Hey, farmer, farmer, put away the DDT now.
Give me worms in my apples
but leave me the birds and the bees, please!
—Joni Mitchell

Laboratories across the world are genetically engineering human genes into pigs, fish genes into tomatoes, and insect genes into potatoes. Genetic engineering creates new life forms. New life forms cannot be recalled. Many of these labs are funded by chemical and pharmaceutical companies such as Monsanto and Ciba-Geigy in order to create genetically distinct and therefore patentable life forms.
—Mothers For Natural Law

The plot reads like what you could expect if Stephen King teamed up with Arthur C. Clarke, but it is horrifyingly real. Other countries now require that genetically-modified foods be labeled as such. Why does the United States lag behind the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Hungary—and even Iran and Ethiopia—in demanding truth in labeling?

Of course. genetic engineering is just one scenario of many in the technology-gone-awry -in-the-hands-of-moguls-gone-mad category. If these have become a science-fiction clichŽ, it is only because industry offers Hollywood so much rich material. Recent memory easily yields catastrophes like the Exxon tanker Valdez oil spill and Union Carbide's murderous gas leak in Bopal, India. Not far behind are the "historic" disasters of Three Mile Island, Thalidomide and leaky silicone breast implants.

As Dr. Lee Hitchcox points out in Long Life Now, (Celestial Arts, Berkeley 1996): One of the harshest economic realities of our time is the schizoid, conflict-of-interest syndrome that contributes to the scandalous American mortality rate: Dow Chemical and Monsanto sell pesticides as well as anti-cancer drugs; DuPont and Union Carbide market both pesticides and medical diagnostic equipment; General Electric operates hazardous waste sites and also sells mammography machines; and ICI-Zeneca, founding sponsor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, peddles pesticides and anti-cancer drugs.

So long as such giants rank their bottom line above human lives, our very planet is at risk. It’s no wonder that in 1996, of the 77 percent of the Americans asked how much confidence they had in large business corporations, 45 percent said "some," 30 percent said "very little," and two percent said they had "none." What do YOU think?

As Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) says:

Companies have to consider the double bottom line: not just the financial bottom line, but the quality of life and relationships. And not just with their people, but with all their stakeholders their suppliers, their customers, their stockholders, their communities. The double bottom line is equal to the parable of the goose and the golden egg. You don't want to just protect the eggs; you need to protect that goose as well. That's what we need.

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