In Part 1 of this series we saw how Saletan used his Slate magazine piece to blame the critics of golden rice for the blindness and death of countless malnourished children, without making it clear that the real reasons this GMO crop is still unavailable are:
1. it has failed its field trials;
2. it hasn’t been safety tested;
3. it hasn’t even been shown to help the malnourished.
Saletan also omitted to mention that tried and tested approaches to tackling vitamin A deficiency have already achieved a rapid reduction in the problem in the Philippines, the main target country for golden rice.
In Part 2 we also considered Saletan’s sins of omission. We saw how he sought to bury the fact that the World Health Organization’s experts had declared the herbicide with which over 80% of the world’s GMO crops are grown a “probable human carcinogen”, while his authority for claiming that “experts agree” glyphosate is “relatively benign” was a report by US Dept of Agriculture economists that contained no evidence that could possibly support such an assertion.