Outrageous! Why are people opposed to GM rice which saves lives and prevents blindness? [View all]

[True Earthling]

Someone please explain the rationale for this...

On three different occasions now, three different groups of experts, with no ax to grind and no stake in vitamin firms, have reached the same answer. Enhancing nutrients, they calculate, yields benefits 30 times greater than costs. The readers of Slate magazine, given the chance to vote on the Copenhagen Consensus in recent weeks, mostly agreed-putting micronutrients second only to family planning. The evidence for micronutrients has been getting stronger. Studies from Guatemala, following up children for 30 years, find that good early nutrition not only combats stunting and increases intelligence but, says Dr. Lomborg, "also translates into higher education and substantially higher (23.8%) incomes in adult life, which not only matters to the individuals but also starts a virtuous circle."

Vitamin A deficiency affects the immune system, leading to illness and frequently to blindness. It probably causes more deaths than malaria, HIV or tuberculosis each year, killing as many people as the Fukushima tsunami every single day. It can be solved by eating green vegetables and meat, but for many poor Asians, who can afford only rice, that remains an impossible dream. But "biofortification" with genetically modified plant food (such as golden rice) is 1/10th as costly as dietary supplements.

"Golden rice"-with two extra genes to make beta-carotene, the raw material for vitamin A-was a technical triumph, identical to ordinary rice except in color. Painstaking negotiations led to companies waiving their patent rights so the plant could be grown and regrown free by anybody. Yet today, 14 years later, it still has not been licensed to growers anywhere in the world. The reason is regulatory red tape deliberately imposed to appease the opponents of genetic modification, which Adrian Dubock, head of the Golden Rice project, describes as "a witch-hunt for suspected theoretical environmental problems ... [because] many activist NGOs thought that genetically engineered crops should be opposed as part of their anti-globalization agenda."

http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/red-tape-hobbles-a-harvest-of-life-saving-rice.aspx