My dad and I exchange emails with links and stuff here and there and I get some good reads from what he is sent.  When I checked my email tonight, I was literally bouncing up and down.  It would seem really trivial to some but to me, I was ecstatic over it.  It was sent from Truth for Trade and Technology, which he is a member of.

Here’s what it read:

Allow Golden Rice Now!

Media Release –  October 1, 2013

Former Greenpeace leader Patrick Moore to lead demonstration against Greenpeace’s crime against humanity, their anti-Golden Rice campaign that perpetuates blindness and death among millions of children.
www.allowgoldenricenow.org

At 10 AM on October 2 the global campaign Allow Golden Rice Now! will be launched in front of the Greenpeace office at 33 Cecil Street. Dr. Patrick Moore will lead the demonstration with a banner that reads:
‘Greenpeace’s Crime Against Humanity’ ‘ Eight Million Children Dead’ ‘AllowGoldenRiceNow.org’

Details of the campaign and the demonstration will be released at an information session to be held tonight, October 1, at 7 PM at the Pauper’s Pub at 539 Bloor Street West.

The aim of the campaign is to convince Greenpeace that they should make an exception to their zero-tolerance position on genetic modification in the case of Golden Rice, on humanitarian grounds. The World Health Organization estimates that up to 500,000 children become blind each year due to vitamin A deficiency, half of whom die within a year of becoming blind. About 250 million preschool children suffer from vitamin A deficiency among the nearly 3 billion people who depend on rice as their staple food.

Conventional rice has no beta-carotene, the nutrient that humans need to produce vitamin A. In 1999 Dr. Ingo Potrykus and Dr. Peter Beyer, both science professors who were aware of this humanitarian crisis, invented Golden Rice after a nine-year effort. By inserting genes from corn they were able to cause rice plants to produce beta-carotene in the rice kernel. It is beta-carotene that makes corn golden and carrots orange. Golden Rice can end the blindness, suffering and death caused by vitamin A deficiency.

Field trials in Louisiana, the Philippines, and Bangladesh have proven that Golden Rice can be grown successfully. Clinical nutritional trials with animals, adult humans, and vitamin A deficient children have proven that Golden Rice will deliver sufficient vitamin A to cure this affliction. Yet Greenpeace continues to support the violent destruction of the field trials and trashes the peer-reviewed science that proves Golden Rice is effective and safe. We demand that they end these activities, stop fundraising on this issue, and declare that they are not opposed to Golden Rice. We believe that their continued actions to block Golden Rice constitute a crime against humanity as defined by the United Nations.

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines is coordinating the research and development of Golden Rice. The IRRI is supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Helen Keller International, USAID, and many agricultural research organizations. Golden Rice is controlled by non-profit organizations, and it produces viable Golden Rice seeds, so farmers are not dependent on any particular supplier.

“The Allow Golden Rice Now! campaign will carry this protest to Greenpeace offices around the world,” stated Dr. Moore. “Eight million children have died unnecessarily since Golden Rice was invented.  How many more million can Greenpeace carry on its conscience?”

Allow Golden Rice Now!
www.allowgoldenricenow.org

I was so excited to hear that Greenpeace is being called out as committing crimes against humanity because that is exactly what it is.  These well funded activists group oppose these attempts to help others yet have no plan to deal with this problem.  They never see the suffering of these children and the parents who see them die or become severely disabled by such a preventable disease.  If we were to wear these people’s shoes and see our infant slowly become blind and disable with nothing to stop it, would we want help to prevent this?  Of course!

Ask yourself, what has Vandana Shiva, Jeffrey Smith, Andrew Kimbrell, Bill Freese, Walter Ritte, Jessica Wooley, Gary Hooser, Tim Bynum, Brenda Ford, Margaret Wille, Tulsi and Mike Gabbard, Russell Ruderman, Hector Valenzuela, and Nomi Carmona done for solving a real world problem?  What is their contribution to helping others except for supporting the same thing that Greenpeace is supporting?  How about all of the activists who spread their propaganda of fear and claims of dangers resulting in wanting to ban all GMOs?  Are we so selfish to protest and not offer up anything to contribute to others around the world?  Sadly, yes, we are so fixated on “our” food and what is “best for us” that these folks along with their followers have lost sight of the potential to help others.  It really appears to be a crime against humanity, way worse then the claims and rumors they harbor towards Monsanto any day.

We westerners never see this and can argue about GMOs and block it because we are well fed and well nourished.  What about all the others in the world who suffer because our stupid fights over food and technology?  That’s selfish and ignorant to block this potential tool to help others live a better life that we take for granted.  We fight over food because we have it while others are lucky to get anything at all.

Penn and Teller minces no words about Greenpeace and the anti-GMO supporters either.

When I traveled to Thailand and visited the cities, my eyes opened up to the problems these countries have with the disabled.  They would all be begging and either hobbling on their arms dragging their legs, blind, and their clothes would be shredded.  One kid walked on his hands with his legs straight out in front of him and the rest were all blind.  It was terribly saddening to me to see this.  If we westerners could somehow help these people, why not?  That is how I see Golden Rice as a tool to make someone else’s life that much better.  It is a great reason for why I support science and research.  I donated money towards this cause that I do believe in.

Hawaii people are stuck on their rock making claims of poison and spreading anecdotal evidence.  They have become blind to the needs of others that can be helped by this technology.  Are we too stuck in our own world to look beyond at the bigger picture?  Have we become selfish, self absorbed people blind to the world’s problems?  Think beyond the rock people, there is more than what you see about being anti-GMO about “your” food.

Mark Twain summed this issue up nicely in his quote:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Related articles

• Scientists Call Out Greenpeace For Killing and Blinding Kids (reason.com)
• Why did media not cover Patrick Moore’s anti-Greenpeace demonstration? (cotmblog.com)
• Golden Rice, Green Idiocy (blogs.the-american-interest.com)