Nobel winner calls for GMO action

BRUSSELS — One of the winners of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has called for strong government action in launching an education campaign against what he says are lies about genetically modified organisms.

In a recent email interview, Sir Richard J. Roberts, who is spearheading the effort, said since a letter signed by over 100 Nobel laureates in support of GMOs was published at the end of June last year, “a number of the anti-GMO groups, including Greenpeace, are a little less active than they were. Increasingly we are seeing less vitriolic comments coming from them as more GMO products are released.”

The number of Nobel laureates who signed the letter has increased from fewer than 110 at the end of June 2016 to 133 two years later.

Supporters of GMOs such as Golden Rice, which contains genes from corn and a bacterium aiming to combat vitamin A deficiency, argue that they are low-cost, high-efficiency vehicles for people, especially in underdeveloped regions.

Golden Rice “has the potential to reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by a vitamin A deficiency, which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa and Southeast Asia,” said the letter, which also called on Greenpeace to reverse its long-held against GMOs.

Despite the letter from the world’s top scientists two years ago, only four countries have approved Golden Rice — the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Part of the problem that the public has yet to be on board with scientists’ consensus, Roberts said, is “that we are still not educating the public (or the politicians) properly and many of the plant scientists are still intimidated by the anti-GMO activists, which causes them not to respond to many incorrect articles that appear”. stance