Have I been smoking crack today?
or did one of our far leftist whack jobs just vomit forth some conservative theory about monsanto
a company my far right buddy fears is going to kill us all
There are Monsanto whackos on both sides.
That's what happens, when you go so far right that you meet the far left on the other side.
while I'm suspicious of them, mostly b/c there's nothing wrong with our food, and the idea that dna altered rice will feed the poor in hellholes is bunk and they are making billions off of it, I don't see them as any more of a threat to the world than any fear mongers
2Thumb the Cynic eh?? Don't think there's ANY justification for GM enhanced rice?
Why Golden Rice
According to UNICEF, the estimated number of children deaths precipitated worldwide by vitamin A deficiency (VAD) every year lies at 1.15 million. Many more show VAD-related syndromes, among them loss of sight and increased susceptibility to a number of diseases. Biofortification &endash;the creation of plants that make or accumulate micronutrients&endash; has the potential to reduce these numbers significantly. The aim of biofortification is to improve the primary food source of hundreds of millions of people by increasing the nutritional quality of staple crops.
Golden Rice is a good example of a biofortified crop. In this specific case biofortification was obtained by genetic modification of the rice plant to produce and accumulate provitamin A (β-carotene) in the grain, something that doesn't happen in naturally occurring rice plants. This feat was accomplished by Ingo Potrykus, professor emeritus of the Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland, and Professor Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg, Germany, in the late 1990s, after several years of work, and has been further improved since then.
In developing countries 500,000 people, mainly children, become blind every year, 50 percent of which die within a year of becoming blind. Nearly nine million children die of malnutrion every year. VAD severely affects the immune system, hence it is involved in many of these children's deaths in the guise of a number of diseases. Recently, malaria deaths in children under five years of age has been linked to deficiencies in the intake of protein, vitamin A and zinc (Caulfield et al., 2004).
If it's a staple food and you can SAVE THAT MANY LIVES and enrich general health?
I'd allow it without reservation. Don't be a leftist about this