According to the World Health Organization,
approximately 250 million preschool children worldwide suffer from vitamin A deficiency.
WHO estimates that a quarter to a half a million of these children become blind
every year because of this deficiency, and of those half die within a year of
losing their sight. Moreover, low levels of vitamin A and its precursors are
known to impair immune responses to various microorganisms, increasing the toll
of contagious diseases among those populations.
In the face of
such horrendous statistics, one might think that every effort to improve
vulnerable children’s vitamin status would receive support from all quarters.
Unfortunately that doesn’t happen.
Apparently acting
under the mantra, “We must kill them to save them,” anti-GMO ideologues
destroyed trial plots of so-called “Golden Rice” in the Philippines. Golden
Rice has been genetically engineered with genes that allow it to produce
beta-carotene, a substance the human body can use to form vitamin A. If this
rice is consumed instead of the typical white rice that is a staple food in
much of Asia, it could go far to ameliorate the vitamin A deficiency that
threatens so many young children....To Read More.....
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