I think it's similar to religious / philosohic arguements of freewill vs determinism.

If genes absolutely controlled every aspect of our behaviour we wouldn't have any freewill.

Anyway, a couple of refrences:

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1156336.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/01/AR2008090102087_pf.html

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By request I'll talk about a few paranormal experiances I've had. First, My "Past Life" experiances. I went thru past life regression with Helen Wambaugh, author of "Life before life", "Reliving Past Lives: The Evidence Under Hypnosis" among others.

Here is a sample of what she tried to show, "Dr. Helen Wambach, in conducting 1,088 past life regressions (into well‑established historical periods) has discovered that the described past lives accurately reflect current estimates of components of the world�s population. Men and women, for example, were equally represented even when there were unequal numbers of male and female subjects being regressed. Socioeconomic data also corresponded to actual populations. Here, only 10 percent of past lives described were from the upper‑class, whereas 60 to 77 percent (depending upon the century being described) were of lower‑class peoples, and in large numbers, farmers. Descriptions of the middle‑class varied, increasing as the centuries passed and the world as a whole became more prosperous.

The number of Dr. Wambach�s past life reports in specific time periods also reflected the gradual growth of the world�s population. The growth of the world�s population included only about 300 million from the time of Christ to the year 1000 AD. Thereafter the population varied considerably up and down, until 1750 when the population reached about 800 million. By 1800, the population had reached the one billion mark. Since that time the world�s population has increased dramatically:

Population Year (Current Era)

1 billion 1800
2 billion 1930
3 billion 1960
4 billion 1974
5 billion` 1990
6 billion 2000 ?
7 billion (next Thursday)

It is particularly noteworthy that Dr. Wambach�s past life reports reflected this growth. In her study, past lives in the sixteenth century were twice as numerous as those in the first century, past lives in the 1800s were double those in the 1500s and those in the twentieth century were four times as numerous as in the nineteenth century. Such numbers accurately reflect the growth of the world�s population over these centuries.

If Dr. Wambach�s numbers are accurate, this correlation between population growth and recalled past lives could be very important. Combined with the socioeconomic statistics, this evidence is very compelling. We would indeed have to bury our heads in the sand to dismiss these statistics by assuming that the subjects were merely imagining the alleged past lives."
Here's the source. (Click)

I "remembered" 3 different past lives and a birth experiance. In one I lived in Roman times, so it seemed, and was being executed by beheading in a forest for being on the wrong side of a political dispute. The exact "crime" or year was not clear. I watched myself get beheaded, and as my head got lopped off there was no pain in death, it was actually some what interesting as a participant! Message being, it is fear or anticipation of pain and death that makes it seem so grim. The "reality" may be quite painless. Another life was in a village or city near the Mediterranean Sea perhaps in the first or second century. I remember getting Shad for a meal.

The birth experiance was interesting, as I really didn't want to come out, but the time was right.

I was photograhed at one of the sessions and my picture was in the centerfold of people magazine in an article about past life regression hypnotism. Another time I was shown on "In Search of" ( I believe it was probably this one, "Life After Death/Near Death Experiences (1977") though I wasn't featured or interviewed in either of those. I knew "Lee", Helen's assistant, real well and that's how I got involved in those seminars. I wonder where Lee is today? She was around 50 in 1977 or 78, and really intrigued me with her habit of fixing things and just doing the things she wanted to do regardless of whether she knew how or not. She was gay and had a falling out with Helen after the first book was published. (Helen was straight) I remember Lee and her girlfriend took me to Finnochio's in North Beach to see Charles Pierce, one of the 20th century's foremost female impersonators. She was a personal friend of him and we went up to his dressing room after the show. Charles wasn't feeling good, but when he opened the dressing room door and saw me, he brightened considerably. He reached out to shake my hand and said something like . "Welcome, Dear Boy". Lee said, "Hi charles, this is Tom, but He's straight." "Oh Ok," he replied and just smiled at me. I wasn't offended in any way, after all Finnochio's was the place for female impersonators in San Francisco from the 1930's till it closed in 1999. Unfortunately Charles Pierce passed away in 1999 as well. I think I'm getting off track so we'll pick up psychic experiances next time with near death experiances and the warnings that saved me. Curiouoso*