Bloody Hands vs. Golden Rice
Thursday, August 19, 2021
The Philippines recently granted regulatory approval for production and sale of golden rice, named for the color lent to its grains by the beta-carotene they contain, thanks to genetic engineering.
Reason Magazine, which rightly calls Greenpeace evil for opposing the move reports the following eye-opening consequences of anti-GMO opposition to just this product:
This is sickening, and while I have profound philosophical problems with Libertarianism, I must thank Reason for calling a spade a spade here. There is much more that could be said, but this is a good start.Regulatory approval of the grain in the Philippines is a big step toward improving the health of some of the poorest people on the planet. As AgDaily notes, "a one-cup portion of cooked Golden Rice contains enough beta-carotene to meet 30 to 50 percent of the estimated average requirement of vitamin A for children aged 6 months to 5 years, the group most at risk of vitamin A insufficiency in the Philippines. At present, only 2 out of 10 Filipino households meet the estimated average requirement for vitamin A intake in their daily diet."
Image by The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), via Wikimedia Commons, license.
Vitamin A deficiency causes blindness in between 250,000 and 500,000 children each year, half of whom die within 12 months, according to the World Health Organization. A study by German researchers in 2014 estimated that activist opposition to the deployment of Golden Rice has resulted in the loss of 1.4 million life-years in just India alone. Since 2005, an estimated 14 million children worldwide have died of Vitamin A deficiency and an estimated 3.5 million to 7 million are permanently blind. bold added]
-- CAV
2 comments:
Hi Gus,
In addition to the anti-science aspects of Greenpeace's opposition, there lies a more sinister evil. Ersatz population control.
The Enlightenment West regards mass death with horror. The Deep Greens consider it to be a 'good start'.
And then you have the useless idiots in the Aid organizations that promote the idea that creating dependence in 3rd world countries is a good thing because it allows the West to expiate its moral sin of imperialism. They actively argue against self-sufficiency for 3rd world communities and their aid programs, with free food dumps and top-down money drops are very effective in making sure that self-sufficiency will not emerge. Free food dumps make it impossible for local farmers to recover their costs on anything that makes it to market and top down money keeps corrupt dictators and 'crats in power. And such dictators and 'crats want a self-reliant population even less than the 'benevolent' Aid organizations do.
There are some exceptions, of course. The golden rice initiative is very nearly unique in promoting local growers to avoid the disruption that most aid initiatives bring. Micro-investors who give very small capital infusions directly to individuals are another. But they are few and far between.
I would argue that altruism is the ugly underpinning of the disruptive Aid organizations. Because how can you claim moral credit in helping others if those others persist in being or becoming self-sufficient? Parenthetically, this is why the client groups of the Democrat party in America are never allowed to prosper, and if particular individuals escape the 'charity' trap, they are denounced as race traitors or worse.
c andrew
C.,
Indeed.
It is quite interesting to consider the far left's recent move to phase out glyphosate and GMO's in Mexico in light of your suggestion.
Gus
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