Case Study: Golden Rice

The Facts

1. Hundreds of millions of individuals suffer from diet-related vitamin A deficiency, mostly related to a diet high in rice, since normal rice does not contain vitamin A.

2. Severe cases of vitamin A deficiency can cause blindness and other maladies.

3. By inserting a gene found in daffodils and removing a gene that naturally occurs in rice, scientists were able to create a form of rice called Golden Rice that contains roughly 10% of a person’s daily vitamin A requirements per serving.

4. Golden Rice is a genetically modified organism, or GMO.

The Arguments

The Argument for Golden Rice

Food scientists argue that Golden Rice seeds should be distributed to farmers in poor countries on an ability-to-pay basis.

The poorest farmers would get the seeds for free.

While Golden Rice does not provide all of the vitamin A a person needs, it may help alleviate the effects of vitamin A deficiency at the margins, including reducing the number of cases of blindness related to vitamin A deficiency.

The Argument Against Golden Rice

Greenpeace argues that Golden Rice is a Trojan horse to “greenwash” GMOs.

On this view, GMOs are potentially damaging to the environment, but people will look more kindly on GMOs if they are told that a GMO will help alleviate blindness.

Fresh vegetables, meat, and eggs also contain vitamin A.

Greenpeace argues that Golden Rice may decrease biodiversity, making access to these other sources more limited.

Golden Rice also does not contain very much vitamin A, so perhaps we should work on alleviating the root cause instead: poverty.

Discussion Questions

1. Most individuals concerned with GMOs are concerned with crops that are engineered to be immune to herbicides or pesticides. For example, they might argue that making corn unaffected by Roundup simply leads to greater use of Roundup. Is the fear with Golden Rice the same? Are there other concerns? Are some GMOs good while others are bad, or are they all good or all bad?

2. Would it make a difference if Golden Rice provided a higher percentage of a person’s daily vitamin A? Would it be better if it provided 25% of daily requirements? 50%? 100%?

3. Would it make a difference if Golden Rice magically added years of life to poor individuals who ate it, instead of merely alleviating blindness at the margins? Suppose it added one year of life to poor people who ate it regularly. What about 10 years? 25 years?

4. Conspicuously absent from the arguments between food scientists and Greenpeace is a discussion of what the people who would actually grow and eat Golden Rice think. Does it matter what the poor people think? What if they really want it? What if they do not care? What if they really do not want it? What if nobody disagreed about the harms, and everyone knew it would alleviate suffering in the region, but those people still did not want it? Could it be forced on them?

5. Part of Greenpeace’s argument is that even if Golden Rice really helped alleviate suffering, it could still lead to the increased use of GMOs. This is a steep, slippery-slope argument. Should we accept that argument? Should we refuse to take a step down the slope even if that step will alleviate suffering, but might lead to bigger issues later on?