Zmffkskem said:
No matter how true your argument is, incest is inbreeding. If we are to follow modern evolutionary theory, that is bad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding said:
Inbreeding is reproduction from the mating of parents who are closely related genetically.[1] Inbreeding results in increased homozygosity, which can increase the chances of offspring being affected by recessive or deleterious traits.[2] This generally leads to a decreased fitness of a population,[3][4] which is called inbreeding depression. An individual who results from inbreeding is referred to as inbred. The avoidance of expression of deleterious recessive alleles caused by inbreeding is thought to be the main selective force maintaining the outcrossing aspect of sexual reproduction.[5][6] (See also Inbreeding depression.)
Of course, it is to be noted that every sentence suggests possibility, but modern theory is that a self-contained gene pool is bad for adaptation(i.e. survival X years into the future)
Honestly speaking though, at its current rate incest is not extremely significant. A rate less than 5% is, under any absolute terms, very low although the rate is considered high in biology(at least in terms of 'increased susceptibilities')
I suppose, evolutionary theory is a multi-generational(>10,000 years?) thing, so no one now needs to care more about this than CO2 400.
*Edit: First of all, incest does not automatically equal inbreeding, these are two distinct things. Inbreeding doesn't have to even follow incest. In most places, it is completely legal for say a guy to donate his sperm to his sister, and he wouldn't be prosecuted or anything. In other words, inbreeding is essentially legal, and yet strangely incest is illegal on the possible grounds that inbreeding may occur. Now it could be that people just haven't actually thought of the scenario where a guy donates his sperm to a family member, but as of now, in most places, it is completely legal.
The rest of the comment was what I was originally going to write, but temporarily stopped, but didn't edit because I felt lazy.
First of all, the effects are blown way out of proportion, second of all people's actions regarding it are inconsistent.
On the first, the actual risk is insignificant, in the single digit percentages, and I'm being generous to the opposition here. Most estimates put the actual risk close to around 5% possibility of passing on a genetic defect. It also takes many generations for the risk to even reach the level of a woman giving birth in her 40's entails. Then there are the people that have genetic defects and we generally don't stop them from having sex, even when they have a high chance of passing it on in general. And lastly, most children born from incest are actually healthy.
Evolution isn't an excuse to discriminate. Yes, if everybody boinked their sisters, the human race would die out, but it would also reach that conclusion if everybody became gay, or became celibate (or even asexual). The slippery slope arguments can be used other ways as well. If I eat too much, then I may get sick and die or at the least unhealthy, therefore I must ban eating. You might get hurt by leaving the house, so we should ban leaving our houses. Actually, there's a lot we could possible do that might hurt us, so we should all be locked into individual cells.
See basing everything on possibilities is stupid. Incest, when legal is still not very prevalent (though it's more prevalent than people think). In cases where it occurs, most do not end in childbirth, even with abortion taken out of the equation. And when children are born, most end up perfectly healthy. I've even been around people with health defects (not from incest though at least not to my knowledge) and the people around them loved them and made sure they had a good life. And these people lived good lives. This was always very important. And I've been around healthy people who were treated like shit by their parents. Physical health isn't everything, there's also mental and emotional health, these also determine if a child lives a good life, even more so than physical health in most cases.
In the end I think the second we start treating people not as individuals, but base their worth on their long time genetic appeal then we as a race deserve to die. I would take a defective race with love than a perfect robot. If such is against evolution, then it can stuff it. Fortunately I don't evolution isn't against us. If biology was really against things like incest and homosexuality or whatever, then they wouldn't happen. And yet they do, we are more than just a set of genes to pass on. If we were, then there would be no point. The universe would be one giant hoarder keeping these people alive for...idk. If we are more than machines than we can look past simple genetics and live our lives in peace so long as we don't harm other people. Actually evolutionarily speaking if our actions were against evolution, then we would be weeded out. It isn't so much a matter of right or wrong, these traits would be weeded out if we needed them to. And yet they haven't been completely destroyed. The westermark effect isn't 100% effective (the study that saught to prove it didn't show a 100% effect) meaning some people aren't effected, and there is GSA which proves most people are biologically attracted to those genetically similar, with the westermark effect being a sociological deterrent to balance it. If our biology was completely against it, the effect wouldn't be sociological, but clearly genetic as in we would know even without living with them, and the westermark effect wouldn't exist, not to mention GSA wouldn't exist either.
One could say our biology is made up to reduce it so as to not make it so prevalent to cause harm, but as with homosexuality (btw, there was a study recently that said that homosexuality may not be caused by genetics, but by epigenetics), it isn't so much a biological ban, so much a balancing effect to keep it from going out of hand. We don't need laws regulating it, our own bodies regulate it for us, and even though not everybody is effected by the westermark effect be it for one reason or another, not everybody is straight either, and that wasn't a (good) reason to ban it. |