Better to starve them?(Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service)

The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Thursday, Aug. 29:

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Droughts and crop failures have left 2.5 million Zambians at the edge of starvation, yet the government has rejected thousands of tons of American grain offered through the U.N. World Food Program.

Why? Because it may contain genetically modified corn and soybeans.

Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa recently declared to television reporters that he'd rather let his people starve than have them eat modified U.S. grain. He will allow distribution of U.S. food only to 130,000 Angolan and Congolese refugees. By Mwanawasa's logic, his own people may die, but at …