Neadau: Genetic concepts were used to reinforce class structure. That people in upper classes were better people—not because of any special thing they inherited in terms of wealth—but what they inherited in terms of genes. And in the early part of the century, there was a tremendous amount of research done by geneticists to show that wealthy, upper class people were genetically better than poor people who were genetically inferior. That’s been completely debunked, and there’s no basis to that at all scientifically.

Niedermier: As late as the early 1970s, the U.S. government operated a sterilization program based on eugenics, which recommended sterilization to stop the spread of genetic defects. Around that time, many researchers started moving toward the current belief in roughly a 50/50 split between genetic make-up and environment in shaping a person’s behavior. Psychology professor at the University of Colorado’s Institute for Behavioral Genetics, Gregory Carey, says the two factors play off each other, with a person’s genes usually leading the way...

Carey: There are a few exceptions, for example, like religious affiliation in childhood. But strangely enough, no matter what we seem to measure, we end up finding that there is some moderate genetic influence on it. For example, divorce, or the amount of TV one watches. There’s no divorce gene, that’s a very silly thing to pursue. Instead, we suspect that there are genes that influence different aspects of personality temperament—whether someone is going to be a dominant, in-your-face assertive type versus more passive and placid or whether someone may be relatively irritable and all that. Of course, genes for hubby will influence his behavior and genes whilst his wife’s genes will influence her behavior and all of that. If they don’t mesh, then the probability for divorce is high. If they do mesh, then the probability is low.

Niedermier: Carey says genes also influence intelligence. But again, how smart you are will not automatically determine your social ranking.

Carey: Dumb luck has an awful lot to do with it. I have a brother-in-law, for example, who is several years older than I and we were talking a year or so ago about our area—it’s a very poor area in Pennsylvania—about his youth. He’s a very smart guy, and if he were born today or were in high school today, he would surely be able to go on to college and all that. But, he grew up in a house that was relatively poor, that didn’t have an indoor bathroom in it, for example. He said, “Well, when we were growing up, the best you could hope for was a high school education, then you went into the Armed Forces and after that you came home and went to work.” The kids today get all of these opportunities. There’s all these types of different factors that influence such things as class. Another very classic example is our current president. He did not get into Yale based on his scholastic ability. It is very clear that it was family background that pushed that particular relationship.

Niedermier: And Case Western Reserve University’s Joe Naedau says the mix of an individual’s genes and environment could determine the difference between jail or legitimate wealth. For example, consider someone born with aggressive tendencies...

Naedau: While in one environment, he/she may work in business or the stock market, and focus that aggression in ways that society counts as constructive. In another economic or family/environmental setting, that aggression may be realized in ways that society doesn’t like and lead to behaviors that get that individual into deep legal trouble.

Niedermier: But not all researchers accept a 50/50 nature versus nurture split. Central Michigan University sociologist Robert Newby believes environment has much more influence.

Newby: We’re sort of made up of three things: the biological, the social and the psychological. Now, those three things interact and interplay with one another. In fact, most of the so-called genetic stuff often comes out of the environment. That is to say, where people live, what kind of nutrition they have. All of those things affect behavior. What I would say is that probably somewhere around 80% is about the social, in terms of the context in which we were raised–the land, the language, all of those kind of things–end up shaping who we are, shaping our reality. Most of that is social. To be sure, genetics do play a role in terms of what physical limitations we’re being shaped by, but I just think that 50% is probably too much.

Niedermier: While there is still some debate over how much behavior is controlled by environment or by our genes, most researchers agree that environment plays a much bigger role in social class standing than genetics, but all that could change. Case Western Reserve University law professor and medical ethicist, Max Mehlman, believes our expanding genetic knowledge could lead to a new form of class stratification if not controlled.

Mehlman: We are about to have the possibility of testing embryos before they are implanted as part of an in-vitro fertilization process and only implanting those embryos that have the best set of inherited characteristics. Both disease characteristics and these non-disease characteristics. So you have the possibility of those who can afford in-vitro fertilization, which now costs about $36,000 per live birth, and therefore is well beyond the financial means of most people in this country, but those who can afford it will be able to select their children based on the best set of characteristics. That’s the first level of the emergence of a potential class structure based on those who have been chosen for their characteristics and the rest of us, who don’t have the means to do that.

Niedermier: Mehlman says the second level is in the distant future. It’s the possibility of actually installing the most desirable genetic traits into embryos, which would be passed on through heredity.

Mehlman: Think of designing a child who is particularly handsome or beautiful, tall, strong, clever or smart—assuming that we can manipulate those characteristics to the extent they are inherited, or what aspects of them are—and you return to an aristocracy which is no longer based simply on who your parents were, but also based on how your parents have manipulated your genes or how their parents manipulated theirs. I call this the formation of a gene nobility.

Niedermier: Mehlman says laws governing scientific discoveries typically come along about 25 years after the breakthrough. So he hopes legislators make genetic manipulation a priority. Geneticist Gregory Carey says he and most of his peers strongly oppose embryo enhancement, but banning it in this country would not eliminate it.

Carey: If that technology is there, there is no way you could prohibit a family from running to an island with loose controls in the Caribbean and having it done.

Niedermier: So, as it stands now, genes play little role in social class, but in the future, the wealthy could outspend the poor and middle class to create what professor Mehlman calls a “gene nobility.”