Originally Posted by misombra
i was watching jerry springer one time (i was hospitalized and that's all there was to do)
haha good save
personally, I wouldn't mind other people doing it - depending on what genetic research says about it, which seems to be in dispute - but I wouldn't do it myself, eww. I've only met my cousins once when I was 15, but even still they're family, y'know?
Genetically this kind of thing is really interesting.
Here's a quote from a bbc article:
(
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbo...ception1.shtml)
...findings from the Perception Lab show that we tend to choose partners who look like our opposite sex parents. This seems to suggest that we prefer to mate with people who appear to share the same genes as us.
This apparent tendency towards inbreeding might come as a surprise. Inbreeding can cause harmful recessive genes to pair up in children, resulting in deformity or disease.
In a well-known study, Dr Marion Petrie and Dr Craig Roberts of the University of Newcastle asked female volunteers to wear the same T-shirt for several days. Male subjects were then asked to choose which one smelt best. Men invariably prefer the smell of a woman with an immune system very different to their own.
Children born to parents with different immune systems have a better chance of fighting off disease, suggesting that outbreeding has definite advantages.
But Dr Petrie sees no contradiction between her findings and those of Perrett's. "There is an optimum genetic distance that is preferred. You don't want a mate that's identical because that would be inbreeding," says Petrie.
"But if [animals] mate at too great a genetic distance, [they] could be mating with another species," she adds, "and that could be bad news."
(at this point, if you say, "but we're not animals", I would ask you to think again. We are a product of evolution as every other life form. If you do not believe in evolution, you cannot also believe in genetics, and therefore incest should theoretically be okay for you! lol I love using logic on religion.)
The suggestion is that a little inbreeding is no bad thing, because it preserves useful combinations of genes that are adapted to your environment. Petrie believes that chemical cues from smell work in an opposite way to facial cues of attractiveness in order to strike this balance between extreme inbreeding and extreme outbreeding.
edit:
so, in conclusion.. if two cousins could smell the right kinds of genetics from each other and that caused them to be attracted to each other, thus resulting in perfectly healthy children, who am I to say it's wrong?
Then again, if genetics can show that children from cousins are __always__ at a higher risk of deformity or weak immune system or whatever, I'd say, EUWWW!!
The automatic disgust that I and everybody else has at the prospect of sex with a first cousin leads me to believe that there is a genetic, evolutionary reason for it. And this leads me to what must be the defining question of this issue: Are the people who get together with their cousins for some reason devoid of the natural disgust that is meant to prevent inbreeding?
Or, can they sense that the cousin in question is different enough genetically? Genetic differences do vary, it's not just so and so much percent. You know -- some families look so similar, even more distant relatives.. and in other families, even siblings look completely different.
incidentally.. my cousins look quite similar to me. I would love to find a person who is not disgusted by the thought of sex with their OWN first cousin, and ask them how different/similar the cousin looks.
If genetics behaved differently, and, say, two people of the same hair colour getting together caused sickly children, this thread might be named "sex between two blondes.." and everybody would go "ick! that's horrible".
food for thought...
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