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Rockefeller Foundation
Pandemic Data Management
Data platform data.org has announced the launch of Epiverse, an initiative aimed at enabling distributed data analysis to power pandemic response, with funding from Wellcome and the Rockefeller Foundation's Pandemic Prevention Institute.
Founded in 2020 by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, data.org will create an open digital infrastructure and software tools that enable privacy-preserving analysis of data, including health data, privately available health systems data, and commercial data for pandemic response. Analysis of non-traditional data will create new actionable insights into the emergence and spread of pandemics — insights that can also be applied to other social challenges.
The UK government, under its G7 presidency, invited data.org to lead the effort earlier this month, in response to calls from the Science Academies of G7 nations to ensure safe access to and use of data for health emergencies and to the 100 Days Mission to respond to Future Pandemic Threats the G7 launched in June. While the initial focus will be on mitigating COVID-19 and the detection and prevention of future pandemics, the consortium will serve as a public good with the broader aim of transforming the distributed analytics commons. 1)
Food and Aggriculture Projects
The Golden Rice Project
The WHO details for Golden Rice are a collection of Bill Gates alliance talking points and spin that are similar to the current campaigns for COVID vaccines. Both are expensive, scientifically experimental solutions that have low cost, safe and effective, time honored remedies to actually reduce the problem. 2)
Golden Rice Scientific Reality
GMWatch and GM-Free Cymru, 13 January 2014
Golden Rice (GR) is genetically engineered to contain increased levels of beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A (also known as provitamin A). The rice is claimed to help cure blindness and other illnesses caused by vitamin A deficiency in the Third World. It is also claimed that opposition to GR by environmentalists and anti-GMO activists has caused millions to die or go blind in the developing world.
However, the claims made for and about GR are factually incorrect and unscientific. 3)
GM golden rice: A silver bullet that misses the target
Colin Todhunter - Counterpunch, 29 Oct 2019
Promoters of genetic modification (GM) in agriculture have long argued that genetically engineered Golden Rice is a practical way to provide poor farmers in remote areas with a subsistence crop capable of adding much-needed vitamin A to local diets. Vitamin A deficiency is a problem in many poor countries in the Global South and leaves millions at high risk for infection, diseases and other maladies, such as blindness.
Some scientists believe that Golden Rice, which has been developed with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, could help save the lives of around 670,000 children who die each year from Vitamin A deficiency and another 350,000 who go blind.
New study fails to show golden rice can help solve vitamin A deficiency
GMWatch - 21 June 2019
The well known GMO promoter C.S. Prakash is in ecstasies over a new study on golden rice, the genetically engineered grain that has been hyped for the last two decades as a lifesaver for millions suffering from vitamin A deficiency (VAD).
In other words, “Approve golden rice for consumption first and then we will be able to study its impact.” This constitutes a form of blackmail.
But why should we put the cart before the horse? Pharmaceutical companies don’t ask governments and regulators to approve their products first so that they can be tested for safety and efficacy after they have entered the market. They have to provide the test data on safety and efficacy first, including the results of human trials. And human trials are only performed after tests in laboratory animals have found no toxicity risk.
What makes the emotional blackmail practised by golden rice proponents particularly absurd is that there are already simpler, safer, and cheaper measures that have already proven effective in reducing vitamin A deficiency – in the Philippines, for instance. That’s something that the likes of C.S. Prakash never seem to mention or acknowledge, as they endlessly promote GM’s golden “lifesaving” grains.