GMO Myths and Truths

vitamin A deficiency have long been available.
The most commonly used method is Vitamin A
supplements. A review published in the British
Medical Journal assessed 43 studies involving
200,000 children and found deaths were cut by 24%
if children were given the vitamin. The researchers
estimated that giving vitamin A supplements to
children under the age of five in developing countries
could save 600,000 lives a year. They concluded,
“Vitamin A supplements are highly effective and
cheap to produce and administer.” 127,128
The World Health Organization’s long-standing
project to combat vitamin A deficiency uses
vitamin A supplements, backed up with education
and development programmes. These programmes
encourage mothers to breastfeed and teach
people how to grow carrots and leafy vegetables
in home gardens – two inexpensive, effective,
and generally available solutions. WHO says its
programme has “averted an estimated 1.25 million
deaths since 1998 in 40 countries.” 129 According
to WHO malnutrition expert Francesco Branca,
these approaches are, for now, more promising
approaches to combating vitamin A deficiency
than Golden Rice. 124
If the resources that have been poured into
developing Golden Rice had been put into such
proven programmes, thousands of children and
adults could have been saved. The food writer
Michael Pollan wrote in an article for the New
York Times entitled “The great yellow hype”:
“These ridiculously obvious, unglamorous, lowtech
schemes are being tried today, and according
to the aid groups behind them, all they need to
work are political will and money.” 130
Pollan is one of several critics who suggested
that the real value of Golden Rice lies in its
usefulness as a public relations strategy to boost
the tarnished image of the biotechnology industry.
Pollan wrote that Golden Rice seemed less like a
solution to vitamin A deficiency than “to the publicrelations
problem of an industry that has so far
offered consumers precious few reasons to buy what
it’s selling – and more than a few to avoid it.” 130
3.9.2. Purple cancer-fighting tomato
The John Innes Centre (JIC) in the UK has
developed a purple tomato engineered to contain
high levels of anthocyanin antioxidants, which
have anti-cancer properties. The JIC announced
the development of the tomato in 2008 in a press
release headlined, “Purple tomatoes may keep cancer
at bay”. 131 Professor Cathie Martin, who led the
research, published an article in the press entitled,
“How my purple tomato could save your life”. 132
These claims were based on the results of a
preliminary feeding study on cancer-susceptible
mice, which found that those fed with the purple
tomato had an extended lifespan, measured
against control groups fed non-GM tomatoes
and a standard rodent diet. 133 Yet as one of the
researchers pointed out, the study did not test for
possible toxicity, so “We’re far from considering a
human trial”. 134
Meanwhile, anthocyanins are available in
abundance in many common fruits and vegetables,
including raspberries, blackberries, blueberries,
bilberries, blood oranges, red cabbage, red onions,
and aubergine (eggplant).
The JIC’s Cathie Martin has argued that
tomatoes are consumed by people who might not
normally consume many fruits and vegetables,
for example, on pizzas and in tomato ketchup on
burgers. 132 It is questionable, however, whether
people who are conservative in their food choices
would eat a tomato that looks, in the words of one
journalist, “like a cross between an orange and a
black pudding” 135 – let alone a tomato that, at least
in Europe, will carry a GM label.
In 2010, a year after the JIC announced its
purple GM tomato, Italian researchers announced
a non-GM tomato with higher-than-usual levels
of the anti-oxidant lycopene. 136 Lycopene, like
anthocyanin, has anti-cancer properties.
In 2011 the JIC’s GM purple tomato became
entirely redundant when Brazilian researchers
announced that they had developed a non-GM
purple tomato with high levels of anthocyanins
and vitamin C. 137 In contrast with the JIC’s GM
tomato, the non-GM tomatoes received little
publicity.
3.9.3. “Biofortified” crops are not a
sensible solution to hunger
Most “biofortified” crops, whether produced
through GM or conventional breeding, target the
GMO Myths and Truths 58