DNA Tests Are Uncovering the True Prevalence of Incest

Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 233 points – DNA Tests Are Uncovering the True Prevalence of Incest
theatlantic.com

The geneticist Jim Wilson, at the University of Edinburgh, was shocked by the frequency he found in the U.K. Biobank, an anonymized research database: One in 7,000 people, according to his unpublished analysis, was born to parents who were first-degree relatives—a brother and a sister or a parent and a child. “That’s way, way more than I think many people would ever imagine,” he told me. And this number is just a floor: It reflects only the cases that resulted in pregnancy, that did not end in miscarriage or abortion, and that led to the birth of a child who grew into an adult who volunteered for a research study.

Most of the people affected may never know about their parentage, but these days, many are stumbling into the truth after AncestryDNA and 23andMe tests.

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Love a news article that let's you read down a while before cutting you off to reveal its a pay to view site.

Fuck those sites.

Firefox reader mode just grabs the text and images and let's me read the whole article on most of these sites.

And if it doesn't load it all, just reload the page 😘

You all are awesome. Finding out new features every day with Firefox. Glad I returned.

Whole article shows up when opened in reader mode

It is the Atlantic to be fair so you might not be missing much. This from a magazine that endorsed the Shakespeare conspiracy repeatedly.

If you can lie about one thing, you can lie about two....

What Shakespeare conspiracy?

That he didn't write the plays and presumably the poems. It's basically flat earthers for the literature. The Atlantic ran a piece advocating for it and then ran two other pieces about how great they were for running the original piece.

It's a good conspiracy they've got answers to all the questions, 'what about all the huge piles of evidence that clearly show he wrote them?' Is easily answered by 'just pretend it doesn't exist!'

Best is when they say Edmund Spencer wrote them or someone, it makes so little sense I almost hope it's true.

My favorite is when they say Bacon wrote them. Ok spend five minutes and read New Atlantis and then five minutes reading say the Scottish play. Then look me in the eye while you say that the same author wrote both.

The style, the words, the handling of dialogue, every single aspect of the two men are different.

Some will say it is unfair to compare the two but I would say that since the conspiracy started with Bacon it is fair game.

It just boils the blood of some English lit types that the guy who will forever dominate the language only had a high school education and a bff who owned a bookstore.

I just read the article on 12ft and am considering paying for it. It's that good.

One in 7,000 people, according to his unpublished analysis, was born to parents who were first-degree relatives—a brother and a sister or a parent and a child. “That’s way, way more than I think many people would ever imagine,”

Now I'm not walking around thinking I'm living in a porn movie, but a rate of 0.014% is not what I would call shocking.

And this number is just a floor: It reflects only the cases that resulted in pregnancy, that did not end in miscarriage or abortion, and that led to the birth of a child who grew into an adult who volunteered for a research study.

Either way, what number of parent raping and impregnating their child or sibling raping and impregnating their sibling would be shocking to you? Because to most people it's probably "anything that isn't zero".

It's shocking to you that rape exists? Clearly its a bad thing and shouldn't happen, and it's upsetting, but I would disagree that most people would be shocked if you told them "more than zero rapes happened this year".

While I agree with you in principle, I actually do think that 1/7k is unexpectedly high. If 1/10k people had an incestuous relationship, that would be low enough that I wouldn't find it surprising. This study, if we take it to be cross-sectional, implies that the rate of incidence is much higher, at least on the order of 1/1k, possibly something around 1%. I don't know the frequency that people of incestuous individuals have a child as a result, but the idea of it being higher than 1/7 strikes me as unlikely. Of course, multiple children can result from a pairing, so that has the potential to sway the numbers, but I'd hope that incestuous individuals are less likely to desire children from the relationship, and as a result would take a pregnancy as a sign to stop.

One in a Thousand ist still low enough that it is very likely you will never meet a person involved with this in your entire life. In the EU the rate of traffic death per 100,000 people per year is at about 7.5. So for any given person the chance of dying in a traffic accident in 13.3 years is as high as that.

Over a life span of 80 years the probability of knowing one incestous person is as likely as knowing 6 people that died in traffic accidents at current accident rates and assuming independant and random distributions.

I'd be more shocked to lose 6 friends to traffic accidents over my lifetime than one of them turning out to have had an incestous relationship.

One in a Thousand ist still low enough that it is very likely you will never meet a person involved with this in your entire life.

What? If I met only 1 new person every month for my entire life, I'd meet 1000 people before 85 years. If I only met 1 new person a week, I'd meet 1000 people before I turned 20. I'm a goddamn hermit, but I still rarely go more than a week without meeting someone new, and when I meet new people it's often more than 1.

I've already met people who later died in in traffic accidents, so what the fuck are you talking about?

Anecdotal, but I know at least ten people who have died in traffic accidents. I'm only 30. I also work in retail and see thousands of people a day. A whole person a day I see could statistically be a child of incestuous rape. That is pretty shocking and horrifying to me.

But if they say "i was raped"?

1 out of every 6 women in America are survivors of attempted or completed rape. If you're shocked someone tells you they've been raped, it's because they're brave enough to say it, not because it's statistically unlikely.

And that just rape how much "keep it in the family" and "keep the blood pure" kind of people exist ? With the expansion of far right everywhere ( and yes i always see Far right people as inbred moron ) i would say a lot

Whoa, where did all the rape come from?

It kinda comes built in with incest.

You're overplaying your hand here. Parent/child incest implies rape if the child is underage. Adult sibling/underage sibling implies rape. But incest of siblings who are similar age (whether adult or child) doesn't necessarily imply rape. Even incest of a parent and their adult child doesn't imply rape.

Statistically I'd bet this is predominantly rape and you are largely correct, but by saying incest = rape you've overstepped a bit.

I'm not doing anything of the sort, you on the other hand, are telling on yourself 🤮

Telling what, exactly?

That dude sounds like he's projecting. You're just trying to clear up something that matters when talking about these sort of topics.

Yeah, it's like those aggressive pedo hunters who DEFINITELY aren't pedophile, but then get caught with a massive CP collection or during an attempt to woo a little kid.

That sounds like a hell of an assumption. Any data supporting that?

And this number is just a floor: It reflects only the cases that resulted in pregnancy, that did not end in miscarriage or abortion, and that led to the birth of a child who grew into an adult who volunteered for a research study.

Meaning that this could be an indication of a wider incest....problem?......trend?.....idk....

Edit: it was literally the next sentence....

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Given the number of blathering idiots there are, I'm kinda surprised inbreeding isn't even more common.

I’ve been thinking it’s pretty common for a while, just because of how common a version of it with plausible deniability for the downsides (step siblings, etc.) is in porn. I know people say it’s just to appeal to people who really like it and the rest can just mute, but that’s very unconvincing. I always have porn muted, because the sounds don’t do much for me and just about every person I talk to about this (not a lot, so grain of salt) is surprised that anyone would mute as a rule. Secondly, I don’t think you really need words to pick up on the incest vibe.

My theory about all the step sibling porn is that they’re trying to get you to pay for the “normal” porn. “Yes you can watch it for free…but wouldn’t it be better if it wasn’t so weird?” I don’t think most people find those story lines appealing.

Sibling or other incestuous roleplay is super common actually. The step sibling stuff on porn sites afaik was once again enforced from their payment providers or advertisers. Because people who aren't related, but acting like they are, are apparently turning the world into Sodom & Gomorrah, and based on some of those weird virgin or conspiracytard comments here it seems that some people actually do believe this too.

I think the idea is that step porn is basically just normal porn past the first few opening lines.

Normal people will just skip that bit and watch.

People into incest will watch the first few lines.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of porn makers have tried to split the baby and ended up alienating both audiences. People into incest don't like the whole "step" thing, because it's not real incest. And people who don't like incest don't like the "step" thing, because it's too close to real incest.

Essentially, I think porn producers think it's a moneymaker, but it's really just bad porn production.

Incest porn is so disgusting. I don't care if it's fictional, it's still disgusting.

I have no problem with porn in general, but I'm just glad I don't know who gets off on the incest porn.

It’s 100% not my thing, but, y’know, neither is scat. I’m just assuming someone likes it because it’s everywhere. Another user suggested it’s to get people to pay for non-incest porn, which sounds possible, though the porn companies would have to be willing to collude about that. I’m not sure if that’s likelier than that people are just ashamed about it.

I think a third option is that porn companies think it's what people want whether it is or not and people consume it because it's oversaturated the market.

That’s possible, though I gotta assume they use tracking. Actually, I wonder if it’s just as common outside of private mode

Good question. If you're really into incest porn, you might be inclined to do your best to hide it.

I mean, I just use a private window as a matter of course because I use the auto complete for common websites and I don’t want anything untoward showing up if I’m looking something up in front of people. I gotta assume that’s pretty common, no matter what people are into.

Yes, the bigger problem is when people think a private window does more than forget their search history and cookies on their device

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The UK actually has a big issue with incest. Especially with cousins. Causes loads of child fatalities.

Really big issue with people from Asia, incest is the norm there.

Edit for those downvoting me is this a recorded issue. It's been in the news. Just because it doesnt fit the narrative or we arent meant to talk about those things doesn't mean it isn't happening.

Is the UK like Brazil where cousins relationships aren't illegal?

Yes. They aren't illegal apparently. White people in the UK don't marry their cousin from my understanding though. So it becomes racist to infringe on other cultures I guess, eventhough it is the UK and UK culture should be what's important.

Fun fact, Charles Darwin married his cousin. It used to be a more common among white Britons (and other Europeans, especially royalty lol), but it's rare now. It is indeed quite common among Britons of Pakistani heritage, buts it's becoming rarer. And the risk of genetic defects is actually quite small. I don't think it can be considered incest when its legal.

There is a theory that the reduction in cousin marriage in Europe reduced the power of clan groupings and led to the more indivualistic liberal culture we have now, with both good and less desirable effects (basically, more freedom but weaker communal bonds)

I'll upvote you if you provided a source rather than just insisting something is true because you say so.

Edit: actually, I won't upvote you. Incest isn't the norm anywhere you fuckwit.

actually, I won't upvote you. Incest isn't the norm anywhere you fuckwit.

Heres is a source. So you can get fucked, obviously you don't know what you are on about this is why information is so important and not just making out you know things.

"follows the health of 13,500 babies born in Bradford Royal Infirmary between 2007 and 2011. It the largest study of its kind in the UK to date."

"60 percent of the Pakistani mothers in the study were married to a blood relative."

https://www.progress.org.uk/risk-of-birth-defects-from-cousin-marriage-revealed-by-bradford-study/

Did a bit of research after your response and it turns out you're right. Sorry for calling you a fuckwit.

I wonder what their family trees look like. European royalty 🤝 Pakistanis

I would consider your point if you didn't need to call someone a name to make it. Call me moral or ethical or something.

If 1/7000 kids are the product of incest, I'm guessing that 1//500 have been lied to about their biological father; looking at you royal family of England.

Well there's 8 billion humans and 331 million Americans so

Over a million humans and almost 50k Americans.

Rad

What's the equivalent to take me home country roads in UK? I think it deserves one.