No, the idea is to taint anti-GMO activists with the accusation that they're killing third world children so that other, more profitable GMOs can be fed to fat Americans. Golden rice is so utterly incapable of actually solving vitamin A deficiency that even the IRRI have given up pretending that it can (notice how the article describes it as "a complementary, food-based solution to existing nutritional interventions, such as diet diversification and oral supplementation" - a working oral supplementation program is effective without any complementary solution and is much cheaper).
To give some idea of how fundamentally absurd an approach this is, two 5-cent capsules of vitamin A a year are sufficient to prevent vitamin A deficiency in kids, whereas as far as I can tell replacing all the rice eaten in countries whose poor populations are almost entirely dependent on rice with the most modern, improved varieties of golden rice still wouldn't achieve this. (Oh, and by the way it inherently has worse yields than the varieties it's based on, so that golden rice will be more expensive too.)
Even if it worked, the licensing issues made it undeployable in practice. There's a free license to certain third-world countries that GMO proponents like to wave in the face of opponents, but that's basically all it's useful for - due to a one-two punch of requiring the rice to be grown in the country it's sold in and only licensing countries that can't grow enough rice to feed their population (almost all of which can't grow rice at all), it cannot be used for any kind of meaningful deployment of the tech. Despite the complete and utter lack of any profitable commercial market for golden rice, the GMO industry couldn't bear to actually give up the possibility that they could somehow make money from starving third world kids.
> No, the idea is to taint anti-GMO activists with the accusation that they're killing third world children so that other, more profitable GMOs can be fed to fat Americans.
Yes those evil corporations are trying to save children from blindness just to make anti science activists look bad. The bastards!!!
Sarcasm aside, did you know most of our crop varieties have been modified using radiation? Those types of mutations are still used today and require little testing, much less than what golden rice has been through.
> (Oh, and by the way it inherently has worse yields than the varieties it's based on, so that golden rice will be more expensive too.)
This is straight up FUD. The first version didn't have the same yield but the more recent ones do.
> it cannot be used for any kind of meaningful deployment of the tech
Why not? It clearly states they will provide the technology to the National Agricultural Research Centres and other public sector research institutions, in developing countries. Once the farmers have the crop they can replant as much as they like and they don't have to rely on capsules anymore.
> the GMO industry couldn't bear to actually give up the possibility that they could somehow make money from starving third world kids.
Except the GMO industry (whatever that means) is not involved in the development of Golden Rice (apart from some patents).
> No, the idea is to taint anti-GMO activists with the accusation that they're killing third world children
670,000 kids a year die from vitamin A deficiency (and, of course, many more than that "only" go blind). Golden rice has been around for 18 years now, but "activists" have prevented its widespread use.
Is there a reason they need to get their vitamin A from rice, a crop that demands precise cultivation practices, and not cheaper and more convenient vitamin pills?
People in those areas have been growing rice precisely enough for centuries. It is their main food; they will consume rice either way. Acquiring and distributing vitamin pills would be more difficult.
If it were so easy, why none of the anti-GMO fanatics do so already? But of course that would involve doing something useful, not strutting around in the same crowd as anti-vaxxers and flatearthers.
I'm glad at least 1 more person in the thread bothered to read about this. It's completely clear that this useless product is only used to break resistance to GMOs and flood the market with hoards of potentially dangerous modified strains.
To give some idea of how fundamentally absurd an approach this is, two 5-cent capsules of vitamin A a year are sufficient to prevent vitamin A deficiency in kids, whereas as far as I can tell replacing all the rice eaten in countries whose poor populations are almost entirely dependent on rice with the most modern, improved varieties of golden rice still wouldn't achieve this. (Oh, and by the way it inherently has worse yields than the varieties it's based on, so that golden rice will be more expensive too.)
Even if it worked, the licensing issues made it undeployable in practice. There's a free license to certain third-world countries that GMO proponents like to wave in the face of opponents, but that's basically all it's useful for - due to a one-two punch of requiring the rice to be grown in the country it's sold in and only licensing countries that can't grow enough rice to feed their population (almost all of which can't grow rice at all), it cannot be used for any kind of meaningful deployment of the tech. Despite the complete and utter lack of any profitable commercial market for golden rice, the GMO industry couldn't bear to actually give up the possibility that they could somehow make money from starving third world kids.