German brother and sister/couple want incest law removed.

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Actually I think it's much closer to 4% for cousin couples. Maybe even 3 to 4%.

I know what I saw. The Wikipedia article on incest showed ages ago that the risk for sibling couples was only 4 to 7%. I didn't see that statistic today when I looked at the incest page, someone must've removed it.

Quite all right. I missed it for awhile too.

As for the statistics, Wikipedia is not always accurate. It's not a safe source.

Well, in this case, Wikipedia may have pulled the figure because there IS no correct figure -- anything you read on it will be a guess, which can be severely slanted depending on the assumptions of the person guessing.

The risk depends on the number of harmful recessive genes involved. If the parents are close relatives, the chances that they will have those genes in common increases, obviously. But how many do they have? People attemptiing to statistically model it have made assumptions of 1, 2, or 2.5, but those aren't based on any sort of genetic survey, they're just arbitrary numbers someone pulled out of a hat. A more realistic idea can be gotten from actual studies on consanguinous couples, but not very many of those have been done, particularly on those which are especially closely related, just because there are few such couples to study. But this one will give an idea...

So the risk of a genetic problem severe enough that it causes stillbirth or death in infancy goes up from 1.7% for non-relatives to 2.9% for cousins -- 1.2% added risk. The overall rate for birth defects which are noticed (this includes very mild things which have no impact on the person's life) is about 3.5%, of which about a third are known to be of genetic origin. So if we extrapolate from the rates with fatal birth defects, which are increased by 70% over the rate for non-relatives, we can guestimate that the rate of birth defects for cousins would be around 4.3% -- 2.3% or so non-genetic, like everyone else, and genetic defects increased from 1.2% to 2.0%. But the causes of 60% of birth defects are categorized as "unknown," so if we were to assume that ALL of those were caused by inherited genetic anomalies, the rate could be as high as 6.7%.

The Norwegian data would indicate an average of somewhat less than 2 harmful recessive genes can be found in the typical individual, if we extrapolated from that, we could get risks for other (non-cousin) consanguinous matings -- the rate for guys who marry their aunt, for example, would probably be around 10%. Of course, this discussion so far ignores another factor: that as much as the rate of risk for harmful genetic traits increases, so does the rate for beneficial genetic traits. And this has very likely happened in human history -- chromosome #2, for example, mutated away from the form it took in our ape relatives, and became fixed in 100% of the human population. The obvious way for this to have occurred would have been for the mutation to have happened in a single individual, who then passed it along to one of their children, and had further offspring with that child. Icky thought? Perhaps, but it's a good example of how inbreeding is a two-sided coin, and just as it's capable of producing a messed-up kid, it is also capable of producing truly outstanding genetics from time to time. That's why inbreeding is routinely used in raising plants and animals -- there is no other realistic method of fixing rare and beneficial genetic traits.

Anyway, I hope that this clarifies how there is no one answer -- the increase in risks (and benefits) depend totally on the genetics of the individuals concerned, so any fixed number you read is at best someone's guess, and at worst a fabrication.

but you have to feel for the kids they have had together, i mean some of them are handicapped and backward because of inbreeding, despite the fact that they did'nt grow up together it's not right in my eyes but i feel for their plight, they should be allowed to be lovers but maybe the girl should be sterizlised?

An interesting poem that sort-of relates to this

[quote]

Now many, many years ago when I was twenty-three,
I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be.
This widow had a grown-up daughter, had hair of red,
My father fell in love with her and soon the two were wed.


This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life,
My daughter was my mother 'cuz she was my father's wife.
To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy,
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy.


My little baby then became the brother-in-law to dad,
And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad.
For if he was my uncle, that also made him the brother of the
Widow's grown up daughter, who of course was my stepmother.


Chorus:

I'm my own grandpa, I'm my own grandpa
It sounds funny, I know, but it really is so, for
I'm my own grandpa.


My father's wife then had a son that kept him on the run,
And he became my grandchild, for he was my daughter's son
My wife is now my mother's mother and it makes me blue,
Because she is my wife, she's my grandmother, too.

Chorus

Now if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild,
And every time I think of it, it nearly drives me wild.
For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw,
As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa.

Chorus (2x)

http://www.ralphsworld.com/lyrics.htm?song_id=78

Wow. So many different sides to the one story.

I think this is one of those topics that will be debated till the end of time, there'll be no conclusion to the arguement.

Personally, I wouldn't do anything with my siblings, they're both spoilt brats and are extremly annoying and I hate both of them!! !! !! !! !

*mumbles* Get up me for typing too loud will ya? Grrrrrrrrr!

I heard about this case where a load of boys and girls were raised together in an Israeli kibbutz. It was hoped that when the kids got older they would pair off with each other, but when they did get older, they were without exception completely unattracted to each other. This suggests there must be some evolved trait that prevents people becoming attracted to people they’ve been brought up with.

However, other research has shown that people are often attracted to people who physically resemble themselves. So maybe this brother and sister becoming attracted to one another is an almost understandable consequence of a very unusual situation.

But I don’t think the laws against incest should be abolished for the sake of one rare case.

I’ve had a skim through this thread, and no one seems to have suggested there might be another reason behind the incest law besides concern about birth defects. If birth defects are people’s main concern, then presumably they would also be opposed to certain disabled people procreating. I doubt that’s the case for many people here.

The thing is the family unit is the bedrock of society, and explicitly allowing marriage between a brother and a sister is a subversion of the family unit. I’m not surprised no one’s mentioned this, because the default position among many people these days is the liberal position that says, “anything goes as long as you’re not hurting someone else”. People think this is an incredibly englightened position to take, but if you follow it through to its logical conclusion, it’s just nihilistic - you end up sweeping away everything that makes society civilized. You see examples of this attitude everywhere:

“Why do you care if I fry my brain with drugs?”
“Why do you care if TV is full of violent trash? Don’t watch it!”
“Why do you care if I have a loud, sweary mobile phone conversation in public? It’s better than a punch in the face!”

The "default position" you are talking about sounds more libertarian than liberal. I happen to agree wholeheartedly with it. I don't see what's so great about being "civilized" if it restricts your freedom to do so.

I totally agree with "why do you care if I fry my brain with drugs"--that's a perfectly valid question to ask the drug prohibitionists. And with the TV, certainly you can decide not to watch it. As for the sweary conversation in public, that raises some more questions since it is public. You certainly have the right to have a conversation where you swear, but if other people can't avoid hearing it then I think some courtesy is appropriate.

I agree with one and two. Three however is likely to hurt someone's feelings which is the main difference.

No matter where the story starts we are the product of incest.

The family of Adam and Eve are a shocking example.

We know who ordained that, it is well documented.

Being made from his rib makes her his twin, same DNA.

Is the child of identical twins a triplet?

Who did what with whom in the next generation?

It seems there should be a race of clones.


This debate does seem to explain the reactions I get from my book.

I write about the other story, the one with science in it.

I get my radical ideas from the Human Genome Project.

Early humans passed through several bottlenecks, times when the whole species numbered 5,000 to 8,000.

There is a fair amount of evidence that they were not social, and did eat strangers.

They lived in small family groups.

A couple, their children, and their children were about as large as they could support in a hunter gather way. Most evidence says twelve would be a large group.

The male pool would be grandpa, dad, uncle, brother, first cousin, and all the girls were pregnant all the time. This went on for millions of years.

This is a subtractive form of breeding, recessive genes become manifest.

It does produce some non-vaiable mixes, and Nature has this thing called death, problem solved.

It produces a lot of the same, dumb and ugly in the case of humans, and a few better mixes.

The trail of bones does show better mixes took Nature's way, first cleaning out their own line, then the neighbors.

The new and improved replace the old and traditional very quickly. It happens several times.

By the Out of Africa story, at the last bottle neck, we all come from a population of 8,000 who developed in northern Africa about 120,000 years ago. From what we can guess, they had the hairless body, and the long wavy hair of Austrailian Aboriginies. That part of the line crossed sixty miles of deep open ocean and reached Australia 70,000 years ago.

Another traceable group went north, continued the pattern of family procreation, and reached another bottleneck, this time less than 100, very closely related, a narrow family tree, and they are the ancestors of Europeans. This happened 40,000 years ago. Roughly the last 1,000 generations.

The lot of them were more closely related than brother sister, they were closer to twins, they all had the same grandparents, greatgrandparents, going back many generations.

That they survived as a distinctive European breed shows they did not mix outside blood.

They have two main traits, Lucistic, pink skin, blue eyes, light hair, and a long skull. Everyone was round head, roughly the same measure side to side and front to back, their heads are longer front to back.

They had a small population spread over a large area and continued the family breeding program. By 20,000 years ago long heads have replaced round heads. Interbreeding would have mixed the traits, but that did not happen.

They did develop everything we know as the modern era.

Their religion fit the facts, Baal Temples have many babies given back to the Sun. Many are likely still born, sealed in a pot, left at the Temple, others it seems were cast into the fire. Line breeding does take culling, nature does most.

The Bon Fire, is a survival of The Baal Fire, and in recorded times defective babies were tossed in to the blaze, for recycling.

Most Royal Lines were maintained by brother sister couples, the Pharos, the Inca, Hawaiians kept a special line. Many other cultures maintained a high line by line breeding. Many others maintained casts.

Some chose to breed the best with the best, a cultured line.

It does have it's problems, the Russian Czars shared too many ancestors, and hemophila. King George had urine the color of claret, and that too runs in close families. The Burbon lip. Romans married their nieces, cousins, and some their sisters.

Some of this modern breeding idea can from the church, because they could not break into the culture of a village or town, for everyone wanted to keep the land and wealth in the family, so married their cousins. The church used it to marry their most faithful in and take over.

In my own time 1950s there were no institutions for defective childern, they all died very young. It was expected of a family that they would not raise a child who could not survive, and would never become a productive member of the group. It had always been that way. Children were starved, drowned, poisoned, smothered with a pillow, and no parent was ever charged. Under the old law, part of the Roman Legal Code, a father had the right, and social obligation, to kill his own children.

Autis, Downs, missing limbs, spinal bufidica, and many others died soon after birth. Look for them in the records of the past, you will not find them.

Now they are kept alive, and healthy children are aborted, now that is shocking.

Medical science kept hemophilacs alive, AIDs exterminated them.

The defective are being kept alive, and are too far gone to worry about breeding, I favor free range aspies, but what an odd lot they are. Nature will sort it all out.

Having a low IQ and many children seems common. Intelligence per human seems to be declining.

Intelligence per aspie is rising, and even though we do not produce many children, which is good, we are being expressed in the NT gene pool.

A bunch of very smart, but dumb, hand flappers. This technology aspies have unleashed, computers, is the greatest leap forward of all time. Aspies are deeply involved as creaters, maintainers, users.

How strange that this bud sport in the gene pool could gather. Over 10,000 here? What will come of this?

NTs do not understand us, the more we study them the simpler they seem, and I give up on explaining computers to them. We do understand each other, we do still carry a lot of NT opinion and conditioning, but soon, aspies growing up aspie.

It has been rough at times, but overall, I would rather have my aspie brain.

We are a small part of the gene pool, more being discovered, more growing up knowing, more aspie pride. My problems do not come from AS, but from dealing with a world that seems wrong to me.

What a great and interesting future before us.