I was going to write about asteroids this month. In case you hadn鈥檛 heard,
the number that might hit the Earth is lower than previously thought. Yet they
still represent a threat to civilisation, and the British government is seeking
advice on the matter. As I started thinking about this, however, vitamins forced
their way to the front of my mind instead, for reasons that will become clear
later.
I approve of all vitamins in principle, and of many of them in practice. An
effervescent tablet of vitamin C in a large Campari has on occasion served as an
excellent tonic. But it鈥檚 vitamin A I鈥檓 fondest of, because it cheered up my
brother. John took up development work in Sudan in the mid-1980s, and I remember
his delight in the success of the vitamin A project he worked on in the Red Sea
Hills. Here was an intervention that worked, where there weren鈥檛 black markets
to steal away the goodies, and where a small effort made sure that a large
number of kids didn鈥檛 go blind.
The news that substantial progress has been made in genetically modifying
rice so that it produces beta-carotene, the precursor to vitamin A, thus struck
me as welcome. More than half of Asia鈥檚 children suffer varying degrees of
vitamin A deficiency. If GM rice could make up that deficiency, carrying on my
brother鈥檚 work, why not let it?
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Needless to say, my enthusiasm is not universally shared. Greenpeace has a
set of arguments as to why this rice鈥攄ubbed 鈥済olden鈥� because of its
colour鈥攊s not worth developing. Vitamin A supplements are cheap, at 4
cents a year per child; intensively farmed rice of the sort needed for vitamin A
production is a bad thing; alternative farming methods can meet all requirements
for micronutrients like beta-carotene. In sum, golden rice is undesirable
because it distracts us from more sustainable solutions.
Of course, while the modified rice may soon be available, the political will
to implement the alternatives is currently lacking. That alone does not
undermine the analysis: like technology, political will can be developed. Nor
are the arguments against the rice to be shunned simply because they are part of
a blanket opposition to all genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Yet one
cannot ignore that context either.
As critics of GMOs like to point out, fans of genetic modification would
benefit immensely from a single indubitably beneficial application of their
technology. So they have everything to gain from the acceptance of golden rice.
Conversely, for those who oppose the technology on principle, it is vital that
there is no such example. For them, there is no problem for which genetic
modification might be an appropriate solution.
Which brings me back to the asteroids. If we discover a biggish one on course
to hit us a decade from now, the only technology that we might feasibly use to
divert it is nuclear weaponry. I鈥檓 not suggesting that this should justify the
production of new generations of nuclear weapons. But it does mean that there
are circumstances in which using nukes would be an incontestably good thing.
If nuclear weapons have justifiable uses far removed from the concerns that
gave rise to them, then surely genetic modification could too. Admitting as much
might seem like a bad move move for opponents of GMOs but would actually be
rather smart. Conceding that good could eventually come from this technology
would make their more immediate objections more convincing.