Last August, vandals, cheered on by Greenpeace and other NGOs hostile to crop biotechnology, destroyed a field trial of Golden Rice in the Philippines. The rice has been ready for farmers to use since the turn of the 21st century, yet it is still not available to them. Escalating requirements for testing have stalled its release for more than a decade. Now with those hurdles almost overcome, opponents of precision plant breeding have taken to lawlessness. A group of the world’s top scientists have come together under the banner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to issue a joint statement condemning this behavior, reaffirming the organization’s commitment for an evidence-based evaluation of this new technology:
- Bruce Alberts, former President of the National Academy of Sciences
- Roger Beachy, founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
- David Baulcombe, Royal Society Research Professor and Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge
- Gunter Blobel, Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology
- Swapan Datta, Deputy Director General (Crop Science) of Indian Council of Agricultural Research
- Nina Fedoroff, former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
- Donald Kennedy, former Commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration
- Gurdev S. Khush, World Food Prize laureate
- Jim Peacock, former President of the Australian Academy of Sciences
- Martin Rees, former President of the Royal Society
- Phillip Sharp, Nobel Prize laureate
Read the full, original story here: “Standing Up for GMOs”
Additional Resources:
- “Petition to condemn Golden Rice vandalism gains support from scientific community,” Genetic Literacy Project
- “Golden Rice — Lifesaver?” New York Times
- “From Lynas to Pollan, Agreement that Golden Rice Trials Should Proceed” New York Times
