A new report from the United Nations says that the world’s richest nations must get over their fear of genetically improved foods if they want to eradicate poverty in the Third World. The prolonged debate over food safety minutiae, says the 265-page Human Development Report 2001, “mostly ignores the concerns of the developing world.” The New York Times says that this new report “draws a comparison to successful Western-led efforts to ban the use of the industrial pesticide DDT worldwide, which has allowed a resurgent population of mosquitoes to devastate tropical countries with several virulent strains of malaria.” Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, acknowledged that the world has to move away from what he calls “an anti-technology bias” in order to keep growing populations fed. Today’s Washington Post column by Sebastian Mallaby notes that anti-technology nannies like Greenpeace promote “murderous nonsense… No test has suggested that genetically engineered crops harm human health. On the other hand, a lack of plentiful cheap food harms human health enormously.” Noting opposition from misguided politicians like Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), Mallaby reminds readers that the green revolution “cut the malnutrition rate from 40 percent to 23 percent. What the green revolution began, the gene revolution can continue.”
