VERY YEAR 1 million to 2 million children die because their diet lacks enough of a single nutrient, vitamin A. Many of these children eat a diet based on rice. If researchers figured out a way to manipulate the genes of rice so that it naturally produced more vitamin A, many of these children would live.
In fact, a researcher based in Switzerland, with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation, has developed such a rice. But it remains locked in a refrigerator, trapped by regulatory hurdles, patent disputes and fear-mongering politics that try to portray every genetic alteration as a "Frankenfood."
The only thing that appears unusual about the rice devised by Dr. Ingo Potrykus is its color. The rice is golden, a signal of all the beta carotene that the researcher has managed to pack into the grains. As recently described by the New York Times, the Potrykus invention is a classic example of the looming benefits of genetic engineering. Starting with a typical strain of white rice, Potrykus managed to add to its genes some DNA from a daffodil, pea, bacterium and virus.
For Potrykus, the discovery won't necessarily be very golden. His deal with a biotechnology company would allow the researcher to make royalties off the rice sold in developed countries such as the United States. The rice would be distributed free of charge in developing countries, however, to farmers earning less than $10,000 a year, which is virtually all of them.
Meanwhile in Switzerland, the government is considering whether to ban the export of all genetically modified organisms. Activists who oppose the technology shout down Potrykus at lectures. Progress to bring this invention into the real world has been slow. Potrykus said he had hoped his seeds would have reached farmers "a year ago."
He works on what he hopes to be his next breakthrough, a rice filled with more iron, the key ingredient to prevent millions of malnourished children from developing anemia.
The researchers' golden rice is not a Frankenfood. It is a miracle of modern technology. It is those who seek to keep this rice locked away, because it doesn't fit their ideology about the evils of modern science, who are acting like monsters.