The Opposition to Genetically Modified Food Has Killed Millions

[jimmy olsen]

Anti-GMO activists should be purged from the Earth with fire!

Lots of embedded links within this article
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/project_syndicate0/2013/02/gm_food_golden_rice_will_save_millions_of_people_from_vitamin_a_deficiency.single.html

The Deadly Opposition to Genetically Modified Food
Vitamin A deficiency has killed 8 million kids in the last 12 years. Help is finally on the way.

By Bjørn Lomborg|Posted Sunday, Feb. 17, 2013, at 7:30 AM

Finally, after a 12-year delay caused by opponents of genetically modified foods, so-called "golden rice" with vitamin A will be grown in the Philippines. Over those 12 years, about 8 million children worldwide died from vitamin A deficiency. Are anti-GM advocates not partly responsible?

Golden rice is the most prominent example in the global controversy over GM foods, which pits a technology with some risks but incredible potential against the resistance of feel-good campaigning. Three billion people depend on rice as their staple food, with 10 percent at risk for vitamin A deficiency, which, according to the World Health Organization, causes 250,000 to 500,000 children to go blind each year. Of these, half die within a year. A study from the British medical journal the Lancet estimates that, in total, vitamin A deficiency kills 668,000 children under the age of 5 each year.

Yet, despite the cost in human lives, anti-GM campaigners—from Greenpeace to Naomi Klein—have derided efforts to use golden rice to avoid vitamin A deficiency. In India, Vandana Shiva, an environmental activist and adviser to the government, called golden rice "a hoax" that is "creating hunger and malnutrition, not solving it."

The New York Times Magazine reported in 2001 that one would need to "eat 15 pounds of cooked golden rice a day" to get enough vitamin A. What was an exaggeration then is demonstrably wrong now. Two recent studies in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition show that just 50 grams (roughly two ounces) of golden rice can provide 60 percent of the recommended daily intake of vitamin A. They show that golden rice is even better than spinach in providing vitamin A to children.

Opponents maintain that there are better ways to deal with vitamin A deficiency. In its latest statement, Greenpeace says that golden rice is "neither needed nor necessary," and calls instead for supplementation and fortification, which are described as "cost-effective."

To be sure, handing out vitamin pills or adding vitamin A to staple products can make a difference. But it is not a sustainable solution to vitamin A deficiency. And, while it is cost-effective, recent published estimates indicate that golden rice is much more so.

Supplementation programs costs $4,300 for every life they save in India, whereas fortification programs cost about $2,700 for each life saved. Both are great deals. But golden rice would cost just $100 for every life saved from vitamin A deficiency.

Similarly, it is argued that golden rice will not be adopted, because most Asians eschew brown rice. But brown rice is substantially different in taste and spoils easily in hot climates. Moreover, many Asian dishes are already colored yellow with saffron, annatto, achiote, and turmeric. The people, not Greenpeace, should decide whether they will adopt vitamin A-rich rice for themselves and their children.

Most ironic is the self-fulfilling critique that many activists now use. Greenpeace calls golden rice a "failure," because it "has been in development for almost 20 years and has still not made any impact on the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency." But, as Ingo Potrykus, the scientist who developed golden rice, has made clear, that failure is due almost entirely to relentless opposition to GM foods—often by rich, well-meaning Westerners far removed from the risks of actual vitamin A deficiency.

Regulation of goods and services for public health clearly is a good idea; but it must always be balanced against potential costs—in this case, the cost of not providing more vitamin A to 8 million children during the past 12 years.

As an illustration, current regulations for GM foods, if applied to non-GM products, would ban the sale of potatoes and tomatoes, which can contain poisonous glycoalkaloids; celery, which contains carcinogenic psoralens; rhubarb and spinach (oxalic acid); and cassava, which feeds about 500 million people but contains toxic cyanogenic alkaloids. Foodstuffs like soy, wheat, milk, eggs, mollusks, crustaceans, fish, sesame, nuts, peanuts, and kiwi would likewise be banned, because they can cause food allergies.

Here it is worth noting that there have been no documented human health effects from GM foods. But many campaigners have claimed other effects. A common story, still repeated by Shiva, is that GM corn with Bt toxin kills Monarch butterflies. Several peer-reviewed studies, however, have effectively established that "the impact of Bt corn pollen from current commercial hybrids on monarch butterfly populations is negligible."

Greenpeace and many others claim that GM foods merely enable big companies like Monsanto to wield near-monopoly power. But that puts the cart before the horse: The predominance of big companies partly reflects anti-GM activism, which has made the approval process so long and costly that only rich companies catering to First World farmers can afford to see it through.

Finally, it is often claimed that GM crops simply mean costlier seeds and less money for farmers. But farmers have a choice. More than 5 million cotton farmers in India have flocked to GM cotton, because it yields higher net incomes. Yes, the seeds are more expensive, but the rise in production offsets the additional cost.

Of course, no technology is without flaws, so regulatory oversight is useful. But it is worth maintaining some perspective. In 2010, the European Commission, after considering 25 years of GMO research, concluded that "there is, as of today, no scientific evidence associating GMOs with higher risks for the environment or for food and feed safety than conventional plants and organisms."

Now, finally, golden rice will come to the Philippines; after that, it is expected in Bangladesh and Indonesia. But, for 8 million kids, the wait was too long.

True to form, Greenpeace is already protesting that "the next 'golden rice' guinea pigs might be Filipino children." The 4.4 million Filipino kids with vitamin A deficiency might not mind so much.

[mongers]

The article is a strawman, there's already more than enough food in the world to give everyone a decent varied diet, it's just badly disturbed.   

Whatever the pros and cons of GM modified food and it may well have a role to play, but its silly to say opposition to it directly kills millions. 

Waste, unaffordable prices, poor logistics and now price manipulation play a real part in causing malnutrition, hunger and starvation.

[Jaron]

Its stupid all around.

Its stupid to point fingers and its stupid to opposite GMO in the first place. If you don't agree with it, don't eat it.

[Admiral Yi]

The article is a strawman, there's already more than enough food in the world to give everyone a decent varied diet, it's just badly disturbed.   

Whatever the pros and cons of GM modified food and it may well have a role to play, but its silly to say opposition to it directly kills millions. 

Waste, unaffordable prices, poor logistics and now price manipulation play a real part in causing malnutrition, hunger and starvation.

Price manipulation?  What are you talking about?

And why is it that the GM claim is silly, but not the waste, unaffordable prices, poor logistics and price manipulation(!?).  Why are those real and GM is silly?

[Faeelin]

Because.

[PDH]

Because.

That showed 'im

[mongers]

The article is a strawman, there's already more than enough food in the world to give everyone a decent varied diet, it's just badly disturbed.   

Whatever the pros and cons of GM modified food and it may well have a role to play, but its silly to say opposition to it directly kills millions. 

Waste, unaffordable prices, poor logistics and now price manipulation play a real part in causing malnutrition, hunger and starvation.

Price manipulation?  What are you talking about?



And why is it that the GM claim is silly, but not the waste, unaffordable prices, poor logistics and price manipulation(!?).  Why are those real and GM is silly?

Yi, you don't seem to be as widely read as you think, why not google, it's been a major news story for the last couple of years.

I'll help you out, why not start here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-12/barclays-stops-speculative-agricultural-commodity-trading-2-.html

Because those are real, to repeat my point, there's already enough food in the world for everyone, but those and other factors result in poor distribution ie fat westerners, thin African, Asians and Latin Americans.

Yes, the claim that the anti-GM crowd is dirrectly responsible for killing millions is silly, just as Timmays OTT comment is.

[Josquius]

It is a bit of a silly claim. I guess they're trying to tap into the commonly repeated thing about the green revolution saving millions.

[chipwich]

The article is a strawman, there's already more than enough food in the world to give everyone a decent varied diet, it's just badly disturbed.   

Whatever the pros and cons of GM modified food and it may well have a role to play, but its silly to say opposition to it directly kills millions. 

Waste, unaffordable prices, poor logistics and now price manipulation play a real part in causing malnutrition, hunger and starvation.

Price manipulation?  What are you talking about?



And why is it that the GM claim is silly, but not the waste, unaffordable prices, poor logistics and price manipulation(!?).  Why are those real and GM is silly?

Yi, you don't seem to be as widely read as you think, why not google, it's been a major news story for the last couple of years.

I'll help you out, why not start here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-12/barclays-stops-speculative-agricultural-commodity-trading-2-.html

Because those are real, to repeat my point, there's already enough food in the world for everyone, but those and other factors result in poor distribution ie fat westerners, thin African, Asians and Latin Americans.

Yes, the claim that the anti-GM crowd is dirrectly responsible for killing millions is silly, just as Timmays OTT comment is.

That says nothing about how price speculation affects world hunger.

[Viking]

That says nothing about how price speculation affects world hunger.

It does show how immoral selfish scumbags try to make money be speculating on food sold to rich westerners.

However, the GMO free status that european states demand for allowing imports from third world countries have resulted in some former european colonies banning GMOs preventing them from taking part in the modern food trade, while it allows them to continue their colonial era food trade.

[chipwich]

That says nothing about how price speculation affects world hunger.

It does show how immoral selfish scumbags try to make money be speculating on food sold to rich westerners.

No it doesn't.

[Neil]

Your thread is stupid Tim.

For one thing, not a one of the people who have died are in any way valuable.  Third-world trash remains third-world trash forever.

Also, wouldn't general inequality have killed far, far more people than the lack of patented foodstuffs.

[Admiral Yi]

Yi, you don't seem to be as widely read as you think, why not google, it's been a major news story for the last couple of years.

I'll help you out, why not start here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-12/barclays-stops-speculative-agricultural-commodity-trading-2-.html

Being snotty is a luxury reserved for people who are right.  Your link has nothing to do with agricultural price manipulation.

[Razgovory]

I guess I don't get the anti-GM food arguments.

[CountDeMoney]

Anti-GMO activists should be purged from the Earth with fire!

Who the fuck else is going to help control the earth's untenable population boom?  The derfetuss crowd?  Fuck you.