These vitamin-fortified bananas might get you thinking differently about GMOs [View all]

[Humanist_Activist]

[div class="excerpt" style="margin-left:1em; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius:0.4615em; box-shadow:-1px -1px 3px #999999 inset;"]In the winter of 2014, students at Iowa State University received emails asking them to volunteer for an experiment. Researchers were looking for women who would eat bananas that had been genetically engineered to produce extra carotenes, the yellow-orange nutrients that take their name from carrots. Our bodies use alpha and beta carotenes to make retinol, better known as vitamin A, and the experiment was testing how much of the carotenes in the bananas would transform to vitamin A. The researchers were part of an international team trying to end vitamin A deficiency.

The emails reached the volunteers they needed to begin the experiment, but they also reached protesters. "As a student in the sustainability program, I immediately started asking questions," said Iowa State postdoc Rivka Fidel. "Is this proven safe? Have they considered the broader cultural and economic issues?"

Fidel and a group of six other alarmed students began asking the researchers and the school administration to publicly answer questions about the experiment. They started showing up at events bearing a petition with their list of questions. Sometimes one of them would dress up as a banana.

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/30/11318252/gmo-bananas-vitamin

Thought I'd throw this in the mix. In addition, its really fucking infuriating that activists are using fearmongering to try to prevent scientists from fucking helping people from not dying.

Also, to nip it in the bud, no, you can't have them grow fucking carrots. Carrots are a cold weather crop.