Excerpt
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Researchers believe they have found a way to add critical nutrients to rice, a dietary staple in countries like the Philippines. But those changes tap directly into concerns over genetically modified food.
Science correspondent Miles O’Brien has a look at the high stakes in this fight.
One note for eagle-eyed viewers: Miles shot this story earlier this year, before he lost his left arm in an accident.
MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour): He may not be happy about it, but this megadose of vitamin A might save his vision or maybe his life. Vitamin A deficiency is a pervasive and silent killer of malnourished children and pregnant mothers in the Third World.
Each year, at least a half-million children and a few hundred thousand women go blind or die for lack of this crucial micronutrient. The best sources of vitamin A, meats and leafy vegetable, expensive and often unavailable, are rarely part of the daily diet here.
That’s why people here in the Philippines are working to add vitamin A to the daily staple, rice. But the rice they’re meticulously breeding has become the gold standard for a heated debate over genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.
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