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Ray Oceanweaver Profile
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Registered: 04-2003
Location: England, UK
Posts: 17
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Incest - does it really produce disabilities?


I'm sure that everyone has heard the 'fact' that if a child is produced as a result of incest, there will be something wrong with it. Is this actually the case? And why? Sure, they say it's something about the genes. But how exactly is this caused (that's if it's not just a myth)?

I found this:


If the parents of a child are both carriers of a trait the child has a one-fourth chance of inheriting the trait. This is true whether the parents are related or not. The reason incest is bad is because traits tend to run in families. So if the partners are in the same family more of the family members will carry the trait and the more likely it is that the child could get it.

Van hoeck



Source: http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/mole00/mole00076.htm

But surely this is the case for ANYONE with that recessive trait? So it's not incest that causes this, it's just bad luck, really.

What do you all say?

---
Rachel


~The optimist fails as badly as the pessimist, just has a better time of it~

Reading: House of Echoes - Barbara Erskine, La Casa de los Espiritus - Isabel Allende

Writing: Short story
25/Sep/05, 14:06 Link to this post Email   PM  Blog
 
Alpha Centauri Profile
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Registered: 02-2004
Location: Athens, Hellas
Posts: 1988
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Re: Incest - does it really produce disabilities?


Here's an interesting article which may provide some explanations on both medical and legal aspects.

Incest — sexual relations with one's parents, children or siblings (brothers or sisters) — is forbidden in all known cultures. However, once you get outside the immediate family to include cousins, nieces and so on, the definition varies from culture to culture. The rare historical exceptions include sibling pairings of Egyptian and Hawaiian royalty to preserve the royal family line. Why is the incest taboo in the immediate family essentially universal?

One of several possible theories involves the combining of recessive genes. For recessive genes to cause a trait, the child must receive two recessive genes, one from each parent. Suppose there is a recessive gene for a negative trait in a family. It is unlikely to pair up with another recessive gene for the same trait, if family members mate with members of the general population. However, if incestual relations occur, the chances of the child having the negative trait jump to about 25%. This may have been a contributing factor to the high incidence of hemophilia — a disorder in which the blood loses its ability to clot — among European royalty, when cousins married each other.

Another theory about the universality of the incest taboo deals with role conflict. (A role is the expected behavior in a social position.) When you simultaneously hold two positions that require contradictory social behaviors, this leads to role conflict. This can be illustrated with the popular country song, "I'm My Own Grandpaw." (If you haven't heard it, I guess it isn't that popular.) The song tells of a widower and his son, who meet a widow and her daughter. They fall in love. However, the widower marries the daughter, while the widow marries the son. The resulting relationship is diagrammed below.

Image


Examine the diagram carefully. Now, since the widower married the daughter of the son and the widow, the widower is now the son-in-law of the son. Remember that the children of you son-in-law (the widower) and your daughter are your grandchildren. However, the son is the child of the widower and the daughter! Therefore, the son is his own "grandpaw."

In this situation, is the son expected to behave toward the widower as his father or his son-in-law? Is the son supposed to treat the widow as his wife or his grandmother? Is the son expected to act toward the daughter as his daughter or his stepmother? All the other members in this situation will suffer similar role conflicts.

Now let's look at role conflict in an incestual relationship. Suppose a father has an incestual relationship with his daughter, which results in a child. Is the child to be treated by the father as his child or his grandchild? (The child of your daughter is your grandchild.) Should the daughter react toward her child as her child or her sibling? Since role conflict is typical of any incestual relationship, this is why it is seen as a reason for the universal incest taboo.

The last theory to be covered is the mutual assistance theory. To illustrate, we will use an example from prehistoric times. Groups traveled across the countryside foraging for food. Suppose a 10-member family crossed into the territory of a 30-member clan. This would probably result in a conflict, with the larger group winning.

However, in case the 30-member clan came into conflict with a larger group, it would be better if they could rely on the assistance of the smaller family. How could they accomplish this? If a member from each group mated, the offspring would be in common for both groups. They are very likely to combine their resources to protect the children.

If one of the spouses died, this might lead to the breakup of the mutual assistance relationship. To avoid this, the levirate and sororate systems were developed. If a husband is killed, his widow becomes the wife of one of the brothers under the levirate system. Similarly, if a wife dies, the widower will become the husband of one of her sisters under the sororate system. In this way, the relationship between the two groups will be maintained. In addition, the more groups that any group can intermarry with, the more that group can insure its physical survival.

But what if one of the sisters — in the sororate system — was in love with her brother and refused to marry the widower? This would threaten the very survival of the group! This might explain why many people feel very threatened by even the hint of a possible incestual act.

Each culture or subculture probably has its own explanation for its incest taboo. However, the theories discussed here seem to apply to some extent to all cultures.

SOURCE: Incest Taboo by David A. Gershaw, Ph.D.
http://www3.azwestern.edu/psy/dgershaw/lol/Incest.html


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27/Sep/05, 17:45 Link to this post PM 
 
Ray Oceanweaver Profile
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Registered: 04-2003
Location: England, UK
Posts: 17
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Re: Incest - does it really produce disabilities?


Thanks Alpha, that's an interesting article.

Surely, though, these "roles" that the article talks about are specifically based on non-incestual relationships? Therefore, if incest occured, a whole different system should be used, as the lines between the roles become blurred, or even non-existant.

If, to use their example, a daughter bears her father's child, why should the father have to choose between one of two roles? He is both, yet he is neither. His situation is unique, thus his relationship with both his daughter and child would be completely different. I find it silly to try to put restricting boundaries on relationships such as this where there is no clear answer.

Of course, this is just my opinion. I realise that there is, of course, the recessive gene thing. It's a good reason not to allow incest, but the chance of the child not having that bad trait is 75% which is quite high. Not every family would have a bad trait, either. There can't be recessive genes in every single family for haemophilia, or other afflictions. So surely that would drop the chance of being affected by these 'recessive bad traits' considerably?

It's not as if every single person in the world is suddenly going to go off and have children with their brother or sister. It's not even as if children will be born from every incestuous relationship.

On a related note:

The majority of us (I imagine) find the idea of sex with close family unpleasant. Do we feel this simply because we know that they're our family, and that we have been told since we were young that such things are wrong? If we didn't know we were related to a certain person, would we feel attracted to them then? Basically, is it only society's restrictions that make family members undesirable to us, or would we naturally not be attracted?

---
Rachel


~The optimist fails as badly as the pessimist, just has a better time of it~

Reading: House of Echoes - Barbara Erskine, La Casa de los Espiritus - Isabel Allende

Writing: Short story
28/Sep/05, 22:54 Link to this post Email   PM  Blog
 


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