Golden rice…

If you could save half a million destitute children each year from blindness and/or death from Vitamin A deficiency,  would you do it?   I certainly  would.   All you would need to do is encourage the cultivation of golden rice,   which  simply modifies rice to contain beta-carotene,  a necessary nutrient often missing from the diets of the destitute in countries such as Bangladesh,  the Philippines,  and Indonesia.

Yes,  golden rice is a GMO (genetically modified organism),  but it is not toxic and it puts nothing harmful into the environment.   It is being developed by the non-profit International Rice Research Institute,  not by monsanto or any of the other big players in agriculture.    It will be provided patent- and royalty-free to poorer farmers on a non-profit basis, with funding from the Gates Foundation and others.

Yet the non-GMO hysterics are trying to block this valuable,  helpful resource.   You will never convince them that nearly everything they eat is to some extent GMO — cattle producers have practiced selective breeding of bovines in order to obtain the qualities they desired,  whether higher milk production or more muscular cattle.  Flowers are hybridized all the time,  and vegetable plants are carefully produced to thrive in certain climates and conditions or to produce fruits with specific qualities.

I have written to the anti-GMO guys pointing out that objecting to golden rice is in fact anti-human,  which is most certainly is.  My letters and postcards may not change their minds,  but it proves to them that people are watching them and objecting to their positions,  so they can’t claim  honestly that everyone agrees with them.   And it made me feel better!