Genetically Engineered Food: Saving Lives the Greenpeace Way
BiotechBloggers
Dennis T. Avery
May 10, 2007
CHURCHVILLE, VA-The media this week is full of dire warnings about man-
made global warming. Greenpeace and the UN say Americans must move
quickly to give up 80-90 percent of their current energy use to
prevent millions of potential human deaths from an over-heated planet.
The haste to destroy the world's economy is strange considering: 1)
there has been no significant global warming for the past nine years;
2) most of our current modest warming took place before 1940; and, 3)
much of the scientific evidence gathered the last twenty years points
directly to the sun as the source of our cyclical warmings and
coolings over the last million years.
Oddly enough, Greenpeace is, at this same moment, proposing endless
delays for a far cheaper way and proven way to prevent millions of
human deaths-genetically engineered Golden Rice. Golden Rice, like
carrots, contains beta carotene, which the human body turns into
Vitamin A. Rich-world kids get their Vitamin A mostly from meat, milk
and eggs, which Third World kids can't afford. Golden Rice yields far
more bio-available Vitamin A to poor kids than do carrots or leafy
greens.
The new rice could prevent a million kids a years in third world
countries from going blind due to severe Vitamin A deficiency in their
diets and reduce death rates from such diseases as measles, diarrhea,
and malaria. It is estimated that two million lives a year could be
saved by this inexpensive and simple dietary addition.
Greenpeace opposes Golden Rice on the vague generalization that
genetic engineering is "too dangerous." Yet Greenpeace has documented
no risks at all from Golden Rice or any other biotech food-let alone a
risk that would stack up against the ongoing deaths of millions of
kids per year.
At two million deaths per year, in fact, Greenpeace is rapidly
becoming a real competitor to Rachel Carson in the global "deadliest
killers" sweepstakes. Rachel duped us into believing that DDT was too
dangerous to use, indoors, to protect kids in the tropics from malaria
mosquitoes. Rachel and her willing followers' DDT phobia has triggered
only about one million deaths per year, however, so Greenpeace is
rapidly closing in on her total of needless human slaughter.
Golden Rice was developed by Swiss government researchers, and given
free to a public-private partnership for cross-breeding into farmers'
rice varieties. Greenpeace has worked to make biotech testing and
approval so onerous that it took five years just to get a field trial
of the Golden Rice seeds! And the field trial had to be in America,
because no poor country had all the regulatory bells and whistles in
place to conduct it. On the present schedule, it now looks as though
it will take a total of 13 years and 14 million deaths to put Golden
Rice in the mouth of any poor, at-risk child.
How unfair is it that Third World children are the major victims of
both Rachel Carson and Greenpeace?
Since Greenpeace presents itself also as a leading authority on global
warming, should we re-examine their stance on that issue too?
DENNIS T. AVERY is a senior fellow for Hudson Institute in Washington,
D.C. and is the Director for Center for Global Food Issues
(www.cgfi.org). He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of
State. Readers may write him at Post Office Box 202, Churchville, VA
24421
For more information go to www.gmofoodforthought.com