Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Olga Khazan writes about the connection between lower incomes and obesity in the U.S. And Truthout discusses how poverty and other stressors can directly affect individual and communal genetics for generations:

(A) study by researchers at University College London's Institute of Child Health found that, thanks to epigenetics, children whose parents and grandparents were born into poverty can, themselves, carry the scars of that past poverty with them for the rest of their lives. That's because children born to families who've lived generations in poverty inherit genes configured to help them survive that poverty, but as the researchers pointed out, turning those genes on can make those children more susceptible to health conditions like heart disease, diabetes and cancer when they're adults.

And epigenetic changes - genetic changes caused by the circumstances of life - have previously been linked to a variety of mental disorders too, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
...
Because of epigenetics, whenever there's war, violence, poverty, famine or just about any other stressful situation, not only are our bodies changing, but those of future generations will, too.

That's why it's so important that we do everything possible to protect future generations by making the world work well today.

- And Rachel Malena-Chan highlights how much more an individual can both benefit personally and contribute to the community with a basic income in place to meet essential needs.

- Jordan Weissmann questions whether the spin about reduced global inequality making up for increased country-level inequality is the least bit accurate - particularly since it relies on ignoring unreported wealth. 

- Meanwhile, Marc-Andre Gagnon suggests that a national pharmacare program could provide both economic and health benefits. But Nick Fillmore contrasts the public's actual concerns about higher drug prices and other consequences of the CETA against the media's eagerness to declare that nobody can possibly question more corporate-friendly trade deals.

- The Montreal Gazette's editorial board weighs in on the need to put public safety first when it comes to regulating dangerous business activity. But we can instead expect plenty more policies at the federal and provincial levels alike aimed at letting business do what it likes in the pursuit of short-term profits, regardless of the obvious dangers to the public - combined with the occasional gratuitous swipe at public servants in order to distract from corporate giveaways.

- And finally, Frances Russell wonders whether the Cons' fraudulent vote suppression in 2011 is only a prelude to a wider, more desperate attempt to keep power in 2015.