been running the programs for 15 years, but they cost tens of millions of dollars a year. The problem is that besides the expense, you need the infrastructure to distribute the capsules. We're aiming for people who can't be reached this way, poor farmers in remote places.
As for the possibility of eating foods that supply vitamin A, such as liver, leafy green vegetables and eggs, the people we're targeting are too poor to buy them. Some kitchen garden projects provide them, but despite these interventions we still have 6000 children dying every day. These are not enough. The Golden Rice project aim is to complement, not replace these programs
In 2005, 190 million children and 19 million pregnant women, in 122 countries, were estimated to be affected by VAD (Vitamin A Deficiency). VAD is responsible for 1–2 million deaths, 500,000 cases of irreversible blindness and millions of cases of xerophthalmia annually. Children and pregnant women are at highest risk.
Delaying the introduction of golden rice (which is now proven effective) has cost over 20 million lives since golden rice was first available in 1999 and an improved version in 2005.
It took a long time, but by conventional breeding scientist have bred a new Golden Rice with varieties to suit individual tastes in different countries. This is now completed in the Philippines, Indonesia, India, China, Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia.
2012 Study of 68 Children
Critics had claimed that the rice is impractical. According to calculations by Greenpeace, people would need to eat huge amounts - as much as 18 kilograms of cooked rice a day - to obtain enough vitamin A.
A study involving 68 Chinese children demolishes the criticism. Guangwen Tang of Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues have demonstrated that just 100 to 150 grams of the rice - about half the children's daily intake - provided 60 per cent of the recommended daily intake of vitamin A.
The children were given beta-carotene either in the rice, in pure form in oil, or in spinach. All the beta carotene they received contained isotopes enabling any vitamin A made from it to be distinguished from vitamin A that was already circulating in their blood.
Analyses showed that it took 2.3 grams of beta-carotene derived from rice to make a single gram of vitamin A - only marginally less efficient than making it from oil, which took 2 grams.
Why are Greenpeace and other groups such as Friends of the Earth so adamantly against Golden Rice?
They've realised that it's politically more effective to be radical and not judge things on a case-by-case basis. I've had high level discussions with Greenpeace over the years and it becomes clear they cannot tolerate any genetically modified organisms (GMOs), even those that can be used for the public good. If you encourage them to change their position on Golden Rice, their response is the same: they're against GMOs. That's the position, and it's very successful.
One of the cleverest tricks of the anti-GMO movement is to link GMOs so closely to Monsanto and other multinational corporations, because Monsanto has no friends. That strategy guarantees millions of supporters because people are emotionally against multinationals and in favour of organic farming because of the perception that it's run by idealists who protect nature and don't make money from it.
The anti-GMO folks are above concern for “little people”.
I believe that Greenpeace has members who would - if they could, and if they could assure their own personal survival - wipe out 90% of the population of the world.
This sounds like a targeted version of what commonly happens in nature. A virus will copy a gene sequence out of one organism and paste it into another. But because it happened in a lab rather than out in a field, eek it is Frankenfood.
Iodine that they used to get from iodized salt which a former government encouraged salt manufacturers to sell to improve the health of the US population.
The people who deny the benefits of golden rice, and attack the companies who develop these kinds of solutions, are one and the same as the Carson disciples. And the result is predictable.....the needless deaths of millions and the untold suffering of millions more. The anti-science idiots have a lot to answer for.
You are exactly correct, the American left has a lot of blood on their hands. Luckily, currently the developing world is not so helpless and trusting as they were in the 1970s. They, like China, Russia, Brasil, etc, will work in their own best interest.
Hello, choir, no sense in my preaching here.
Let me ask, though, what could be done to replace eco-whacko notions with some common sense, in the heads of our deluded brethren?
On a large scale, that is.
I read a really good book recently called “The Really Inconvenient Truths” by Iain Murray.
One of the chapters deals with the banning of DDT, and the harm, misery and needless death that inflicted on people all over the world, and it is more blood on the hands of leftists.
Liberal environmentalists are a pox on humanity.
“I believe that Greenpeace has members who would - if they could, and if they could assure their own personal survival - wipe out 90% of the population of the world.”
IMHO, a far more serious ethical deficiency is found in the writings/speeches of the enviro-mental movement leaders.
As an example, “Better dead than alive and riotously reproducing.”
I am going to have to side against the majority here on this one. I am against GMO’s. I am not aligning with the environmentalists or “greenpiece”, but I think gene splicing between completely different organism could result new contagious and deadly diseases or even a collapse of the biological food chain. We are tampering with something we cannot possibly understand the ramifications of or control.
The same arguments for GMO’s are used for embryonic stem cell research and why we need Obamacare. I am all for exploiting our natural resoures to create wealth; by I am against unnatural genetic modifications in the name of kindness, progress or any other leftist utopian ideal.
Sometimes I'm inclined to believe that there is a lot more capitalistic activity in those countries than in our own. These countries appear to be embracing free markets while we increasingly condemn them......and it boggles my mind.
Huh? Let me understand what you’re saying......are you claiming that it’s better for for 1–2 million deaths, 500,000 cases of irreversible blindness and millions of cases of xerophthalmia annually from VAD — mostly in children — than it is to use GMO crops to mitigate the suffering?
You did well when you chose your screen name.
It’s interesting to those of us who believe in him how God alerts us scorn certain people.
No. That’s a false dichotomy. GMO crops are not the only alternative to starvation and malnutrition. Most of the time, there are barriers to helping people in the form of government corruption and charity fraud. If you could give twice the amount of needed food for these people, most would still starve or be malnurished unless you can find a way around those other issues. As another example, India could wipe out their starvation and malnutrition practically overight if they could as a nation abandon a religion that views cows as sacred rather than as food.
I am not on a personal campaign or crusade to stop GMO’s from being given away. There are many other tragedies I fear more, and which require more immediate attention.
However, I do not support this. I do not trust globalist-philanthropists like Bill Gates. Sorry. He may mean well, but like they say, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
It is the same way I am against government providing free housing and food and spending money. If we immediately pull the plug on these things, the effect would be catastrophic. I would support a mechanism for transitioning away from destructive programs like welfare, HUD housing, food stamps, etc.
I would prefer there were no GMO’s at all. Since that is not possible, I support restricting any tax dollars from going into their purchase, production or research. I support the restriction of GMO’s (and really all biological life) from any patent or other ip protections.
If Bill Gates uses his money to grow these crops and give them to those who would otherwise suffer the severe effects of malnutrition, I would not oppose him. If he wants to use tax dollars for this, I am against it. If he wants to mix these crops into our food chain, I am against it. If he wants them to be sold or distributed without being identified as GMO’s, I am against it.
My screen name comes from the title of a character in a book by Christian author, C.S. Lewis. The idea was that the occupation of unlearner required first correcting erroneous knowledge prior to teaching the truth or training in how to do something correctly.
It is ironic, but in my previous reply I made a mistake about where I first heard the term “unlearner”.
I was trying to recall the specific book in which I read it, and it was not from C.S. Lewis at all. (I think I must have read the actual source about the same time as my reading of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.)
Turns out the term came from a book called “Speculations on the Fourth Dimension”, Selected Writings of Charles H. Hinton which inlcuded Hinton’s writings from 1885.
Someone posted an excerpt here: http://www.eldritchpress.org/chh/h5.html
Strangely it made quite an impression on me, but I later forgot the correct authorship.
So I had to exercise some unlearning myself. But that is my corrected and revised self-naming history. And my tag line is thus as well.
Did you read the article?
I am not on a personal campaign or crusade to stop GMO’s from being given away.
That's good. Passive ignorance is less dangerous than militant ignorance.
Keep trying, you still have some erroneous knowledge to unlearn.
Yes I read the article. Do you have any sense? Do you wear pants? Can you post a logical comment rather than hit and run?
“That’s good. Passive ignorance is less dangerous than militant ignorance.”
Wow, do you post things like this because you think it actually makes a point or wins an argument, or do you do it to see yourself in print?
My position is simple: I am against GMO’s.
Disagreeing with you does not make me ignorant or illiterate.
FYI, since I was a child I have known missionaries who have lived in both Uganda and Rwanda. I understand some of the politics and corruption and other obstacles that have contributed to the starvation and malnutrition there.
The Greenpiece do-gooders may stifle efforts to help, but there are far worse obstacles to helping these people, like militant Islam, corrupt UN “helpers”, local corrutpion and superstition, and on and on.
But if you think donating GMO seeds will help, fine. Do it with your money, and make sure the GMO’s you give away do not find their way, unidentified as such into the supply chain so as to promote the IGNORANCE you are gravely worried about.
But some of us recognize that opposing GMO’s is wise, notwithstanding the offense it might create toward those with a self-inflated ego and conviction of their own self-importance. So go ahead and cry and take your marbles and go home.
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