Hi-tech crops are bad for the brain

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Hi-tech crops are bad for the brain

Tue, 14 Dec 2004 14:16:35 -0000

 

http://www.biotech-info.net/hi_tech_crops2.html

 

 

" Hi-tech crops are bad for the brain "

 

Geoffrey Lean

Environment Correspondent

Independent

April 23, 2000

 

" Miracle " crops, hailed as the answer to global famine, are

contributing to widespread brain impairment in the developing world, a

new report concludes. It says that the high-yielding rice and wheat

varieties that brought about the much-heralded " Green Revolution " are

among a range of environmental factors undermining human intelligence.

 

The study, which looks at environmental threats to human intelligence,

is part of the £15m Global Environmental Change Programme, financed by

Britain's Economic and Social Research Council. It is published

tomorrow. It concludes that a deadly combination of soil erosion,

pollution and inadequate diet is affecting the intelligence of

millions of people, with effects ranging from severe intellectual

disabilities to " sub-clinical decline " in whole populations.

 

The Green Revolution crops, introduced in the late 1960s and early

1970s, produce several times as much grain as the traditional

varieties they replaced, and they spread rapidly. They enabled India

to double its wheat crop in seven years, dramatically increasing food

supplies and averting widely predicted famine.

 

But the report says that the new crops, unlike their predecessors,

fail to take up minerals such as iron and zinc from the soil. So even

as people consumed more calories, their intake of these key

" micronutrients " fell. " High-yielding Green Revolution crops were

introduced in poorer countries to overcome famine, " the report says.

" But these are now blamed for causing intellectual deficits, because

they do not take up essential micronutrients. " The report is written

by Dr Christopher Williams, a research fellow with the Global

Environmental Change Programme. Using already published UN data he has

calculated that 1.5 billion people ­ one quarter of the earth's

population ­ are affected by " Green Revolution iron deficiency " . He

claims the condition impairs the learning ability of more than half of

India's schoolchildren. He concludes that, eventually, the evolution

of the brain could go into reverse as humans develop more extensive

digestive systems to cope with the lack of nutrients ­ sacrificing

intelligence in the process.

 

The professor's sources include the Food and Agriculture Organisation

of the United Nations which has compiled evidence that the amount of

the metal in people's diets fell throughout most of the Third World in

the 1970s and 1980s, making iron deficiency the only form of

malnutrition to increase over the two decades. The greatest drops in

the intake of iron took place in South and South East Asia, the very

areas where the Green Revolution was most successful. Other UN figures

show that half the world's pregnant women are anaemic, because they

have too little iron, putting both them and their babies at risk. The

condition is thought to be responsible for 200,000 deaths a year. And

the World Bank reckons that deficiencies of iron, iodine, and vitamin

A together wipe out some 5 per cent of the GDP of developing

countries, a crippling blow to poor economies.