THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VII, Issue # 14, January 19, 2005
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM & SKEWED ETHICS ON BIOTECHNOLOGY:
ANTI-BIOTECH CAMPAIGNS PERPETUATE POVERTY,
MALNUTRITION, & PREMATURE DEATH
By Paul K. Driessen
THE TREMENDOUS PROMISE OF AGRICULTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGY, FOR PEOPLE IN HEALTHY, WELL-FED NATIONS, & ESPECIALLY
FOR POOR, HUNGRY PEOPLE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES -- HOW RABIDLY ANTI-BIOTECH ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS ARE
DELAYING THE INTRODUCTION OF THESE SAFE, DELICIOUS FOODS & THEREBY PERPETUATING THE POVERTY, MALNUTRITION,
DISEASE, & PREMATURE DEATH THAT CONTINUE TO PLAGUE THE THIRD WORLD
FULL STORY:
Tsunami survivors and millions of others could benefit from a marvel of modern science: golden rice. By adding two daffodil genes to
common rice, researchers made it rich in beta-carotene, which humans can convert to vitamin A.
This miracle rice could help reduce widespread Vitamin A deficiency that causes up to 500,000 children to go blind every year – and
2,000,000 a year to die from diseases they would likely survive if they weren’t so malnourished. Just a few ounces a day will do
wonders.
Unfortunately, thanks to radical environmentalist anti-biotechnology zealots, the rice is still not available. Even if it were, the
undernourished children of the Third World would probably still go without. The radical activists would simply repeat their 2002
tactics, which convinced Zambia’s government to reject 26,000 tons of U.S. corn that had been sent as food aid, rejecting the corn
because some of it was genetically modified (GM).
The anti-biotechnology activists spread rumors that the corn was poisonous, and might cause cancer, or even AIDS – even though it
was the same corn Americans have been eating safely for years. So the government locked it in warehouses, while parents and
children went hungry.
“We’d rather starve than eat something toxic,” intoned President Levy Mwanawasa. Of course, amply provisioned by planeloads of
European delicacies, His Corpulence was hardly starving. Finally, desperate people broke into the warehouses and took the corn.
Today, 14 million people still face starvation in southern Africa. Worldwide, 800 million are chronically undernourished. Nearly 30,000
(half of them children) die every day from malnutrition and starvation. And three billion people – half the world’s population – try to
survive on less than $700 a year, coaxing crops from the earth with farming methods that haven’t changed in a millennium.
Biotechnology could help reduce this human misery.
In addition to fortifying plants with vitamins, genetic engineering can produce crops that grow better in the dry, saline, nutrient-poor
soils that prevail in much of Africa. It can replace staples devastated by disease – including Kenyan sweet potatoes and Ugandan
bananas. It might soon enable plants to produce vaccines against killer diseases like diarrhea and hepatitis B.
Bt corn and cotton combat insect predators. Bugs that feed on the plants ingest proteins that attack their digestive systems, leaving
other insects untouched. Farmers can greatly reduce pesticide use, thereby protecting crops, people and “good” bugs. By
eliminating pests like corn borers, which chew pathways for dangerous fungal contaminants, Bt corn plants also reduce fumonisin
and aflatoxin, which cause fatal diseases in animals, and reduce cancer, weakened immunity, and birth defects in humans.
GM crops also reduce soil erosion, doing this by allowing farmers to use herbicide-resistant plants (like RoundupReady soybeans)
and no-till farming methods. Other crops enjoy longer shelf-life, even without refrigeration – a vital consideration for some 2 billion
people who still don’t have electricity, because radical environmentalists also oppose power generation facilities.
By increasing crop yields, gene-spliced plants can help poor farmers earn a decent living, grow more nutritious food for their hungry
people – and, at the same time, save wildlife habitats. According to Dr. Norman Borlaug, Nobel Prize winning father of the first Green
Revolution, if the world had been forced to use organic farming or 1960s agricultural technologies to produce as much food as it
actually did in 2000, “we would have had to double the amount of land under cultivation.” Millions of acres of forest and grassland
habitats would have been plowed under, destroying biodiversity, to feed famished people – or millions more would have starved.
Modern biotech methods are precise, predictable refinements of plant breeding techniques that have been used for centuries to
modify the genetic makeup, size, flavor, quality and other traits of nearly every food we eat. Studies by the National Academy of
Sciences and others prove they’re safe for people and planet.
But Greenpeace still claims gene-spliced organisms “pose unacceptable risks to ecosystems and have the potential to threaten
biodiversity, wildlife, and sustainable forms of agriculture.” A child would have to eat 15 pounds of cooked golden rice a day to
get his minimum daily vitamin A, ever-inventive Rainbow Warriors prevaricate.
We need a moratorium on all GE crops, “including those already approved,” the Sierra Club insists. Biotechnology threatens “a
form of annihilation every bit as deadly as nuclear holocaust,” rants professional malcontent Jeremy Rifkin.
No wonder Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore says the campaign against genetic engineering “has clearly exposed the
environmentalists’ intellectual and moral bankruptcy.” Their specious, speculative “concerns” simply have no basis in reality.
The radical environmentalists' opinions and "concerns" are based on their willingness to say virtually anything to further their
cause, and on their incessant abuse of the so-called “precautionary principle.” If they can foresee a possible danger, no matter
how remote, the radicals demand that new technologies be banned until proponents can prove the technologies will never
cause harm.
This means ultra precaution against distant, theoretical risks to healthy, well-fed Westerners – at the expense of real, immediate,
life-threatening risks to the Earth’s poorest, most malnourished people.
Yet the media report their absurd claims without question or comment. Politicians and bureaucrats cite them to justify new
regulations, more delays in approving new products, and trade barriers to protect subsidized farmers from “unfair” foreign
competition. And “socially responsible” foundations, European Union member-governments, and organic food companies
continue to fund the radical activists – $500 million between 1995 and 2001, and $175 million between 2002 and 2006, according
to the Wall Street Journal and other analysts.
People are starving and dying, while these organizations talk about far-fetched, hypothetical risks to the environment – and then
claim they’re moral and ethical for doing so.
“I appreciate ethical concerns,” Kenyan plant biologist Florence Wambugu says. “But anything that doesn’t help feed our
children is UNethical.”
Thankfully, the tide may at last be turning. The European Union finally approved a biotech corn variety for human consumption.
India’s government acceded to poor farmers’ demands that they be allowed to continue planting GM cotton. Brazil did likewise
when it realized its farmers were not about to give up their RoundupReady soybeans. And China has been able to slash pesticide
use by 70-80 percent in Bt cotton fields.
Will golden rice, Ugandan bananas, Kenyan sweet potatoes, and dozens of other potential life-saving crops be next to gain
global approval? Will Green zealots finally recognize their scientific and moral decay, as some have belatedly on DDT to control
malaria?
The misery and death toll is already unconscionable. It’s time to oppose Eco-Imperialism, and return science, ethics, and
compassion to agricultural and environmental policies.
© 2005 Paul K. Driessen
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Paul K. Driessen is Senior Policy Advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality, the Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow, and the
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Driessen is author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death, which can be
obtained at www.Eco-Imperialism.com. Email: pdriessen@cox.net --- Telephone:
(703) 698-6171
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