Greenpeace and its activists allies have blocked for more than two decades the adoption of Golden Rice, which is genetically enhanced to produce the vitamin A precursor beta-carotene. The result, according to new calculations by DC Abundance founder and research director at the Golden Gate Institute for AI Abi Olvera, is that “delay has killed about 106,000 children and left another 210,000 to 425,000 blind.”
Her conservative calculations of the deaths and disabilities caused by Greenpeace’s scientifically ridiculous opposition to Golden Rice are focused on 11 countries in which the consumption of rice makes up a significant proportion of their people’s diets.
As Olvera reports, the World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that “250 000–500 000 children who are vitamin A-deficient become blind every year, and half of them die within 12 months of losing their sight.” Vitamin A deficiency contributes to increased morbidity and mortality from common childhood infections. As the WHO notes, “Even mild, subclinical deficiency can be a problem, because it may increase children’s risk for respiratory and diarrhoeal infections, decrease growth rates, slow bone development and decrease the likelihood of survival from serious illness.” And it is the world’s leading preventable cause of childhood blindness.
I have been debunking Greenpeace’s unscientific opposition to Golden Rice since 2000 when the activist group claimed: “Greenpeace opposes golden rice because it has all the risks of any [genetically modified] crop.” In my 2013 article, “Scientists Call Out Greenpeace for Killing and Blinding Kids,” I hailed the blistering editorial in Science that asserted, “If ever there was a clear-cut cause for outrage, it is the concerted campaign by Greenpeace and other nongovernmental organizations, as well as by individuals, against Golden Rice.”
In 2016, I reported the open letter by 100 Nobel Prize laureates calling on “Greenpeace to cease and desist in its campaign against Golden Rice specifically, and crops and foods improved through biotechnology in general.” The laureates suggested that Greenpeace was committing a “crime against humanity.” And as recently as 2024, I warned that Greenpeace’s crusade against Golden Rice will continue to blind and kill children when reporting that the anti-technology activist group had persuaded a Philippine court to block local farmers from planting the grain.
For over 25 years, Greenpeace and its anti-technology allies have blocked this lifesaving crop. Although it is way past time, Greenpeace’s blockade may be coming to an end. As it has become more normal for poorer countries to engineer their own genetically enhanced crops, Olvera optimistically concludes, “the harder it gets to keep blocking the one that should have come first.”
