[aestra]

Golden rice treats a symptom and is not a cure. Instead of spending millions of dollars on treating symptoms I wonder if all that effort should instead be invested in finding a cure. There is an idea that biotechnology alone will solve all the world's problems without trying to understand what causes those problems. Or even understand the situation outside their own worldview.

Vitamin A deficiency is rarely an isolated phenomenon but usually coupled to a general lack of a balanced diet. It seems like a too first world centric solution to say "you eat mostly rice? Lets alter the rice" rather than looking into the reasons why you eat mostly rice. And vitamin A is a single nutrient.

I'm not sure if there was any other unforeseen consequences taken into account as nothing exists in a vacuum. Will encouraging golden rice consumption lead to discouraging a varied diet? Who knows. Did they take into account that vitamin A is a fat fat-soluble vitamin and there should be fat in the diet for proper absorption? I honestly don't know on the second question.

Would farmers even be willing to plant the rice?

[delluminatus]

FYI, rice is an extremely healthy food, and typically it has been something that the poor are lucky to have. It also contains fat (in non-white rice).

Also, what do you want people to "find a cure" for? The growing population of humans? Climate change, which will radically alter geography especially in Africa, the Middle East, and India? Wealth imbalance, which has existed since the beginning of agriculture? It's extremely naive to suggest that "millions of dollars" is sufficient to "find a cure" for whatever it is that causes the "symptom" of human malnourishment.

[aestra]

WOW. Nobody argued that rice wasn't good for you. A diet of all or mostly rice leads to nutrition deficiencies.

>in non-white rice

People eat white rice because it doesn't spoil as fast, especially in the tropics.

Education, treating poverty, and encouraging biodiversity and a varied diet among the population. Teaching things like backyard farming, hygiene, breastfeeding. Also vaccines since infection drains vitamin A deficiency and a large cause of mortality from infectious diseases is due to vitamin A deficiency.

Other problems like political instability and poverty are more difficult to find a solution to. I'll let other people study that one.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11761/

> The overall prevalence of VAD is decreasing markedly because of increased awareness of VAD as a public health problem and increased measles immunization and vitamin A supplementation or fortification programs. However, the prevalence of VAD is increasing or is unknown in some regions because of political instability, high rates of infectious disease, and increasing poverty.

http://www.cehjournal.org/article/do-vitamin-a-deficiency-an...

>Children grow and develop well when they have access to affordable, diverse, nutrient-rich food, appropriate maternal and child care, adequate health services and a healthy environment including safe water, sanitation and good hygiene.

>Underlying these causes are factors such as household food insecurity (due to poverty or other reasons), inadequate care and feeding practices, unhealthy household environments and inadequate health services

> Improving the availability of affordable, nutritious foods requires a broad approach, encompassing all the farmers, businesses, institutions and processes (such as supply chains) which produce, process and make foods available to communities.

>In the short term, vitamin A supplementation is the most effective way to reduce vitamin A deficiency and child mortality (see page 70). Doing something about vitamin A deficiency on its own, however, will not deal with the larger problem of undernutrition and deficiency of other micronutrients essential for growth, health and educational development. This is why, in this issue of the Community Eye Health Journal, we suggest that vitamin A deficiency must be addressed – not just with supplementation – but also by working with mothers to address the immediate and underlying causes of chronic undernutrition. This will improve their children’s health and diet and therefore also their general nutrition. In particular, we should encourage improved hand washing practices and work with families to overcome customs associated with inadequate complementary or weaning foods.

That being said, I don't actually believe that giving golden rice to farmers is currently a bad idea as it is already there. I just think the whole initiative was tackling the problem the wrong way. I also worry about any unintended consequences.

It isn't a popular opinion around here because there is a view that science will fix all the world's problems. Too often the societal problems that cause those problems are ignored. Even suggesting that GMOs might not be the answer we are all looking for gets you lumped in with the loonies and a flurry of downvotes.

[afarrell]

I think people were reading "this is treating a symptom of larger problems" and thinking you meant "We should not be treating symptoms but should be focusing on the root cause."

This makes sense when you have only a few minds working on the problem and the root cause can be tackled directly and simply. However, there are many minds with many different specialties and the root cause is complex enough that it makes sense to divide it into individual problems. Especially since those symptoms contribute to the cause. Obesity causes joint pain and joint pain causes lack of exercise. And so it sometimes sounds silly to criticize someone for just dealing with joint pain rather than the larger problem.

But it now sounds like you are actually saying "We shouldn't forget that there are also other problems to solve here." And this is very true.

[aestra]

We should be treating the symptoms and also be focusing on the root cause.

I believe a lot of people have a mindset that technology can/should solve all the world's problems. The mindset can be misguided. When we pump hundreds of millions of dollars in a technology that might not take into consideration the human elements of the problem it is trying to solve - or the unintended consequences of such technology - we should be looking objectively and asking questions. Even if those questions don't have immediate answers.

It seems like if someone brings up any rational doubt or even QUESTIONS about GMOs they are instinctively labeled an "anti-science loon" and dismissed. Dismissing doubt by saying "you want children to go blind and die" isn't productive.

Everything has a trade-off as there isn't finite resources or time. I believe golden rice was misguided and the time and resources spent on it could have been better spent elsewhere, even on cheaper and more proven supplementation programs. It was over engineering.

I read an article in a magazine about how problems might not be solved in a straightforward manner and there is a lack of testing for various interventions to see which one works best or even works. There is a movement to science based aid. The example given that there was a trial for the best way to increase a child's education. Many things were tested such as free textbooks, more teachers, teacher education, etc. Do you know what worked the best for increasing children's education? Anti-parasitic medications. Children lose significant school time due to parasites. Which is in NO WAY obvious.

[afarrell]

Right. We share the opinion in your first paragraph. The second paragraph is because people who believe in science are still humans and therefore still have an in-group out-group instinct; You probably already know this. We also have a strong pattern-matching instinct: "You said $statement? You've probably from $ideological_group."

I'm totally willing to believe that golden rice was over-engineering and was imprudent allocation of resources, but I thought we didn't yet know enough because it was still in testing. Has it actually been deployed?

Science based aid is great if you can choose your metrics successfully.

I think we are in broad agreement.