Commonplace Corporate Genetic Testing of Employees Harbingers Back to Sci-Fi Flick GATTACA

""In the 1997 science fiction film GATTACA, society is dominated by a system of eugenics, where potential children are conceived through genetic manipulation. The main character, Vincent Freeman, is conceived outside the eugenics system and fights to overcome genetic discrimination in a society that engineers humans to possess the best hereditary traits of their parents.

Nearly 20 years after the film debuted, corporations today are starting to head in the same direction as GATTACA. Eugenics programs could be the way of the future as employers start separating acceptable employees from genetic "invalids" using new genetic testing procedures.

In fact, corporations are looking to new genetic testing programs to see if they can predict the probability of disease in future employees. The technology is said to help companies avoid hiring employees who take extra sick time and is supposed to help the companies cut down health expenses altogether.

Alternatively, the technology could be used to predict when an employee is diagnosed with heart disease or diabetes before the conditions develop. In this way, wellness programs can be adapted to help companies coach employees into nutrition and exercise prevention strategies before the conditions show up.

Important questions concerning the validity and ethics of genetic testing

However well intentioned, could these genetic testing programs actually be the beginning of eugenics programs where valid human workers are separated from "invalids" as seen in the movie GATTACA?

Is genetic testing even a legitimate model for predicting metabolic conditions like diabetes and heart disease anyway?

Since genes are influenced by so many environmental factors throughout one's life, how can one's DNA at birth or at any time during their life be the ultimate deciding factor for their disease risk factor the rest of their life?

Shouldn't wellness programs look at environmental exposures and employee habits before they rely on genetic testing as the excuse for the health problems?

How can we rely on the validity and wherewithal of genetic testing alone if the average infant's genes are influenced by multiple injections of toxins like mercury preservative and aluminum adjuvant from vaccines?

If the study of epigenetics shows that these toxic elements influence a person's DNA, then how can we blame heredity on any kind of disease that shows up in a person's life?

Six large companies about to begin genetic testing of employees

Genetic testing of employees has other hurdles to cross as well. Will employees want to share sensitive heredity and health information with their employer? Everyone has a right to their own privacy. Will privacy be neglected as medical research prepares the population for soft core eugenics programs?

Health insurer Aetna and Newtopia from Canada are already taking strides to create personalized health improvement programs that require physicals and blood tests to determine an employee's risk for certain metabolic syndromes. While the programs aim to eliminate heart disease, stroke and diabetes, they are now incorporating genetic testing into the mix. The tests attempt to analyze bands of genes that may express an employee's likelihood to eat compulsively or whether their body is able to process carbohydrates or fats.

Is genetic testing useful and helpful for individuals or is it just a way to micromanage who is worthy to work in a perfect society and who is not fit or "invalid?"""

http://www.naturalnews.com/049690_genetic_testing_disease_prevention_corporations.html

Farmers Resist and Fight Back Against Criminalization in Seed Laws

""Peasant seeds – the pillar of food production – are under attack everywhere. Under corporate pressure, laws in many countries increasingly limit what farmers can do with their seeds. Seed saving, which has been the basis of farming for thousands of years, is quickly being criminalised.

What can we do? A new booklet and poster from La Via Campesina and GRAIN documents how big business and governments are moving to stop farmers from saving and exchanging their seeds, and shows how farmers are fighting back.

Control over seeds must remain in peasants’ hands. This is the principle, based in the production process, that guarantees the food sovereignty of rural communities and urban populations against multinationals and their enormous profits. Over centuries, peasant farmers have created the thousands of varieties of crops that are the basis of the world’s food supply and diversified diets, says La Via Campesina’s Guy Kastler.

But for corporations who want to impose laws that will give them complete control of land, farming, food and the profits that could be made from this sector, these time-tested practices around seeds are an obstacle. For La Via Campesina, the law should instead guarantee the rights of peasants to conserve, use, exchange, use and sell their seeds and protect them from biopiracy.

Big business is carrying out, with the support of governments, a global legal offensive to gain complete control over seeds. This includes not only privatising seeds through new laws, but giving themselves new rights to physically search farmers’ homes and destroy their seeds, says Camila Montecinos of GRAIN.

Seed laws are evolving and becoming more aggressive in response to new demands from the seed and biotechnology industry. So-called free trade agreements, bilateral investment treaties and regional integration initiatives are hardening ‘soft’ forms of ownership rights over seeds. And laws strengthening intellectual property rights over seeds are being reinforced by other regulations that are supposed to ensure seed quality, market transparency, prevention of counterfeits, and the like.

What is at stake is the very basis of peasant farmers’ existence. Social movements worldwide, especially peasant farmers organisations, have resisted and mobilised to prevent such laws being passed.

Corporations and governments rely on secrecy and lack of transparency because they know that an informed citizenry will reject the privatisation of seeds.""

http://www.globalresearch.ca/seed-laws-that-criminalise-farmers-resistance-and-fightback/5441681

'Russian Capital' Moscow Generals Hint at 'Nuclear Force' Spectrum over Baltic States and Crimea if NATO Doesn't Back Down from Borders

""According to notes made by an American at a meeting between Russian generals and US officials – and seen by The Timesnewspaper - Moscow threatened a “spectrum of responses from nuclear to non-military” if Nato moved more forces into Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

The Russians told the meeting, which took place in Germany last month, that an attempt to return Crimea to Ukraine would be met “forcefully including through the use of nuclear force”.

And they said if Nato sent arms to Ukraine this would be seen as “further encroachment by Nato to the Russian border” and “the Russian people would demand a forceful response”.

They added that “the same conditions that existed in Ukraine and caused Russia to take action there” existed in the three Baltic states, which like Ukraine have significant numbers of people who regard themselves as ethnically Russian.

Russia was considering taking steps in the Baltics, according to the notes, but this would most likely be “destabilizing actions that would be even harder to trace back to Russia than those of eastern Ukraine”.

The notes suggest Moscow would avoid “injections of troops and heavy weapons in favour of other tools”.

“Russia would hope slowly to entice those Russian populations towards Russia without giving Nato a pretext to deploy troops,” the document adds.""

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-threatens-to-use-nuclear-force-over-crimea-and-the-baltic-states-10150565.html