THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XII, Issue # 14, January 21, 2010
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
GREENPEACE OPTS FOR MILLIONS OF BLIND KIDS
By Dennis T. Avery
GREENPEACE & ITS ALLIES IN THE ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT OPPOSING ADVANCES IN FOOD PRODUCTION &
HUMAN HEALTH: &nbap;ENVIRONMENTALISTS SEEKING TO BLOCK PRODUCTION & USE OF BIOENGINEERED FOOD CROPS,
INCLUDING THOSE THAT WOULD SIGNIFICANTLY MITIGATE THE PROBLEM OF SEVERE VITAMIN A DEFICIENCY IN THIRD
WORLD COUNTRIES -- ACCEPTING THE TRAGEDY OF MILLIONS OF BLIND CHILDREN, PLUS THE DEATHS OF HUNDREDS OF
THOUSANDS OF PREGNANT WOMEN WHO DIE FROM NEEDLESS BIRTH COMPLICATIONS
FULL STORY:
The earthquake in Haiti has caused more than 100,000 deaths and destroyed the homes of 1.5 million people. It’s a
devastating blow to Haiti — but we don’t know how to prevent earthquakes. All we can do is help Haiti rebuild.
On the other hand, we do know how to prevent 500,000 kids from going blind every year — and even dying — due to
severe Vitamin A deficiency (VAD). But we’re not preventing the blindness or the deaths. Instead, we’re accepting the
tragedy of millions of blind kids, plus the deaths of hundreds of thousands of pregnant women who die from needless birth
complications, also due to VAD. The Vitamin A problem is far bigger than the Haitian earthquake, and it keeps on going,
year after year.
We started trying to cure Vitamin A deficiency 20 years ago, after a Swiss government researcher bioengineered “golden
rice.” The new rice contained a gene from the daffodil that codes for beta-carotene. The human body can then make Vitamin
A out of the beta carotene. Kids in rich countries get most of their Vitamin A from meat, milk and eggs, but poor-country
kids live mainly on such plant foods as rice, cassava, and sweet potatoes. None provide much bio-available Vitamin A.
But Greenpeace and its ecological allies claimed — without evidence — that such genetic engineering is a “danger to the
planet.”
Even after Syngenta developed a corn-based “golden rice II” with vastly more beta carotene — and offered it free to the
Third World — Greenpeace still said no.
Only now, after 20 years of blockade and delay, are we finally seeing the dramatic benefits of growing Vitamin A crops in the
local fields. In the Mukono District of Uganda, they’re growing bio-fortified sweet potatoes. Here, about 25 percent of the
children used to be wan and sickly, prone to severe diarrhea, pneumonia, eye inflammations, and blindness. Most of the kids
are now healthy and vigorous. Pregnant women are thriving, along with their babies.
The difference? Orange-colored sweet potatoes, supplied by Uganda’s national agricultural research organization. They’re
rich in beta-carotene, and they produce high yields because they resist local crop diseases. The germ plasm for the new
sweet potatoes originated at HarvestPlus — Norman Borlaug’s international farm research organization that saved a billion
people from starving in the Green Revolution of the 1960s.
“A danger to the planet,” of course, is what Greenpeace has called virtually every recent advance in global food production.
At the same time, they claim the earth cannot sustainably feed the people already here. The European Union, to its shame,
has backed up Greenpeace with threats to boycott the farm exports of any country which allows biotech plantings. In India,
rice farmers protested plantings of the new rice, for fear the EU’s ban on biotech foods would block their exports of high-value
basmati rice.
HarvestPlus finally decided to breed around the Greenpeace blockade. It took more than a decade of laborious test plots and
back-crossing, but now cross-bred beta-carotene is being planted in farmers’ fields — and the Mukono mothers say their kids
have become remarkably healthier. All it cost was 20 more years, 10 million more blindings, and millions of maternal deaths.
HarvestPlus notes that much of the Third World’s population is caught in a health-poverty trap. Blind and ill family members
and orphans need extra care from the able-bodied family members or from societies resources. They never get ahead. Instead,
struggling people and their large families keep slashing-and-burning more subsistence crops and hunting endangered animals
with cheap AK-47s.
Not even Greenpeace should want a poverty-stricken world full of blind children.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Science, Ethics, & Human Health:
Human Health & Public Policy
Agriculture, the Economy, & Human Health & Welfare:
Policy Issues Relating to Food Production & Consumption
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He is an environmental economist and was
formerly a senior analyst for the U.S. Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global
Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years. Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, Virginia, 24421 or send email to
cgfi@hughes.net
Return to Top of Page
Go to the WEBSITE INDEX
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Public Issues & Political Controversies
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
Most Recent Articles
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Volume XII, 2010
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Subject Matter Highlights
Return to POLITICAL EDUCATION Homepage
CONTACT & ACCESS INFORMATION
This is not a commercial website. The sole purpose of the website is to share with interested persons information regarding civics,
civic and social education, political science, government, politics, law, constitutional law and history, public policy, and political
philosophy and history, as well as current and recent political developments, public issues, and political controversies.
POLITICAL EDUCATION, CONSERVATIVE ANALYSIS
POLITICS, SOCIETY, & THE SOVEREIGN STATE
Website of Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr.
Government, Politics, Public Policy, Legal Issues, Constitutional Law, Government & the Economy, Cultural Values, Foreign Affairs,
International Relations, Military Defense & National Security, Geopolitics, Terrorism & Homeland Security, American National Interests,
Political Systems & Processes, Political Institutions, Political Ideologies, & Political Philosophy
INDEX FOR THE ENTIRE WEBSITE
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic,
Cultural, Military, International, Strategic, & Geopolitical Issues
Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity