Cousin Marriage OK by Science

Cousin Marriage OK by Science

blog.wired.com

...in an editorial in Public Library of Science Biology, may turn the stomachs of people raised to disapprove of any form of incest. But dispassioned analysis suggests that cousin marriage is no more troubling than childbearing by middle-aged women.

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This news comes just in time for the holidays. So for those of you who have a hot cousin that you have suppressed a fantasy of shagging, here's your green light.

Should make for an interesting family tree and more animated family quarrels. I have never known anyone who has this sinereo played out in their family, but i would image that it brings many more concerns and issues to the table then just the over blown speculation of birth defects (in relation to mid-age births).

blog.wired.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 24-12-2008 by The All Seeing I]

Sounds good to me, I've a couple of tasty cousins....

Never had a problem with it. I'll rephrase that, I've never thought it was wrong for cousins to marry or procreate. I think Darwin married his cousin. I seem to remember quite a few people in history married their cousins.

I'm not going to mention Caligula...oh, just did...what he did was a totally different thing but I suppose he was only keeping up with the Pharaohs.

This doesnt actualy give a "green" light to the "kissing cousins" fantasy. If it becomes socially accepted, then that would be the "green" light.

Perhaps in time it will. Me personally I dont care either way. But to each their own.



HO HO HO!!!!

So does that prove Shelbyville and Tasmania correct afterall?

Too icky for me. There's something about a cousin being one step away from being a sister.

By all means, hang out with your cousin, as she's bound to have friends!

Here's a "green-light" if i have ever seen one...

The List Universe's 10 Famous People Who Married Their Cousins

#4 Charles Darwin

All natural selection jokes aside, the man who popularized the theory of evolution married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood. They had a total of ten children. Darwin died in 1882.

[edit on 25-12-2008 by The All Seeing I]

The problems of cousin marriage increase when several generations do nothing but marry cousins, i.e. two cousins marry, their children marry their cousins, and so on and so forth. There are genetically isolated populations like the Samaritans who have largely married their own cousins for generations and now suffer from large numbers of birth defects.

reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint


yep, i remember in my home town we used to have a couple that actually had a child. The child was disabled, and all the town knew the kid and also the reason why he was disabled (he got half of his face deformed in a horror-like way) . So , if it is legal it does not make it right..does it?

Newsweek picked up the study in their latest issue... appropriately called Kissing Cousins.

Found this particular note interesting:

And what of the belief that humans have an incest-avoidance gene that keeps people from lusting after their cousins? None has ever been found. And if avoiding incest with a cousin is part of human nature, as some evolutionary psychologists contend, then an awful lot of humans haven’t noticed. In Turkey and Morocco, first-cousin marriages account for 22% of all marriages, and second-cousin marriages for another 29%, finds demographer Georges Reniers of the University of Ghent. Cousin marriages are similarly common among China’s majority Han ethnic group and in the Middle East and sub-Sahara Africa.

This news will improve my dating life.

Originally posted by sty
So , if it is legal it does not make it right..does it?

Why does it matter? No form of incest should be illegal. What business does the government have in saying who someone can and cannot love? Same with gay marriage.

Its sad that we as a society must resort to writing laws to protect us from the "icky" of the world. Two people loving each other, no matter their relation, is not a criminal act. Laws are directed at criminal acts. It doesn't get any more simple than that.

You don't want to love your cousin, sister, mom, dad, brother, aunt, or uncle? Great, don't. No one says you have to. But don't infringe on others' choice of who they want to love.

Maybe it's not "right", according to society, to have intimate relations with a family member, but broadly dictating who people should and should not have feelings for isn't right either.

When I was in the Air Force I worked with a guy who was the cousin of that superhot Ally Landry. Oh baby!

-ChriS

reply to post by The All Seeing I


All of the south has found a new reason to celebrate this New Years!

I'm only kidding

Marriages to cousins are quite common in the world. Other than the US and Canada, every other place I've visited I've known people who have married their cousin, including in South America, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Australia.

Isolated cousin marriages are unlikely to cause genetic problems.

However, most genetic problems are caused by recessive genes. And the more frequently a small group intermarries, the more often both parents will have the same damaging recessive gene, and their children will suffer the consequences.

The first marriage between cousins only doubles the risk of genetic defects in the offspring. However each successive intermarriage between the children of cousin marriages doubles the risk again, until a whole community becomes affected.

I spent some years of my childhood in a small town, (200-300 people,) notorious for the short stature, low IQ's and genetic heart defects. There was always another kid dying of a hole in the heart. Being born there meant being looked down on anywhere that knew the place, so most of the residents had no choice but to stay there and settle for marrying a relative, as they were all related.

Woolas emphasised the practice (intermarriage between cousins) did not extend to all Muslim communities but was confined mainly to families originating from rural Pakistan. However, up to half of all marriages within these communities are estimated to involve first cousins.

Medical research suggests that while British Pakistanis are responsible for 3% of all births, they account for one in three British children born with genetic illnesses.

In many societies you have large inbred clans where people are related along many lines of descent, and this tends to amplify the characteristics of inbreeding. I think this is the real long-term problem when you have culturally sanctioned cousin marriage; it will occur generation after generation so that pedigree collapse may be inevitable.

The notion in the OP's source, that first cousin marriage is no more risky than having a child when you are over 40, is being pushed by Muslim authorities who don't want their traditions curtailed. However the increased chance of having a Down Syndrome child after 40 is a very real problem, already causing a problem when parents have to decide whether or not to abort their Down Syndrome foetus.

This is already bad enough, but the OP article is being quite dishonest in suggesting this is the full extent of the problem. Successive cousin marriages greatly magnify the risk, and the OP article does not acknowledge that at all.

Well whether it is pushed by muslim orgs or not, i would image that this research is of interest to most smaller knit theistic demographics as well, such as the amish/quakers and jewish community. Putting all of that aside, for a moment, i think it's important to make note of GSA:

Genetic sexual attraction (GSA) is sexual attraction between close relatives, such as brother and sister, who first meet as adults. The effect is also seen between cousins. GSA may occur as a consequence of adoption, when the adopted children knowingly or unknowingly encounter biological relatives. Although this is a rare consequence of adoptive reunions, the large number of adoptive reunions in recent years means that a larger number of people are affected. It is generally highly distressing to both parties, as this sexual attraction is contrary to their socialized sexual and moral structures (the incest taboo). When children are raised together in early childhood, this effect is reversed by a form of imprinting known as the Westermarck effect, which results in reduced sexual desire between the siblings; examples exist in Israeli kibbutzim and, formerly, in Chinese arranged marriages known as Shim-pua.

[edit on 1-1-2009 by The All Seeing I]

Should make for an interesting family tree

Haha, that'll be a funny day school, seeing the banches on the family tree bend in on them selves.

I had many fantasies about one cousin who I learned later to be adopted and not blood related- PHEW!

Einstein also married his cousin Elsa Löwenthal.

She wasn't that hot tough...



Theory of relativity part deux?

reply to post by schrodingers dog


Wouldn't hurt her to wear a bra though

oh and i forgot to mention the Mormons...

fascinating article sums it up ...

titled "Forbidden Fruit:
Inbreeding among polygamists along the Arizona-Utah border is producing a caste of severely retarded and deformed children"



[edit on 2-1-2009 by The All Seeing I]

Originally posted by Rapacity
Sounds good to me, I've a couple of tasty cousins....

Never had a problem with it. I'll rephrase that, I've never thought it was wrong for cousins to marry or procreate. I think Darwin married his cousin. I seem to remember quite a few people in history married their cousins.

I'm not going to mention Caligula...oh, just did...what he did was a totally different thing but I suppose he was only keeping up with the Pharaohs.

Albert Einstein married his cousin Elsa.