The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
Student activists at Iowa State University are up in arms after researchers offered to pay them almost a thousand bucks to eat some genetically modified banana. The bananas, . . . contain high levels of beta carotene, which converts to vitamin A when eaten.
Vitamin A deficiency, which can cause blindness, stunting and even death, is a devastating problem throughout the developing world. In Uganda roughly 40% of children under age 5 are vitamin-A deficient, according to a 2011 health survey.
The hope is that fortified superbananas could help prevent such malnutrition. To test their efficacy, Iowa State students were offered $900 to eat the bananas for four days during three trial periods, then have their blood tested to measure vitamin absorption. . . .
But some of the healthy, well-fed college students in America’s heartland were outraged. In February they delivered a petition with more than 57,000 signatures to the university to oppose the so-called human feeding trials. . . .
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. . . .“Those students are acting out of ignorance,” Jerome Kubiriba, the head of the National Banana Research Program in Uganda, tells me. “. . . .If they knew the truth about the need for vitamin A and other nutrients for children in Uganda and Africa, they’d get a change of heart.”
He’s more optimistic than I am. Genetically engineered crops are anathema to the far left. An article last year in the Ecologist called the fortified bananas “a globe-trotting case of biopiracy,” and said the project’s secret ambition is profit—“to enter the international banana trade, setting itself up as the United Fruit of the 21st Century.” . . .
Wall Street Journal subscribers can read full, original article here: Anti-GMO Students Bruise a Superbanana
