Does Opposition To Genetic Engineering By Groups Like Greenpeace Amount To A Death Sentence For Millions?

The pop-environmental movement has a long history of supporting public policy approaches that, when implemented, end up causing irreparable harm to the environment, and, often, millions of premature deaths, especially deaths among children. 

As just one example, this blog examined, some time ago, the tens of millions of deaths brought about over several decades as the result of Rachael Carson’s misguided attacks on the chemical DDT and the subsequent soaring in the death rates from malaria in much of the tropical world. http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8791618495827652206#editor/target=post;postID=7534575162541163376

In recent years a technology labeled “genetic engineering” has come to the fore as a weapon in the fight against hunger, disease, and other ills suffered by mankind.

Some think this will be the result of genetic engineering

Always a reliable rider on any environmental bandwagon with the capacity to create big dollar donations, the group, Greenpeace, has leaped aboard the anti-genetic engineering wagon with enthusiasm.  In New Zealand, where the discussion regarding genetic engineering has been spirited, in part because of a public relations campaign mounted by a number of organizations allied with Greenpeace, the organization’s website declares, “Greenpeace is opposed to the release of genetically engineered organisms (GE organisms) into the environment and the food chain. Greenpeace is also against the patenting of life.”http://www.greenpeace.org/new-zealand/en/campaigns/genetic-engineering/

Others Think This Is An Appropriate Place For Genetic Engineering

On the other side of the discussion, a November 26, 2012 article published by National Review Online asks the question, “Is Opposition to Genetic Engineering Moral?  http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/333980/opposition-genetic-engineering-moral-henry-i-miller

The subtitle to the piece comments that, “Sentiment and bad science are killing the world’s poor.”

As summarized by the National Center For Policy Analysis, a free market based think tank dealing with many policy issues, including the environment, the National Review Online article addresses a number of new advances demonstrating the potential for saving lives and/or creating significantly enhanced quality of life for the citizens of the world including (bold is mine): http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=22636

“Biopharming.

This is a new way to fight diarrhea, the number two killer of children under the age of five throughout developing countries, accounting for around 2 million deaths per year.

• Since the 1960s the standard care for diarrhea was the World Health Organization's formulation of a rehydration solution. However, this treatment does not lessen the severity.
• Research reflects that reinforcing oral rehydration solution with two proteins, lactoferrin and lysozyme, decreases duration and recurrence of diarrhea.
• Biopharming synthesizes the large quantities of necessary proteins.

Dengue fever.

• A British company, Oxitec, uses genetic engineering techniques to create new varieties of the mosquito species that transmits the disease.
• Oxitec's approach introduces a gene that produces a protein that stops mosquitoes' cells from functioning normally.
• The modified males, once released, survive long enough to mate with wild females, but the offspring die.
• This approach has reduced the infected mosquito population by 80 percent in the Cayman Islands and by 90 percent in Brazil.

The third example is the medical breakthrough called Golden Rice.

• Rice, a staple for billions of people, lacks specific micronutrients needed in a complete diet.
• Vitamin A deficiency is prevalent among poor people whose diet consists largely of rice.
• Every year, about half a million children go blind as a result of the deficiency, and 70 percent of those die within a year of losing their sight.
• The introduction of Golden Rice -- rice groups that are biofortified by the introduction of genes that construct vitamin A -- holds promise for public health.

Other examples exist by the dozens, if not hundreds.  In an article written by myself and soon to be published in an American magazine dedicated to crops a product called Bt is discussed as a natural substance allowing growers to avoid using much harder insecticides.  Bt is a natural bacterium important to the American corn and cotton industries.  Bt can be sprayed onto the surfaces of crops to provide temporary protection against insect pests or, can be genetically engineered into crops to protect plants for the lifespan of the plant. 

Bt has been in used for most of 100 years.

So, what is right, and what is wrong when it comes to genetic engineering? 

If millions of lives can be extended, hunger can be reduced, quality of life can be enhanced, and the environment improved, can it ever be right to withhold the results of genetic engineering from a world in harm’s way?  And, if millions die as the result of withholding the benefits of genetic engineering, who is responsible for those deaths?  Will we ever see Greenpeace stand up and say, in a forthright manner, “We think a world free of genetically engineered foods is worth giving up a few million lives for?” 

I doubt it.

More on this in a future blog.