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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Hope for malnourished kids threatened by anti-GMO zealots

ACSH
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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