Ethel the Blog

GOLDEN SHOWER OF RICE
Those silly, overly emotional, anti-science luddites are at it again! The benevolent corporate overlords at AstraZeneca have gone and spent $100 million to splice a daffodil gene into white rice to create a golden colored variety of rice. But the big deal is not the spiffy new designer color but rather the beta-carotene - a nutrient the body can convert into vitamin A - produced by the new variety. And vitamin A can, in the words of the altruists, "help prevent blindness and infection in millions of children." So it's a no-brainer, right? Especially seeing how although farmers in developed countries will have to pay royalties, those in the "third world" earning less than $10K per year will not. So what can even the most unreasonable of ultra-lefty tree-huggers have to gripe about?