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by the frequency he found in the U.K. Biobank, an anonymized research database: One in 7,000 people, according to his unpublished analysis, was born to parents who were first-degree relatives—a brother and a sister or a parent and a child.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.

  • ShareMySims@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    Expanding on my previous comment - imagine investing time and energy in creating far fetched examples to somehow make incest “ok”, but instead just outing yourself as someone who isn’t.

    • Custoslibera@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      There are several examples of brothers and sisters who were adopted to separate families then become couples later in life unknowingly.

      Just google it.

      • ShareMySims@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        It really is incredible and quite disgusting how many of you creeps are piping up in defence of incest…

    • Worx@lemmynsfw.com
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      8 months ago

      You implied that all incest is a result of rape. I only have to provide one example to prove you wrong.

      You are wrong; I win