WHEN LUDDITES KILL: The Deadly Opposition to Genetically Modified Food: Vitamin A deficiency has killed 8 million kids in the last 12 years. Help is finally on the way.
Finally, after a 12-year delay caused by opponents of genetically modified foods, so-called “golden rice” with vitamin A will be grown in the Philippines. Over those 12 years, about 8 million children worldwide died from vitamin A deficiency. Are anti-GM advocates not partly responsible?
Golden rice is the most prominent example in the global controversy over GM foods, which pits a technology with some risks but incredible potential against the resistance of feel-good campaigning. Three billion people depend on rice as their staple food, with 10 percent at risk for vitamin A deficiency, which, according to the World Health Organization, causes 250,000 to 500,000 children to go blind each year. Of these, half die within a year. A study from the British medical journal the Lancet estimates that, in total, vitamin A deficiency kills 668,000 children under the age of 5 each year.
Yet, despite the cost in human lives, anti-GM campaigners—from Greenpeace to Naomi Klein—have derided efforts to use golden rice to avoid vitamin A deficiency.
For all the claims of “murder” thrown at the NRA over its policy arguments, the usual suspects are much quieter on this subject, where the connection between policy-advocacy and dead children is much clearer.
Greenpeace is just another eco-fascists organization thinking they know what is best for the rest of the world.
This shows why one cannot have a reasonable discussion with these people... they will put the "welfare" of butterflies ahead of that of human beings!
Until libs reduce our country into a third world cesspool and I have no choice but to eat this food, I will continue to raise and preserve my own heirloom veggies and fruits.
Okay, how do we separate the beneficial stuff from the stuff that has potential to harm? I’m no idiot. Humans have been modifying food for millenia (corn wouldn’t be corn without humans) through cross-polination, selective breeding, etc..., but how do we know when we’ve maybe crossed a line we shouldn’t have?
Modifying to add vitamins is fine with me, I have issues screwing with genes that add insecticides, etc....
Liberals are Luddites. They hate progress that will result in healthier children with fewer adverse consequences for the environment.
You’d think Greenpeace would want to end world hunger and take millions of square meters of farmland out of circulation. You’d be wrong.
Does the "it's for the children" reasoning have a familiar ring to it? Personally, I think it's BS. It's mostly about Syngenta controlling that part of the seed market like Monsanto with corn, soy beans and cotton. GMO seeds being 'intellectual property' farmers can't save any of the seed for the next season unless they pay royalties to the seed producer. Just google "Monsanto sues farmer" and see what's going on.
Proud to be a Luddite, if that means foods that don’t have non-plant genes inserted into their DNA.
Who cares about a few million blind kids when when the earth is being saved by the anti-Gm food lobby?
Like it was saved by the anti-DDT lobby.
This is the dumbest article I’ve ever read on FR. Vitamin A deficiencies are caused by evil governments and cultures that cause poverty and starvation among their people. Spreading Frankenfoods won’t help starving kids in Zimbabwe, Somalia or Bangladesh? This stupid article is what happens when a corporation hires a liberal democrat for public relations.