
Block on GM rice ‘has cost millions of lives and led to child blindness’ - jelliclesfarm
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/26/gm-golden-rice-delay-cost-millions-of-lives-child-blindness
======
tjawirklich
For all the promises mentioned around this crop, this was surprising to read
in the article:

/quote

As Stone and Glover point out, it is still unknown if the beta carotene in
Golden Rice can even be converted to Vitamin A in the bodies of badly
undernourished children.

/endquote

Given the advertising as a solution to the issue and all the surrounding
hullabaloo, the fact that it is still not proven to do what it espouses--is
pretty damning.

~~~
asperous
I looked it up and this was the first result

[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c911/5ad056fc1bb4f257fa6109...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c911/5ad056fc1bb4f257fa610978b27418481845.pdf)

[http://www.goldenrice.org/PDFs/Dubock-
The_present_status_of_...](http://www.goldenrice.org/PDFs/Dubock-
The_present_status_of_Golden_Rice-2014.pdf)

> "In conclusion, each of the studies discussed regarding the effectiveness of
> golden rice concluded that it was indeed effective at providing vitamin A. "

Stone and Glover are saying that the current studies which prove Vitamin A are
effective aren't comprehensive enough. However as far as I can tell all the
research so far points to golden rice being effective.

Stone and Glover later wrote: "IRRI’s own assessment that the rice may augment
the already successful nutrition and breastfeeding programs, at least in some
‘‘difficult to reach’’ areas, is plausible."

Sound like they are critical of it for many reasons but accept it working as a
possibility.

[https://pages.wustl.edu/files/pages/imce/stone/stone_glover_...](https://pages.wustl.edu/files/pages/imce/stone/stone_glover_2016_golden_rice.pdf)

~~~
makomk
The studies concluded that it was effective at providing vitamin A as part of
a well-balanced diet that wasn't overly reliant on rice. The controversy is
over its effectiveness in severely malnourished kids whose diet is mostly
rice, since there's reason to believe its effectiveness - and indeed that of
supplementation in general - in providing vitamin A ia heavily dependant on
the quality of the rest of the diet.

To put it bluntly, proponents of golden rice have been arguing that it's
worthwhile because it's just not realistic for poor families to include
vegetables in their diets because of expense and logistical difficulties,
whilst pointing to a study in which the participants were fed meat (amongst
other ingredients) along with their golden rice to prove it works.

~~~
riffraff
IIRC its effectiveness was connected to the availability of fat in the rest of
the diet, without which vitamin A was not metabolized effectively.

~~~
Asooka
Then wouldn't the most effective help for these people be a shipment of butter
and multivitamins?

~~~
mcv
A single shipment is not very effective at anything. They need structural
access to better food.

------
wwarner
Sorry, very inadequate treatment of this story. Golden rice is intellectual
property, whose seeds are no longer owned by the farmer who grows them, but by
whoever is selling it.

Think about it, can the root of the problem be the nutritional value of rice,
when no rich country needs to license a foreign company's intellectual
property to feed itself?

~~~
mikorym
Are they F1 sterile?

If not, then I would encourage developing countries to just igonore the IP
rights and/or in the case that they are sterile to develop a generic.

~~~
GoblinSlayer
Usually international agreements take precedence over local laws. I don't
think there would be any problem to enforce it.

~~~
ClumsyPilot
The definitions of a sovereign country is that it's government/ people decides
what goes.

They can definitely suspend IP protections for indefinite period.

~~~
mcv
That works when you're a rich and powerful country, but not so much when more
powerful countries are willing to inflict economic sanctions on you for
disrespecting the IP of their corporations.

~~~
ClumsyPilot
IP is not enshrined in a UN charter and is not a human right. There is no
reason to believe every country should respect it.

Using it as a cause to impose sanctions would be highly illegal.

Combined with the blowback you'd get for imposing sanctions on Somalia for
trying to feed kids, I don't think it's a realistic possibility.

------
raxxorrax
Bad article in my opinion. Millions of lives were lost because of
malnourishment, not because of golden rice as intellectual property was
rejected. From a production perspective the food could easily be provided in
any other form, there just isn't enough incentive.

~~~
rorykoehler
Reads like it came straight from the PR dept

~~~
dekhn
Perhaps, but one of the most important things about biology and medicine is
that there is often a cheaper, lower tech solution to the problem you are
trying to address. Often, chasing tech and trying to deploy it for
humanitarian purposes works poorly. Look at how long it takes billionaires to
understand that mosquito netting makes more sense than mosquito lasers.

------
tjpnz
While I happen to agree with the conclusion the headline is utter bullshit.
While a block on GM rice may have contributed to the problem it's dangerous
(and intellectually dishonest) to suggest that it's a cause. It's also worth
pointing out that Golden Rice was available in some of these countries and the
locals just didn't want to touch it.

~~~
henryaj
Citation for golden rice being available but local not wanting to eat it?

~~~
tjpnz
No citation but I recall reading years ago about it being made available in
countries where rice isn't normally consumed. Not all that surprising it
didn't catch on.

------
wwarner
This WUSTL anthropologist doesn't agree.

[https://source.wustl.edu/2016/06/genetically-modified-
golden...](https://source.wustl.edu/2016/06/genetically-modified-golden-rice-
falls-short-lifesaving-promises/)

~~~
sremani
They made similar promises about GMO cotton shit that got lot of Indian
farmers killed!

Google BT Cotton!

~~~
microcolonel
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bt_cotton#Controversies](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bt_cotton#Controversies)

Wasn't that debunked? The claim was that it contributed to suicide, but the
farmer suicide rates have, by numbers I've seen, declined over the relevant
period, which would not be surprising since cotton productivity has
skyrocketed.

Now, maybe the numbers are doctored, and I'd believe that about India, but I'd
want some proof other than "Google it and trust the first negative story
written from WhatsApp rumours.".

~~~
sremani
[https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/as-a-
genetic...](https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/as-a-genetic-
revolution-collapses-vidarbhas-cotton-farmers-dread-coming-season)

I do not consider Bloomberg to be fountain of truth! It has its biases but ..
here you go!

~~~
microcolonel
Isn't the problem there the application of improper, illegal pesticides? The
story linked for the 45 deaths from poisoning directly states that the
pesticides involved were siezed by the state.

Then later in the article:

> _He, however, pointed out that the failure of this technology is unique to
> India. None of the 14 other Bt cotton-growing countries have faced the
> problem because they follow pest management strategies such as short-season
> crop, pheromone-based monitoring and so on._

It seems from even your source: no deaths were the result of either variant of
Bt Cotton, and India's failure to maintain the crops is directly linked to
shortsighted mismanagement of crops, and possibly unique conditions in India.

I'm no great fan of Monsanto, but it doesn't seem like there's a case of
_killer cotton_ here, but instead a predictable tragedy of routine human
foolishness.

------
Merrill
The patents on golden rice should begin to expire next year. Not only will
farmers be able to propagate it without running afoul of IP restrictions, but
hobbyist gene hackers will be able to create new varieties.

------
safgasCVS
I don’t understand why you need to engineer vitamins into rice instead of just
handing out vitamins separately? And if its that easy to save lives with
vitamins the implication is these vitamins have been deliberately withheld to
shift this product (which isnt whats happened only that the gist of the
article makes no sense when you look at the premise)

~~~
aritmo
It looks to me that the GM lobby is trying out a new strategy to promote GM
crops, and this time it is "think of the children".

~~~
sschueller
It's not new. The story was alway: "We need GMO to eliminate starvation around
the world".

But somehow people are still starving and the industry is making more money.
Why feed the hungry if you can make more profit selling GMO to those who
already pay?

~~~
Frondo
We already produce enough food per capita world-wide for everyone on the
planet to be morbidly obese. The problems are in distribution; they're
political and logistical. That won't change until the people (both in the West
and in nations with widespread food insufficiency) in charge start doing some
things differently that people with wealth and power seldom decide to do on
their own.

------
tomq
One of the unfortunate things about the GM foods debate is how rarely the
details of a particular crop are considered. What method was used to engineer
it? What gene was added in or modified? What is the IP approach used by the
inventor? What are the results of field trials? For all the strong opinions
I’ve seen, nobody mentions these specifics. It’s like deciding someone is
guilty or innocent of a crime when all you know is that they’ve been charged.

------
blululu
Golden rice is mostly a publicity stunt. Basic agrarian reforms could easily
allow farmers to grow crops that naturally contain vitamin A. This article
perpetuates a very expensive misconception about land use, R&D and the basic
problems of nutrition.

------
deogeo
If only we could use GM crops without handing control of the food supply to
hostile corporations. It's only the irrational fear of GM that is strong
enough to stand up to their lobbying - with the unfortunate side-effect of
stopping all GM crops as well. But without that fear, the same misaligned
incentives that result in tractor DRM and novel-length EULAs will be written
into the DNA of the plants we need to live, while competitive forces will
bankrupt those that stick with traditional seeds.

~~~
strainer
The fear is not inherently irrational either. Its clearly a very powerful
field on the confoundingly complicated biological domain, and with more power
and complexity comes greater potential for serious error. It can be fair to
disagree about the safety and wisdom of various GM applications, but the
charge that it is all irrational is really just divisive rhetoric.

I don't approve of novel GM in agriculture, I encourage naturalistic
development for mass production in the environment and especially the
materials we routinely put into our body. Poor nutrition is caused by poor
politics, culture and economics over and above all of the existing foods which
are already available to solve it.

I think GM will best be limited to acute medical challenges and containable
research and emergency uses, until we have actually developed a strong command
of diseases and natural (evolved) systems. Our agriculture should be as
contingent as possible with natural history and existing species in our
already very disturbed sphere of ecology.

~~~
nradov
Humans have been genetically modifying their food since the beginning of
agriculture. Fear based on the particular modification technique used is
completely irrational.

~~~
jammygit
That is silly. Imagine that the genes were transferred via some toxic mould
that transfers DNA but that was extremely hard to remove after the procedure.
Of course the procedure matters

~~~
dekhn
You mean, like transferring the proteins that cause brazil nut allergy into
soy? Fortunately, they caught that before it was rolled out.

------
mcv
Of course the real cause of these millions of deaths and cases of child
blindness is not so much the block on GM rice, but the extreme poverty in
which these people live so that they have no access to better food than rice.

The GM rice is a stop-gap measure in the absence of improving actual living
conditions. It's sad that it's being blocked, but it's not the true cause.

------
leggomylibro
Whether or not the benefits of "golden rice" are overstated, I'd really like
to see a DIY implementation of that experiment.

Sometimes I see "CRISPR workshops" which go over the basic theory and walk
through performing individual steps like amplifying DNA with PCR and preparing
it for transfection, but it's still very difficult to actually get a stable
targeted mutation.

And having a goal like beta carotene would be a good opportunity to explain
how to research the pathway which leads to a certain chemical, and get a plant
to express each step along the way.

I get that people are suspicious of GMOs, but I'd actually like to see a
simple gene lab in every home. It takes time to perform this sort of
experiment, and if the work could be spread out among individuals who all have
their own interests/tastes/climates/etc, we might see more progress in the
practicum.

Sadly, synthetic biology is hard, and the equipment would probably take more
space than a toaster or a blender. But it's a nice pipe dream.

~~~
marcus_holmes
I love that idea - AgriHack, a plant hackathon to create a new strain of rice
that provides vitamin supplements. The winner has the most vitamins and uses
the least water to grow.

How close are we to this kind of thing?

------
aries1980
The average price of Vitamin A is $54/kg:
[https://www.pharmacompass.com/price/vitamin-a](https://www.pharmacompass.com/price/vitamin-a)
. The RDA for kids is around 0.5 mg, 20,000 kids could be supplemented a day
with $54.

100g of GR1 rice is needed to feed one kid, So 2000 kg rice need would provide
the same amount of beta-carotine/Vitamin A. Just for Vitamin A point-of-view,
I fail to see how is it financially reasonable to choose GR1 over lab-quality
Vitamin A for $54 per kg.

~~~
visarga
But does it assimilate as well?

~~~
aries1980
You mean whether it is biologically available? I guess, the synthesis has been
out there since the 1940s, and other procedures has been found in the 1970s:
[https://community.dur.ac.uk/i.r.baxendale/papers/Tet2016.72....](https://community.dur.ac.uk/i.r.baxendale/papers/Tet2016.72.1645.pdf)
Because these procedures are still in use, my hunch is that they are in use in
vain.

------
bkdbkd
This is a promo piece for Ed Regis' new book, right? Doesn't matter what the
science is, as long as we buy the book in the end.

<wit> If you study hunger, you find that the root causes tend to be
uncontrollable forces of nature like greed, corruption, and politics. Not that
we _can't solve problems like this with frankenrice, but it may be more
straightforward to help those who find themselves oppressed into poverty, be
slightly less oppressed. </wit>

------
aitchnyu
If it works, the poorer Indian states have wheat as their staple. What could
help those hundreds of millions?

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2012_Poverty_distrib...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2012_Poverty_distribution_map_in_India_by_its_states_and_union_territories.svg)

[https://scroll.in/article/670473/rice-and-wheat-maps-of-
indi...](https://scroll.in/article/670473/rice-and-wheat-maps-of-india-
rajasthan-doesnt-eat-rice-rotis-a-rarity-in-manipur)

------
RandomInteger4
Naive Question: Wouldn't a multivitamin be a cheaper and safer solution to
counter a broad range of vitamin deficiencies?

If not, why would growing crops be a cheaper solution? What is the opportunity
cost of growing golden rice to feed your vitamin deficient family vs. growing
something else to sell on a broader market?

~~~
jfim
It's easier to piggyback on an existing behavior (keep on eating rice, but use
this different kind of rice) than creating a new behavior (eat this vitamin
pill).

On the consumer side, one can explain that the new golden rice is better and
keeps your family healthier than regular rice. It's simple enough to be
understood by people with low levels of education that the yellow one is
better, and can easily be communicated to other members of the family who may
not be able to read. There might be issues with counterfeit rice (dyed yellow
instead of being actual golden rice), but that would be a separate problem.

In the cases where new behaviors are wanted, it helps to root them in
culturally specific ways. For example, for iron supplementation, one way to
increase the amount of iron consumed is to use a few drops of acid (such as
citrus juice) combined with an iron ingot. This was done to alleviate iron
deficiency in South East Asia.

Obviously, this was a very foreign behavior with low compliance, until they
reshaped the ingots to be fish shaped, leading to the "lucky iron fish."
Explaining to people that if they cook with the lucky fish in their pot, the
fish will bring them good luck and health. This has led to much better
compliance and outcomes.

~~~
microcolonel
Also see iodine supplementation, enriched flour, fortified milk.

~~~
cperciva
Also, the "lucky fish" made of iron which, when placed into a cooking pot,
prevents iron deficiency in millions of children.

~~~
nomadluap
This is literally explained by the parent comment.

~~~
cpach
Is it...?

------
RaceWon
Talk is cheap, and so is saving some lives. Are you part of the solution?
Please help if you can...

[1] Feed My Starving Children

[1] [https://www.fmsc.org/](https://www.fmsc.org/)

------
mcintyre1994
> “In Bangladesh, China, India and elsewhere in Asia, many children subsist on
> a few bowls of rice a day and almost nothing else. For them, a daily supply
> of Golden Rice could now bring the gift of life and sight,” states Regis in
> his book, Golden Rice, which is published this month.

This made me think of one of the scariest papers I’ve seen:
[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0212840)

> In summary, we have shown that elevated [CO2] has the potential to cause
> damage to human nutrition and health via leaf vegetables and feed crops, not
> only grain crops. The greatest threat comes from the more severe drop in N
> and Zn in polished rice grains, and the lower content of Ca in feed crops
> and leaf vegetables. In addition, a reduction in the intake of minor
> minerals such as Mn and S that we currently obtain in sufficient amounts
> might cause unanticipated health risks. Flow analysis and transcriptomics
> suggested that lower absorption and/or translocation of elements is a key
> factor underlying the lower elemental content in rice grains, and the lower
> expression of related transporter genes under elevated [CO2] might also play
> a role.

> Our results suggest that increasing [CO2] levels might have more serious
> consequences than previous influential predictions that were based on brown
> rice [1]. In particular, the drop in N in polished rice would negatively
> affect the nutritional status of the 153 million individuals of Bangladesh,
> who depend largely on rice for their protein intake and are already
> estimated to have an individual daily protein intake below the standard of
> “hungry” as defined by FAO/WHO (S1 Table).

> Our results showed that elevated [CO2] might also impair human nutrition via
> leaf vegetables and feed crops that we either eat directly or utilize as
> animal feed, not only via grain crops. As compared to the grain, elemental
> content declined markedly in the plant body of rice. For example, Mg and Mn
> content in the plant body decreased 2- and 4-fold, respectively (Fig 1C).
> These data, and the difference between polished (endosperm) and brown
> (endosperm plus bran) grains demonstrate that the elemental reduction due to
> elevated [CO2], is specific to each organ. The impact on leaf vegetables and
> feed crops should also be noted, because these are important sources of
> micronutrients despite being consumed in smaller amounts than staple grains.

In the analysis of feed crops, which combined our new data including rice
straw with data from three previous studies (see Fig 1D, Table 1), elevated
[CO2] decreased the content of five major (S, K, P, Ca, and Mg) and three
minor (Zn, Fe, and Mn) essential minerals by 8.3% to 21.9%. It is especially
noteworthy that the content of Ca was reduced by 12.7%. At present, much of
the world’s population is facing a deficiency of Ca [21, 22]. Approximately
25.4 million adults in the United Kingdom and the United States have a high
risk of Ca deficiency [21], and 54% of the population of Africa (5.7 hundred
million individuals) is at risk of Ca deficiency [22]. Leaf vegetables are an
important source of essential minerals; for example, in the United Kingdom and
the United States, 10% of Ca and Mg intake comes from leaf vegetables [7]. The
main source of Ca is milk, however, with UK adults obtaining half of their Ca
intake from milk and dairy products [7]. The elemental content of the
livestock's ingested feed correlates with that of the milk that they produce
[23, 24]; therefore, the lower elemental content of feed crops grown under
elevated [CO2] is likely to reduce the elemental content of milk and dairy
products. Ultimately, elevated [CO2] might affect human nutrition and health
even in high-income countries, where food supplements for micronutrients
including Ca are readily available.

~~~
ClumsyPilot
Very insightful, thank you

------
aritmo
Looks like another attempt to evangelize GM crops by using this time the
"think of the children" argument.

------
imsesaok
when western people had iodine deficiency because of their diet, they added
iodine in salt, not modifying wheat DNA to contain seaweed's DNA so that it
contains iodine.

this article is a solution in search of a problem.

------
projektfu
Did anyone ask whether the market in any of these countries would accept
golden rice? They generally like white rice. I didn't see any reference to a
market study in the article.

