Greenpeace killed 106,000 children by blocking Golden Rice, report says

“Greenpeace and its activists allies have blocked for more than two decades the adoption of Golden Rice, which is genetically enhanced to produce the vitamin A precursor beta-carotene. The result, according to new calculations by DC Abundance founder and research director at the Golden Gate Institute for AI Abi Olvera, is that ‘delay has killed about 106,000 children and left another 210,000 to 425,000 blind.'”

That’s from Reason Magazine. Its science correspondent, Ron Bailey, says this death toll is a “conservative” estimate “of the deaths and disabilities caused by Greenpeace’s scientifically ridiculous opposition to Golden Rice”, covering “11 countries in which the consumption of rice makes up a significant proportion of their people’s diets.”

As Olvera notes, the World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that “250,000–500,000 children who are vitamin A-deficient become blind every year, and half of them die within 12 months of losing their sight.” Vitamin A deficiency leads to increased illness and death from common childhood infections. As the WHO observes, “Even mild, subclinical deficiency can be a problem, because it may increase children’s risk for respiratory and diarrhoeal infections, decrease growth rates, slow bone development and decrease the likelihood of survival from serious illness.” Vitamin A deficiency is the world’s leading preventable cause of childhood blindness.

As a harsh editorial in Science noted, “If ever there was a clear-cut cause for outrage, it is the concerted campaign by Greenpeace and other nongovernmental organizations, as well as by individuals, against Golden Rice.”

In 2016, an open letter by 100 Nobel Prize laureates called on “Greenpeace to cease and desist in its campaign against Golden Rice specifically, and crops and foods improved through biotechnology in general.” The Nobel Prize winners said Greenpeace was committing a “crime against humanity.” It has long been noted that Greenpeace’s crusade against Golden Rice would blind and kill children.

As Bailey observes, “For over 25 years, Greenpeace and its anti-technology allies have blocked this lifesaving crop. Although it is way past time, Greenpeace’s blockade may be coming to an end. As it has become more normal for poorer countries to engineer their own genetically enhanced crops, Olvera optimistically concludes, ‘the harder it gets to keep blocking the one that should have come first.'”