Yo VIP, let’s kick it
Rice, Rice, child
Rice, Rice, child
Alright cease, collaborate and hear
Rice is again with my model new invention
Vitamin A grabs me tightly
Letting me see day by day and nightly
“Will it ever cease?” Yo, I don’t know
Flip off the lights, and I’ll see the glow
To the acute, genes in rice like a vandal
Mild up a cones and rods like a candle
Cornea clear, no necrosis, increase
Not killing your eyes like a toxic mushroom
Lethal, with no vegetable melody
Youngsters going blind ought to be a felony
Adore it or go away it, you higher gangway
You higher hit bullseye, the child don’t play
If there was an issue, yo, I’ll clear up it
Take a look at the rice whereas my gene revolves it
Rice Rice Child
Vanilla Ice. That brings again reminiscences.
A few years in the past, pre-COVID, I used to be having fun with a fantastic summer time day on the entrance
porch. In all probability writing one in all these beloved and insightful essays.
A pair of younger girls walked up the trail to the porch. Feminine and no matching white shirts. Not Moron, probably Jehovah’s’ Witnesses. They appear to return round yearly or two. I grimaced internally and ready to blow them off.
Nope. They have been Greenpeace acolytes, searching for cash to battle local weather change.
I used to be a sucker for local weather change pleas, again earlier than I concluded that it was all futile. However earlier than I gave them any cash, I requested if Greenpeace had made any amends for his or her irrational opposition to golden rice and all of the hurt it had triggered. I used to be unsure on the time because it had been some time since I had seen something on the subject
They hadn’t heard of golden rice. Properly, I mentioned, look it up and get again to me if they’ve performed their penance.
They by no means returned.
After I was beginning out in medication, oh so a few years in the past, insulin was remoted from the pancrease of
slaughterhouse cows and pigs. The issue was that these insulins are immunologically completely different than human insulin and a good variety of sufferers would develop antibodies towards their insulin, making the diabetes more durable and more durable to manage. It typically didn’t finish properly.
After which.
Somebody discovered tips on how to put human insulin genes into E coli and all of the sudden we had insulin that was not immunogenic. Properly, not so all of the sudden. It was costly and, then as now, diabetics have been typically priced out of life-saving insulin.
As an apart, what sort of society permits life-saving insulin to be value prohibitive?
Anyway. The precept, if not the execution, is straightforward. Cells are little machines that flip DNA into RNA and RNA can then produce just about any biologic product you want or need. Like insulin. The Wikipedia has a listing of biologic merchandise obtainable on account of this recombinant expertise. Together with golden rice.
What, you could ask, is golden rice and who cares?
People are unable to synthesize a variety of micronutrients aka nutritional vitamins. Nutritional vitamins are curious. They’re essential for some physiologic processes however many species by no means acquired, or misplaced, the flexibility to make their very own nutritional vitamins. Like vitamin C:
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) performs necessary roles as an anti-oxidant and in collagen synthesis. These necessary roles, and the comparatively giant quantities of vitamin C required day by day, probably clarify why most vertebrate species are capable of synthesize this compound. Surprisingly, many species, similar to teleost fishes, anthropoid primates, guinea pigs, in addition to some bat and Passeriformes chook species, have misplaced the capability to synthesize it.
Which I discover fascinating, that after we may make vitamin C, however no
longer.
People can’t synthesize nutritional vitamins A, B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), B5 (pantothenic acid), B6 (pyridoxine), B7 (biotin), B9 (folate), B12 cobalamin), E and Okay however are capable of synthesize some vitamin B3 (niacin) and D.
Let’s speak about vitamin A. It has two major types in meals. Retinol in meat and carotenoids in greens. People have to eat one or the opposite to remain replete of their vitamin A.
A lot of the world doesn’t have entry to the jaw-dropping number of meals discovered within the native Safeway wanted to keep away from vitamin deficiency As such, vitamin A deficiency is frequent in SE Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, affecting kids and pregnant females.
About 250,000 to 500,000 malnourished kids within the growing world go blind annually from a deficiency of vitamin A, round half of whom die inside a yr of changing into blind.
That’s terrible. Nobody with a shred of conscience would assist insurance policies that end in hundreds of kids going blind and dying? Proper?
The only intervention can be to offer kids in danger simply 2 doses a yr of vitamin A. That decreases blindness and all-cause mortality by 12 to 24%. Straightforward peasy. Would that the world labored so easily
solely 59 per cent of focused kids have been reached in 2022, with East Asia and the Pacific attaining the bottom protection at 20 p.c, adopted by Jap and Southern Africa at 57 per cent.
Extra methods to get vitamin A into individuals are wanted. Human ingenuity being what it’s, very intelligent individuals found tips on how to put the genes beta-carotine, a vitamin A precursor, into rice. Viola. Golden rice,
a possible partial answer to vitamin A deficiency, particularly the place rice is a eating regimen staple.
Golden Rice appeared good to go within the Philippines till April of this yr when the
Courtroom of Appeals within the Philippines issued a cease-and-desist order on the industrial propagation of two genetically modified crops, golden rice and Bt eggplant, citing a scarcity of “full scientific certainty” relating to their well being and
environmental influence.
And who filed a petition to halt the Golden Rice?
Greenpeace.
Greenpeace! Heros from my youth. Eco-warriors who put their lives on the road, steering their Zodiac boats into the paths of whaling ships to avoid wasting the whales. A company with cred. Plenty of cred. Sadly, since
Deceptive claims from credible sources will be extra damaging than blatant falsehoods.
Greenpeace has a protracted historical past of opposing GMOs and has been combating the introduction of golden rice, and different GM meals. Actions do have penalties, and the results of opposing golden rice is that extra Filipinos are going to go blind and die, on condition that round 17% of kids within the nation are
vitamin A poor and so they depend on rice as their major supply of diet. Greenpeace says in response to the ruling
“Significantly, the decision firmly upholds the Precautionary Principle and puts the burden of proof for safety on the respondents. Greenpeace has constantly noted that GM crops have been approved in the Philippines despite the lack of robust data on safety assessments submitted by proponents. GM crops
have never been proven safe, and have hindered necessary progress on climate resilient ecological agriculture that keeps the control of seeds on our farmers.“We reiterate our stance: the involved companies and agencies have yet to show concrete evidence that these crops would be in the best interest of Filipinos, our environment, and our agricultural sector.
Greenpeace does not address the blindness and death that will occur as a result of this decision. As best I can tell, there is but one mention of blindness and death in all the Greenpeace golden rice blog posts, preferring to focus on other issues. Wonder why that is. However, as is so often the case for the poor and powerless, those who make the rules do not play the game.
The Precautionary Principle, huh?
From basic biology, I can’t see why Golden Rice would present a problem. We eat the genes and their products that make Vitamin A every day to our benefit. As one review noted
There are no cases where post-market surveillance has uncovered harm to consumers or the environment including potential transfer of DNA from the GMO to non-target organisms.
I suspect Greenpeace doesn’t realize when we say that someone is now, tragically, in a vegetative state, we are speaking metaphorically. Vegetable genes have not jumped into the patient.
I can’t find where there has been any worrisome effects from transgenic foods, specifically golden rice. As another review noted
Transgenic crops are subjected to a rigorous pre-market safety assessment. The safety of novel proteins and other products is established, and through compositional analysis and animal studies, the safety of any observed changes is evaluated. These studies provide evidence that the new product is as safe as, or safer than, comparable varieties. It must be asked, however, if this rigorous analysis is
necessary, because unregulated crops produced by other breeding methods also undergo genetic changes and contain unintended effects. Golden Rice poses infinitesimally small, if any, risk to consumers whilst it has the potential to spare millions of lives each year. However, because it is
a transgenic crop, it cannot be deployed without years of expensive pre-market safety review. Paradoxically, if Golden Rice had been produced by less precise conventional methods of breeding, it would already be in the hands of poor farmers.
Try as you might, you can’t cross-breed a carrot with rice. A shame, really. Although I look forward to eathing a tomato-fish. Hope they use San Marzanos.
As far as I can tell, there is no a priori reason golden rice would be dangerous and there no data to suggest it is a danger.
It looks like the US has approved at least 10 GMO crops while for places like the the Philippines get nothing.
When it comes to GMO food crops, anti-GMO campaigners have thus won a remarkable yet dubious victory. They have not prevented rich countries from using GMO animal feed or GMO cotton, yet farmers and consumers in poor countries need increased productivity for food crops, not animal feed or industrial crops. Today’s de facto global ban on GMO food crops therefore looks suspiciously like an outcome designed by the rich and for the rich, with little regard for the interests of the poor.
Same as it ever was.
If you like the Nobel Prize gambit, and I am not so sure I do, but a decade ago107 Nobel laureates signed a letter calling for Greenpeace to stop it, noting
Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of production. There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global biodiversity
Greenpeace didn’t stop it.
Greenpeace’s anti-GMO stance has been called a crime against humanity, and their actions do fit the definition, although history and current events suggests it is rare that anyone really cares about crimes against humanity. Kind of sucks that Greenpeace prefers to support laws that result in people going blind and dying despite all the negative studies.
In medicine, there are never any good solutions to medical problems. There are bad solutions and worse solutions. Interventions are about risks and benefits, trying to determine the least bad solution.
The risks of vitamin A deficiency are well know and common. The benefits of vitamin A are well established. The risks of golden rice appears to be as close to zero as one would like. Seems a simple and safe enough partial solution to a very real problem. If I were given a choice, I would prefer the benefit of my children being able to see and to live to a to the ripe old age of 71 rather than dying young and blind weighed against the vanishingly small chance of a risk from golden rice.
But the courts of the Philippines ruled otherwise. Hm. Justice is blind, perhaps from vitamin A deficiency. A shame she did not have golden rice as a child so she could read the literature and see the mistake being made.
The nice thing about working in health care is I could look in the mirror at the end of the day and know that my actions improved someones life, at least a little. I always wonder how those whose actions lead to suffering and death look at themselves in the mirror at the end of the day and know they have made the world a little, or a lot, worse. They probably do not consider it; no one is evil in their own story. Much the pity. It would be so much simpler if people and organizations acted like Snidely Whiplash, twirling the ends of their moustashe as they tied golden rice to the train tracks. But we lack a Dudley Do-Right in this metaphor. I guess ole Nell is doomed.
As another aside, as best I can determine, whales have a diet high in vitamin A and are themselves an excellent source of the vitamin for Eskimos Imagine what would have happened if whales needed golden rice to survive or the only solution to vitamin A deficiency in humans had been to eat the whales. Golden rice seems so much more civilized.