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Golden Rice Update by Klaus AmmannFrom: Klaus Ammann <bernedebates@ips.unibe.ch> Dear friends, The Golden Rice in its new breed carries enough pro-vitamin A, about 20 times more than previous experimental plants. In the past debates about the content developers always claimed that - if there would be a problem, this can be solved by modern breeding technology. This is a Golden Rice update, since an important new publication about the progress of the Golden Rice development has just been published in Nature Biotechnology. http://www.botanischergarten.ch/Rice/Paine-et-al-2005-NB-Golden-Rice.pdf See the full declaration of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board http://www.botanischergarten.ch/Rice/Humanitarian-Board-Golden-Rice-200503.pdf More selected background links to the Golden Rice story: http://www.botanischergarten.ch/Rice/Selection-Goldenrice-2005.pdf And a bibliography on the scientific literature around the Golden Rice: http://www.botanischergarten.ch/Rice/Bibliography-Golden-Rice-20050328.pdf Greenpeace seems to develop an allergy against success stories of GM crops Its hardly necessary to mention, but see the latest Greenpeace hoax on the Golden Rice, full of misinformation, and still sticking to the old and producing some new falsified myths. Greenpeace seems to have a real problem with success stories of genetically engineered crops: Its a classic piece of pseudosciene - .the Greenpeace spin doctors get nervous.. http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/news/details?item_id=791594 My pictorial comment: see: http://www.botanischergarten.ch/Rice/goldenrice-spiderweb.pdf I would recommend the Greenpeace (spider)webmasters to post some appropriate graphs and apply them to most of the GMO argument websites of theirs. Another target of Greenpeace has been the success story of the Bt cotton in China, where again they do not shy away from presenting pseudoscience. See their original report: http://www.botanischergarten.ch/Greenpeace/Greenp-China-Cotton-2002.pdf And then compare the response of the Chinese author of the original scientific study which Greenpeace grossly distorted: http://www.botanischergarten.ch/Greenpeace/WuKongmingRsptoGreenp.pdf Finally an account of some more cheap Greenpeace GMO campaigns from July 2004 from Thomas Deichmann and Peter Langelüdekke: http://www.botanischergarten.ch/Greenpeace/Deichmann-engl-20040706.pdf I cannot understand why an organization like Greenpeace still can maintain the charity status. I cannot see any charity and mercy at all there in their stance against GM crops. In the face of 250,000 to 500,000 children going blind every year I have absolutely no understanding for such a purist point of view, shutting out a promising solution for the dramatic nutritional problems. I think we simply cannot afford in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe of major proportions such a painstaking methodological debate with half truths and blunt lies shuting out one particular solution even before it can become reality. In the fight for poverty alleviation we must refrain from narrowminded methodological restrictions. Have a look at a broad minded strategy developed over many years by Swaminathan: http://www.mssrf.org/special_programmes/mission_2007_hunger/hungermain.htm In the meanwhile, the two main food distributors Migros and Coop in Switzerland are competing for lower rice prices, on the cost of rice farmers in Thailand.... With my best personal regards, Klaus Ammann previous Berne Debates on http://www.bio-scope.org/bd_result.cfm |
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