

But other synthetic genes are new to the present generation. These genes were transmitted to today's GenRich the old-fashioned way, from parent to child through sperm or egg. Some of the synthetic genes carried by present-day members of the GenRich class were already carried by their parents.

The GenRich are a modern-day hereditary class of genetic aristocrats. The GenRich - who account for 10 per cent of the American population - all carry synthetic genes genes that were created in the laboratory and did not exist within the human species until 21st century reproductive geneticists began to put them there. It is the difference between those who are genetically enhanced and those who are not. The skin colour of Americans comes in all shades from African brown to Scandinavian pink, and traditional Asian facial features are present to a greater or lesser extent in a large percentage of Americans as well.īut while racial differences have mostly disappeared, another difference has emerged that is sharp and easily defined.

Instead, the American populace has finally become the racial melting pot that earlier leaders hoped for. In fact, so much mixing has occurred during the past 300 years that sharp divisions according to race - black versus white versus Asian - no longer exist. These new classes of society cut across what used to be traditional racial and ethnic lines. The people of one class are referred to as Naturals, while those in the second class are called the Gene-enriched or simply the GenRich. The most striking difference is that the extreme polarisation of society that began during the 1980s has now reached its logical conclusion, with all people belonging to one of two classes.

The United States still exists as a unified country, but its population is very different from the one alive 350 years earlier. Lee Silver believes this is not science fiction The year is 2350 and humanity is divided into a genetically enriched elite and an educationally deprived lumpen mass who cannot even breed successfully with their gene-enhanced betters.
