On occasion, the better parts of this press coverage have indicated that there are socio-cultural and technical obstacles to golden rice achieving genuine success in improving the nutrition of those with a Vitamin A deficiency. For a start golden rice will have to be widely grown (which means replacing many thousands of local varieties, or breeding the transgenes into each one); it must be made available to the poorest and most isolated (who actually need it); and it will have to overcome strong cultural preferences for white rice (by means not yet known). Moreover, in both scientific trials on humans (Tang et al 2009; Tang et al 2012) GR2 was immediately frozen at -70C to prevent loss of the apparently easily degraded beta-carotene (2). It was then fed to the study participants with 10% or more butter or oil (to ensure the availability of the fat necessary for absorption of beta-carotene). It perhaps doesn’t need saying that -70C storage capability and comparably fatty diets are not characteristics of those likely to be deficient in vitamin A. Thus, between its technical flaws and its requirement for very large quantities of financial resources and political will (for plant breeding, distribution, etc.), it is highly probable that golden rice will never progress beyond a nice media story. Indeed, following Greenpeace and Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan proposed that golden rice (at that time GR1) was a “purely rhetorical technology”. Pollan’s scepticism proved fully correct, yet somehow only those three managed to disclose certain key facts. The entire science media failed, being apparently too enthralled by golden rice’s grenade-proof greenhouse in Switzerland. But the main point, besides that New York Times readers may be the world’s most misinformed, is that golden rice is not alone, it is just one example among many of preliminary or doubtful research projects being inflated into positive global GMO news stories. Jonathan Latham, PhD.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 15:02:37 +0000
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