|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Agriculture : Children : Civil & Human Rights : Environment : Globalization : International Relations |
|
Golden Rice: All glitter, no gold |
Current rating: 0 |
by Repost by HT
(No verified email address) |
17 Mar 2005
|
|
* |
Thu 16 March 2006
NETHERLANDS/Amsterdam
It was a great sales pitch: adopt this genetically engineered rice, and it'll save millions of children from blindness! It will end Vitamin A deficiency. They called it "Golden Rice." But if you queried their claims, or had concerns about possible genetic contamination of a global staple food, you were an environmental extremist who cared more about trees than children. It was, and is, fools gold.
"Golden Rice" is a technical failure. It won't overcome malnutrition. Worse, it is drawing funding and attention away from the real solutions to combat the very real problem of vitamin A deficiency.
Vitamin A is essential to humans. It has several functions in the human body and is important for eyesight. Vitamin A deficiency can lead to blindness and death, and is a severe problem for many countries in the global south.
Golden Rice was presented in 2000 as a rice variety that was genetically engineered in a laboratory to produce pro-vitamin A (beta-carotene). The media hype was more robust than the science, however, and our analysis revealed that people would need to consume 12 times more rice than normal to satisfy the minimum daily adult requirements of Vitamin A. Subsequent studies have questioned the very notion that Golden Rice would be effective in addressing Vitamin A deficiency.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/news/details?item_id=791594 |
This work is in the public domain |
