GM rice said to be tested on villagers

Another human food experiment, this one apparently involving 24 men in Jining, Shandong Province, has raised concerns that rural residents are being used as human guinea pigs to test genetically-modified (GM) Golden Rice that was also allegedly fed to elementary students in Hunan Province, the Beijing News reported Monday.

The Golden Rice Humanitarian Board, an organization advocating the legalization of the rice, was quoted by the Beijing News as saying that the two human experiments involving GM rice, one on children in Hunan and the other on adults in Shandong, were conducted by Tufts University.

The board says Golden Rice has been genetically modified to be fortified with beta carotene, turning the grain yellow. It believes it could save millions of malnourished people.

An academic paper published in 2007 chronicles 24 healthy men who were selected as subjects for the tests from 195 villagers in Jining.

The test substances used in the Shandong experiment were provided by Tufts University's Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, said the paper.

Chinese media reported the human food experiment in Hunan was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in August. The academic paper, which is on the Journal's website, makes no mention of research work in China and states that only volunteers from Boston were subjects in the experiment.

The Jining CDC said they had no information about the experiment.