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Revision as of 10:15, 31 May 2002

Some biologist should add some numerical information about likelihood of birth defects after incest, say between brother and sister. Also some general information about why mixing is good would be useful. --AxelBoldt

At the level of brother and sister the probability of birth defects goes up noticeably, but not enormously if the gene pool is fairly healthy. Maybe it almost doubles. Some of the more common birth defects (hare lip etc) are probably not due to genetic causes. For first cousins, the increase is down in the noise. Inbreeding can have advantages (ask any plant or animal breeder), but breeding individuals who are not closely related also has advantages (again ask any plant or animal breeder). The best way to get a healthy population seems to involve a mixture of both.

As to why, that is a very complicated thing that is not quite fully understood yet. It would take a very knowlegeble geneticist writing a very long article to explain even what we now know.

I am not sure how this relates to incest for humans. A lot of people would not want to think about humans in these kind of terms, of deliberately breeding to improve the species. Also incest is not quite the same as inbreeding, since in most juristicions it includes various relationships without close blood relationship, and it also includes sexual relationships that do not produce children.

True, but that's just a result of confusion by priests and jurists. It's clear that the incest taboo is there because of genetic reasons.

In Germany for instance, it is legal for a sister to have oral sex with her brother, but penetration is illegal. That makes eminent sense. But the article should explain why.

Bullshit. There is no such thing as an "incest taboo" except in modern societies. It certainly didn't arise due to genetic reasons or evolution.

Is it really clear that the taboo is for genetic reasons? The fact that most traditional versions of it are not very precise in preventing genetic trouble, should be a hint that other reasons should be considered. The genetic reasoning may well be a modern rationalisation for an old custom. It is unlikely that the ancients in the cultures where the taboo existed did the detailed and careful statistical analysis needed to show that inbreeding can increase short term genetic risk. They certainly did not have the theory needed to understand why.

For the definition of incest found in some tribes, that no sex inside the clan is allowed, there is a much more obvious explanation. It is to improve the unity of the tribe by forcing the clans to remain friendly. For other versions of the taboo it is hard for me to imagine any rational reason based on evidence available to the people who first invented it.

- i haven't read anything on this in a while, but my impression is that property had lots to do with it. For example, I seem to remember that in Classical Athens, an uncle could marry a neice if she were the sole heir to her father, in order to keep the property in the family. On the otherhand, I'm pretty sure that Post-Christian Rome had a 7 degree limit, which was also held as the standard for the Franks, although they tended to look at the degrees slightly differently. Of course, this doesn't work if you look at the marriage of Louis the Pious and his son to two Welf sisters, so that Charles the Bald's maternal aunt was also his sister-in-law... Off to hunt in Herlihy and Wemple -- I think that's where I read this stuff...JHK

I restored JHK's recent contribution, and also revised the article. "incest" is a term that has many meanings and uses, and one meaning and use is to describe prohibited marriages. I agree that it is sometimes important to distinguish between prohibited sex and prohibited marriage, and I revised the article to make this clear -- I provided two different definitions of incest, and an specific case that includes an example of a forbidden sexual relationship and a forbidden marriage. I also removed some tendentious polemic. SR

"incest" almost universally means "sex" in modern societies. It is VERY important to distinguish between sex and marriage since nobody except sociologists and historians give a damn about marriage anymore. So what's the deal with putting the marriage definition and examples (which nobody cares about) before the sex definition and examples?

Your "example" is extremely bad, suggesting that people throughout history have forbidden both cases of incest. Which is completely false.

The incest taboo is myth. That is reality. Shouldn't encyclopedia entries deal with reality and report myth as myth? By removing the "polemic" you only confirm the people's preconceptions on the matter!

Here's another way to understand just how wrong and stupid SR's view is.

Consider "child abuse". Is it child abuse to leave whip a newborn infant into a coma? Yes, yes it is. And anyone who gainsays this is a moron. Yet, at the turn of the century in Germany, such practices occured. Was it considered child abuse by the natives? Who cares?

What child abusers consider child abuse is irrelevant. It is a well-known fact that no parent considers themselves a child abuser, even when they are. So who gives a damn what the child abusers believe?

Similarly, what the natives consider incest or not is irrelevant. The fact that Trobriand islanders consider some type of incest to be a-ok doesn't mean we should stop calling incest incest. Incest is a specific practice which we believe to be wrong. It isn't "whatever some society believes to be wrong"!

Next you're going to redefine "evil" and say that child sacrifice in Carthage wasn't evil because they never saw a thing wrong with it!

If you can't deal with the reality of incest then lay off the damn page!

Actually, SR, since you can't even differentiate between incest and inbreeding, which are completely different concepts, you should just lay off the page entirely. For the record, incest refers to sex while inbreeding refers to the reduced genetic diversity of children resulting from incest! -- ark

This article seems to be giving equal or greater weight to the POV that there's nothing wrong with incest. Since over 90% of readers (maybe even 99%) would strongly disagree with this POV, shouldn't we give a little more space to the anti-incest POV?

Not that we should come out and denounce it (that would violate our editorial policy). Just that it should be more balanced.

Who objects to incest, and on what grounds? What are the genetic consequences (for humans)? Why is incest a taboo?

Ed Poor, Friday, May 31, 2002