9 ms·

23andMe Informed Me My Husband and I Are Related

92 points by duman 8y ago

tapland 8y ago
We are all related. It's not surprising some third cousins find out they are related. Maybe a fun read, but is it of any importance?
spacehome 8y ago
You share (about) 1/128 of your genes with a third cousin. The chance of any (particular) recessive trait being passed on from both parents as a result of the inbreeding is a whopping 1 in 65,536.
- kkarakk 8y ago
  it says in the article that their second kid was autistic.
  - raverbashing 8y ago
    Given that its causes are still not fully understood I think blaming it on a 3rd degree connection is a bit of a stretch
  - philpem 8y ago
    The root cause of which is -- at least as far as I'm aware -- currently unknown to medical science. It could be a recessive trait (1 in 65536 doesn't mean "impossible")... but it could also be one of a near-infinite number of other possibilities.
  - spacehome 8y ago
    I guess there’s a chance those facts are related.
    - loseyourslinky 8y ago
      Giving birth after 35 (in this case 37) is statistically more risky than offspring from first cousin's. A third cousin is much more distantly related than a first cousin, your first cousin has a pair of the same grandparents as you, your third cousin shares a pair of your Great-great-grandparents.
- stromgo 8y ago
  I'm not sure what you computed. The interesting question is to pick a recessive trait from one of the parents and ask for the chance of it being passed on. The probability that it's being passed on from the parent who has it is 1/2. The probability that it's being passed on from the other parent is (1/2)*(1/128). The combined probability is 1/512, not 1/65,536.
- Veen 8y ago
  I'm not an expert on this, so perhaps you could tell me if a family history of cousin marriage increases the likelihood of the recessive trait being passed by both parents. I mean, if for the last 10 generations a family has been marrying cousins to each other and introducing little variation from people outside the family, the odds are increased, right? I'd imagine cultures with a history of cousin marriage, such as the Pakistani community in the UK, are much more prone to this type of problem than when cousins marry, but none of their forbears married a cousin.
  - kwhitefoot 8y ago
    Yes. See, for instance, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8326382_Influence_of_ethnic_origin_on_the_incidence_of_keratoconus_and_associated_atopic_disease_in_Asian_and_white_patients https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8326382_Influence_o... and for some wider background and reassurance see: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38114212_Commentary_The_background_and_outcomes_of_the_first-cousin_marriage_controversy_in_Great_Britain https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38114212_Commentary...
em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
This is not a big deal. In fact likely better fertility for them: a 2008 deCODE study results show that couples related at the level of third cousins have the greatest number of offspring, with the greatest reproductive success observed for couples related at the level of third and fourth cousins. [1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18258915?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18258915?ordinalpos=1&it...
- mrunkel 8y ago
  I would be enormously surprised if genetic factors were the primary driver in this. I would think cultural norms and socio-economic factors would be the greatest predictors of the number of offsprings. I could easily envision that those same factors could contribute to a rise in intermarriages between 3rd and 4th cousins. For example, in small communities like "hill people" in the Appalachians, or the Hasidic community in NY.
  - loseyourslinky 8y ago
    The study is specifically of native Icelander's, between 1800 and 1965.
russellbeattie 8y ago
The sociological effects of DNA matching sites are going to be interesting to watch. I personally found out a year or so ago that my dad wasn't my biological father. At the age of 45, that's an, um, interesting secret to suddenly discover. Now, imagine what happens in a society with strict laws/rules/mores about this sort of thing? Well, we won't have to imagine for long. I'm quite sure my experience is a lot more common than most people realize, and I think much of the world isn't ready for it.
- __david__ 8y ago
  On the other side of the coin, I know someone who recently found his biological parents at age 50 through one of these places. Turns out both he and his biological parents had tried to find each other in the past but were stymied legally. This kind of thing exposes secrets. Some of those secrets could be uncomfortable (I'm truly sorry you have to deal with what you discovered!), but some can be good. It'll be interesting to see how society going forward reacts to biological ancestry secrets not being able to be swept under the rug so easily.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > I'm quite sure my experience is a lot more common than most people realize, and I think much of the world isn't ready for it. Nonpaternity is quite rare overall, and still unusual even when the putative father has so little paternity confidence that he demands a paternity test. https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/12/04/how-paternity-testing-is-like-international-trade/ https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/12/04/how-paternity-test...
  - eesmith 8y ago
    I wonder if there how those low numbers have changed over time. I ask from personal history. My grandfather was away in WWII when one of my aunts was conceived. As my grandmother put it, she was lonely. All of the adults at that time knew, but kept it a secret. None of the kids knew until that aunt was about 45 and diagnosed with a cancer ... with a genetic susceptibility passed down though the male line. My grandparents figured it was time to reveal that secret. I therefore conjecture that the numbers in the US were higher during WWII.
throwyawaaaa 8y ago
I work in genomics. My lab, many of my friends and acquaintances work in genomics or had to dabble with it for at least one of their projects. You would think we would all be fascinated by this stuff, getting to know your own DNA and everything. Yet I don't know a single person who would even consider using 23andMe's service. To me this is all an elaborate scam. Why on earth would you pay them to give them your data?! At least with Google et al. we know that if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. With this company you end up $100 (or whatever) short and you surrender your data for it to be sold to advertisers, insurance companies and whatnot. And not just stupid things like your Amazon shopping history or your latest Tinder conversations (which are in themselves pretty damn intimate if you ask me) but the most intimate thing of all. I actually disagree with behavioral genetics/sociobiology fundamentalists who think there's little more to the self than one's DNA, but just because one cannot make much out of it doesn't mean it can't be misused. If Gattaca implications sound scary, imagine what would happen if the decision makers had no idea what they were doing in the first place. Because that's where we are at this point: just because X variant is associated with Y% more incidence of whatever disease does not mean extra care should be taken regarding risk factors, insurance policies, etc. The correlations are interesting when combined with other data but most of the time we have no idea what's going on and what it is that makes variant X cause disease Y, if it does at all. Doesn't mean it won't be misused. Please people, don't pay to get your data swindled out of you. Stop with this weird fascination with your DNA, and stop trying to look for an answer when are barely asking the questions.
- qball 8y ago
  >Doesn't mean it won't be misused. To add to this, though genetic information may be protected against defining a pre-existing medical condition for insurance purposes today, there's zero guarantee that that law protecting you will still exist in the future, or extend to your descendants (which can be assumed to carry roughly half of your genetic material). Once you've given this data away without any guarantee that it'll be destroyed at the end (if such a thing is even possible), you can't take it back, and you could potentially be screwing over those who didn't make that choice.
  - 8y ago
reacharavindh 8y ago
Two thoughts came rushing to my mind after reading this. Disclaimer: I have not researched the scientific background of these thoughts. They are mere thoughts. It made me uncomfortable to read about the autistic child at the end of the story. Was Autism more probable because of the closer genetic relationship of parents? I was raised in southern India, and some of our families have a fascinating astrological tradition about not marrying someone from same "Gothram". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotra https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotra Is it possible that our ancestors knew that certain genetic combinations were unhealthy/undesirable even without a scientific background and adopted these rules for the society?
- uvesten 8y ago
  It is a fact, not a possibility. That's (a big part of) the reason that incest is a taboo in all cultures.
- mindentropy 8y ago
  I am from India(South) and also coming from a family where there are quite a lot of people in the medical field. Yes it was known not to marry inside the family by our ancestors. I know several people who are suffering from various birth defects due to marrying very close and inside the family and yes it is told by the doctors. Gotra is completely screwed up now. A system has to be taken seriously. If a person doesn't know his Gotra then he is just arbitrarily assigned one which becomes dangerous when done in huge volumes. Also in India there are caste communities which are smaller and when they have to marry inside their families problems start cropping up. There is a huge demand for home nurses and speech and hearing specialists in the Gulf region. This is because of consanguineous marriages very prevalent there. There are a lot of children born with mental or speech disabilities.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- eesmith 8y ago
  Nearly every culture has taboos on incest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest comments "sexual relations with a first-degree relative (such as a parent or sibling) are almost universally forbidden". If you were Christian you would point to Leviticus 18:6-18 for the Biblical definition of incest. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+18%3A6-18&version=ESV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+18%3A... . As the Wikipedia page I linked to further states: "cultural anthropologists have noted that inbreeding avoidance cannot form the sole basis for the incest taboo because the boundaries of the incest prohibition vary widely between cultures, and not necessarily in ways that maximize the avoidance of inbreeding." The further refinement of your question might be, how do the unique aspects of the astrological tradition affect inbreeding? In order to test your hypothesis you would need to define gotras. I will quote from the Wikipedia page you linked to: > the definition of gotra as descending from eight sages and then branching out to several families was thrown out by the Bombay High Court. The court called the idea of Brahmin families descending from an unbroken line of common ancestors as indicated by the names of their respective gotras "impossible to accept." The court consulted relevant Hindu texts and stressed the need for Hindu society and law to keep up with the times, emphasising that notions of good social behaviour and the general ideology of the Hindu society had changed. The court also said that the mass of material in the Hindu texts is so vast and so full of contradictions that it is a near-impossible task to reduce it to order and coherence.
cgrand-net 8y ago
According to "An Association Between the Kinship and Fertility of Human Couple" (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/319/5864/813.long http://science.sciencemag.org/content/319/5864/813.long), third (or fourth) cousins have optimal reproductive success. Reproductive success is not just the number of children (because 1st or 2nd cousins couples tend to have more children but with associated health and/or reproductive problems), but the whole descendance.
baddox 8y ago
Third cousins sounds like a non-issue to me, and it sounds like the author and spouse generally agree. I've never knowingly met any second cousins or any other descendants of my great-grandparents (who are not also in my grandparents' lineage). I wonder if there are any estimates on how common unaware third-cousin marriages are.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  It’s interesting how much that can vary. I’ve met every one of my second cousins on 3 out of 4 family branches (one grandparent was estranged from their family). Those who live nearby I’m closer with than first cousins who live further away. My and my siblings’ children will also know some of their third cousins, and see them at least once every few years at holidays. I’ve met a couple third cousins, and am fairly certain with any others (aside from that one branch of the family), we’d discover our relationship well before being together long enough to consider marriage. That said, I wonder to what degree physical proximity plays a role. If the second cousins didn’t for the most part live in the same metro area as the entire rest of the family, we’d probably see them even more rarely than the set of first cousins who live a 3-hour flight away - which is to say, roughly once a decade.
  - baddox 8y ago
    It is fascinating how people grow up with such varying connections with their extended family. Even growing up I would only see my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and first cousins once or twice a year at major holidays. Most years there would be a nearby annual family reunion of my mother’s mother’s parents’ lineage. I remember it mostly as a lot of older people I didn’t know, and none of them lived near me (the venue was a 2-3 hour drive from where I grew up, and I don’t know how far other people drove.) But in my high school class there were definitely lots of people who seemed to be cousins with each other, and had massive family reunions in town. In high school my friends always joked about these extended family events as a hassle, but part of me thinks that perhaps I missed out on something there. It’s interesting to think about the factors that influence a child’s experience with extended family. I grew up only two hours from where my mother grew up, while my father had moved quite far before meeting my mother. My mother had two siblings and my father had one, which is perhaps on the low side for America in that time (my parents were born in the 1950s). Another interesting thing is that I have never met anyone outside my immediate family with my last name. My father only had one sister, who was married, so those cousins have a different last name. My father’s father died young (long before my parents met), and my grandmother remarried, so she had a different surname for my entire life. I grew up in a very small town in a rural area, and I would have expected this to be the sort of place to be where people don’t move far from home and where extended families stay close together. But even my extended family in the same US state (but a couple hours’ drive away) was never super close to me. I barely escaped high school before social media went mainstream, so I wonder if I would have forged closer relationships with my extended family with the help of social media.
funkythings 8y ago
The author using the word "mansplaining" disqualifies her from any hint of professionalism
- fouc 8y ago
  The word wasn't used in the pejorative sense in the article.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Still, it's attempting to normalize this term in people's dictionary.
  - i_am_nomad 8y ago
    Thanks for clearing that up, my nigga.
  - nextlevelwizard 8y ago
    Considering how this and my comments have been flagged we hit right on the mark. You can't casually use sexist remarks towards women, but apparently not only is it OK to use them towards men, but mentioning it as negative results into flagged post.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
nextlevelwizard 8y ago
>Doug: (mansplaining)... and that's where the value of the blog post ends
- akamel 8y ago
  it was a joke
  - serf 8y ago
    an excuse used by those who have made sexist comments since time immemorial.
  - odiroot 8y ago
    The point still stands. We cannot allow to normalise such toxic language.
cm2187 8y ago
A relative of mine who is a doctor mentioned to me that the opposite is a common problem when children volunteer to donate an organ to a parent. They must test for DNA compatibility which often yields bad surprises. Apparently it is gradual. The DNA of the first child almost always matches, the second a little less, the third is where the odds reduce significantly. Granted that was in France...
- narag 8y ago
  That's not the opposite, it's the same thing looking from a different place.
  - JdeBP 8y ago
    A different position is the primary meaning of "opposite". It does not necessarily mean "contrary".
yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
I'm curious of the legitimacy of this story, given one of the comments at the bottom: > Don’t believe the results. I’m retired FDA and investigated this company since its inception. 23and me swabs go to labcorp in NC. They aren’t a lab. They take the results and issue what is tantamount to a horoscope based on your demographic information. Save your $100 or whatever they are charging now.
- svet_0 8y ago
  This is a ridiculous claim. It might be less accurate than other options (although I doubt that), and misses some genetic features (repeats, insertions, translocations or deletions), but there's a huge distance between that and "a horoscope based on your demographic information".
petercooper 8y ago
We're all related, really. It just depends to what degree you want to consider "related". I'm related to my cat, to you, and even to the tree outside my office if I go back enough generations.
ig1 8y ago
It's touched upon in the article, but in reality they're probably not third cousins. 23andme gives relationship estimates for people based on percentage of dna shared, these estimates are based general population data. However they're not accurate for endogamous population like Ashkenazi Jews. Any two Ashkenazi Jews who get married are likely to show up as cousins to each other, simply because there's so much shared DNA within that community. This isn't an exceptional case, but rather the norm for such populations.
JdeBP 8y ago
Several commenters in this discussion have taken as read that the couple are third cousins. Reading the whole article, one finds buried at the bottom the fact that this turned out to be unproven, because the genetic tests are based upon general assumptions that are not true for their segment of the population.
esturk 8y ago
The author alluded to the link that her second child is autistic and the relatedness with her spouse. But what's more glaring is that her second conception occurred when she was 37 and her husband 39. There are studies that showed the increased incidence of child autism conceived from older fathers.
knbknb 8y ago
Here is the transcript of a recent, interesting audio podcast with Anne Wojcicki, CEO of 23andMe. https://www.recode.net/2018/10/20/18002614/anne-wojcicki-23andme-dna-fake-science-goop-gwyneth-paltrow-kara-swisher-podcast-recode-decode https://www.recode.net/2018/10/20/18002614/anne-wojcicki-23a... I think what she argues in the podcast is quite reasonable. Asked about the biggest mistake her startup made in the founding phase, she answered that " I think that we were overly optimistic about the state of scientific literacy in this country. " And that is true in general. I live in Germany, I am a 23andMe customer, and from my results I learned quite a bit about myself. Locally, whenever I tried to talk about this genetic testing service, I have never had a deeper conversation about this subject matter, even with highly educated folks. It's similar to non-conversations about email encryption and IT security many of you readers might have had.

92 points by duman 8y ago

We are all related. It's not surprising some third cousins find out they are related. Maybe a fun read, but is it of any importance?

spacehome 8y ago

You share (about) 1/128 of your genes with a third cousin. The chance of any (particular) recessive trait being passed on from both parents as a result of the inbreeding is a whopping 1 in 65,536.

kkarakk 8y ago
it says in the article that their second kid was autistic.
- raverbashing 8y ago
  Given that its causes are still not fully understood I think blaming it on a 3rd degree connection is a bit of a stretch
- philpem 8y ago
  The root cause of which is -- at least as far as I'm aware -- currently unknown to medical science. It could be a recessive trait (1 in 65536 doesn't mean "impossible")... but it could also be one of a near-infinite number of other possibilities.
- spacehome 8y ago
  I guess there’s a chance those facts are related.
  - loseyourslinky 8y ago
    Giving birth after 35 (in this case 37) is statistically more risky than offspring from first cousin's. A third cousin is much more distantly related than a first cousin, your first cousin has a pair of the same grandparents as you, your third cousin shares a pair of your Great-great-grandparents.
stromgo 8y ago
I'm not sure what you computed. The interesting question is to pick a recessive trait from one of the parents and ask for the chance of it being passed on. The probability that it's being passed on from the parent who has it is 1/2. The probability that it's being passed on from the other parent is (1/2)*(1/128). The combined probability is 1/512, not 1/65,536.
Veen 8y ago
I'm not an expert on this, so perhaps you could tell me if a family history of cousin marriage increases the likelihood of the recessive trait being passed by both parents. I mean, if for the last 10 generations a family has been marrying cousins to each other and introducing little variation from people outside the family, the odds are increased, right? I'd imagine cultures with a history of cousin marriage, such as the Pakistani community in the UK, are much more prone to this type of problem than when cousins marry, but none of their forbears married a cousin.
- kwhitefoot 8y ago
  Yes. See, for instance, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8326382_Influence_of_ethnic_origin_on_the_incidence_of_keratoconus_and_associated_atopic_disease_in_Asian_and_white_patients https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8326382_Influence_o... and for some wider background and reassurance see: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38114212_Commentary_The_background_and_outcomes_of_the_first-cousin_marriage_controversy_in_Great_Britain https://www.researchgate.net/publication/38114212_Commentary...

em3rgent0rdr 8y ago

This is not a big deal. In fact likely better fertility for them: a 2008 deCODE study results show that couples related at the level of third cousins have the greatest number of offspring, with the greatest reproductive success observed for couples related at the level of third and fourth cousins. [1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18258915?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18258915?ordinalpos=1&it...

mrunkel 8y ago
I would be enormously surprised if genetic factors were the primary driver in this. I would think cultural norms and socio-economic factors would be the greatest predictors of the number of offsprings. I could easily envision that those same factors could contribute to a rise in intermarriages between 3rd and 4th cousins. For example, in small communities like "hill people" in the Appalachians, or the Hasidic community in NY.
- loseyourslinky 8y ago
  The study is specifically of native Icelander's, between 1800 and 1965.

russellbeattie 8y ago

The sociological effects of DNA matching sites are going to be interesting to watch. I personally found out a year or so ago that my dad wasn't my biological father. At the age of 45, that's an, um, interesting secret to suddenly discover. Now, imagine what happens in a society with strict laws/rules/mores about this sort of thing? Well, we won't have to imagine for long. I'm quite sure my experience is a lot more common than most people realize, and I think much of the world isn't ready for it.

__david__ 8y ago
On the other side of the coin, I know someone who recently found his biological parents at age 50 through one of these places. Turns out both he and his biological parents had tried to find each other in the past but were stymied legally. This kind of thing exposes secrets. Some of those secrets could be uncomfortable (I'm truly sorry you have to deal with what you discovered!), but some can be good. It'll be interesting to see how society going forward reacts to biological ancestry secrets not being able to be swept under the rug so easily.
thaumasiotes 8y ago
> I'm quite sure my experience is a lot more common than most people realize, and I think much of the world isn't ready for it. Nonpaternity is quite rare overall, and still unusual even when the putative father has so little paternity confidence that he demands a paternity test. https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/12/04/how-paternity-testing-is-like-international-trade/ https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/12/04/how-paternity-test...
- eesmith 8y ago
  I wonder if there how those low numbers have changed over time. I ask from personal history. My grandfather was away in WWII when one of my aunts was conceived. As my grandmother put it, she was lonely. All of the adults at that time knew, but kept it a secret. None of the kids knew until that aunt was about 45 and diagnosed with a cancer ... with a genetic susceptibility passed down though the male line. My grandparents figured it was time to reveal that secret. I therefore conjecture that the numbers in the US were higher during WWII.

throwyawaaaa 8y ago

I work in genomics. My lab, many of my friends and acquaintances work in genomics or had to dabble with it for at least one of their projects. You would think we would all be fascinated by this stuff, getting to know your own DNA and everything. Yet I don't know a single person who would even consider using 23andMe's service. To me this is all an elaborate scam. Why on earth would you pay them to give them your data?! At least with Google et al. we know that if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. With this company you end up $100 (or whatever) short and you surrender your data for it to be sold to advertisers, insurance companies and whatnot. And not just stupid things like your Amazon shopping history or your latest Tinder conversations (which are in themselves pretty damn intimate if you ask me) but the most intimate thing of all. I actually disagree with behavioral genetics/sociobiology fundamentalists who think there's little more to the self than one's DNA, but just because one cannot make much out of it doesn't mean it can't be misused. If Gattaca implications sound scary, imagine what would happen if the decision makers had no idea what they were doing in the first place. Because that's where we are at this point: just because X variant is associated with Y% more incidence of whatever disease does not mean extra care should be taken regarding risk factors, insurance policies, etc. The correlations are interesting when combined with other data but most of the time we have no idea what's going on and what it is that makes variant X cause disease Y, if it does at all. Doesn't mean it won't be misused. Please people, don't pay to get your data swindled out of you. Stop with this weird fascination with your DNA, and stop trying to look for an answer when are barely asking the questions.

qball 8y ago
>Doesn't mean it won't be misused. To add to this, though genetic information may be protected against defining a pre-existing medical condition for insurance purposes today, there's zero guarantee that that law protecting you will still exist in the future, or extend to your descendants (which can be assumed to carry roughly half of your genetic material). Once you've given this data away without any guarantee that it'll be destroyed at the end (if such a thing is even possible), you can't take it back, and you could potentially be screwing over those who didn't make that choice.
- 8y ago

reacharavindh 8y ago

Two thoughts came rushing to my mind after reading this. Disclaimer: I have not researched the scientific background of these thoughts. They are mere thoughts. It made me uncomfortable to read about the autistic child at the end of the story. Was Autism more probable because of the closer genetic relationship of parents? I was raised in southern India, and some of our families have a fascinating astrological tradition about not marrying someone from same "Gothram". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotra https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotra Is it possible that our ancestors knew that certain genetic combinations were unhealthy/undesirable even without a scientific background and adopted these rules for the society?

uvesten 8y ago
It is a fact, not a possibility. That's (a big part of) the reason that incest is a taboo in all cultures.
mindentropy 8y ago
I am from India(South) and also coming from a family where there are quite a lot of people in the medical field. Yes it was known not to marry inside the family by our ancestors. I know several people who are suffering from various birth defects due to marrying very close and inside the family and yes it is told by the doctors. Gotra is completely screwed up now. A system has to be taken seriously. If a person doesn't know his Gotra then he is just arbitrarily assigned one which becomes dangerous when done in huge volumes. Also in India there are caste communities which are smaller and when they have to marry inside their families problems start cropping up. There is a huge demand for home nurses and speech and hearing specialists in the Gulf region. This is because of consanguineous marriages very prevalent there. There are a lot of children born with mental or speech disabilities.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
eesmith 8y ago
Nearly every culture has taboos on incest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest comments "sexual relations with a first-degree relative (such as a parent or sibling) are almost universally forbidden". If you were Christian you would point to Leviticus 18:6-18 for the Biblical definition of incest. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+18%3A6-18&version=ESV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+18%3A... . As the Wikipedia page I linked to further states: "cultural anthropologists have noted that inbreeding avoidance cannot form the sole basis for the incest taboo because the boundaries of the incest prohibition vary widely between cultures, and not necessarily in ways that maximize the avoidance of inbreeding." The further refinement of your question might be, how do the unique aspects of the astrological tradition affect inbreeding? In order to test your hypothesis you would need to define gotras. I will quote from the Wikipedia page you linked to: > the definition of gotra as descending from eight sages and then branching out to several families was thrown out by the Bombay High Court. The court called the idea of Brahmin families descending from an unbroken line of common ancestors as indicated by the names of their respective gotras "impossible to accept." The court consulted relevant Hindu texts and stressed the need for Hindu society and law to keep up with the times, emphasising that notions of good social behaviour and the general ideology of the Hindu society had changed. The court also said that the mass of material in the Hindu texts is so vast and so full of contradictions that it is a near-impossible task to reduce it to order and coherence.

cgrand-net 8y ago

According to "An Association Between the Kinship and Fertility of Human Couple" (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/319/5864/813.long http://science.sciencemag.org/content/319/5864/813.long), third (or fourth) cousins have optimal reproductive success. Reproductive success is not just the number of children (because 1st or 2nd cousins couples tend to have more children but with associated health and/or reproductive problems), but the whole descendance.

baddox 8y ago

Third cousins sounds like a non-issue to me, and it sounds like the author and spouse generally agree. I've never knowingly met any second cousins or any other descendants of my great-grandparents (who are not also in my grandparents' lineage). I wonder if there are any estimates on how common unaware third-cousin marriages are.

cimmanom 8y ago
It’s interesting how much that can vary. I’ve met every one of my second cousins on 3 out of 4 family branches (one grandparent was estranged from their family). Those who live nearby I’m closer with than first cousins who live further away. My and my siblings’ children will also know some of their third cousins, and see them at least once every few years at holidays. I’ve met a couple third cousins, and am fairly certain with any others (aside from that one branch of the family), we’d discover our relationship well before being together long enough to consider marriage. That said, I wonder to what degree physical proximity plays a role. If the second cousins didn’t for the most part live in the same metro area as the entire rest of the family, we’d probably see them even more rarely than the set of first cousins who live a 3-hour flight away - which is to say, roughly once a decade.
- baddox 8y ago
  It is fascinating how people grow up with such varying connections with their extended family. Even growing up I would only see my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and first cousins once or twice a year at major holidays. Most years there would be a nearby annual family reunion of my mother’s mother’s parents’ lineage. I remember it mostly as a lot of older people I didn’t know, and none of them lived near me (the venue was a 2-3 hour drive from where I grew up, and I don’t know how far other people drove.) But in my high school class there were definitely lots of people who seemed to be cousins with each other, and had massive family reunions in town. In high school my friends always joked about these extended family events as a hassle, but part of me thinks that perhaps I missed out on something there. It’s interesting to think about the factors that influence a child’s experience with extended family. I grew up only two hours from where my mother grew up, while my father had moved quite far before meeting my mother. My mother had two siblings and my father had one, which is perhaps on the low side for America in that time (my parents were born in the 1950s). Another interesting thing is that I have never met anyone outside my immediate family with my last name. My father only had one sister, who was married, so those cousins have a different last name. My father’s father died young (long before my parents met), and my grandmother remarried, so she had a different surname for my entire life. I grew up in a very small town in a rural area, and I would have expected this to be the sort of place to be where people don’t move far from home and where extended families stay close together. But even my extended family in the same US state (but a couple hours’ drive away) was never super close to me. I barely escaped high school before social media went mainstream, so I wonder if I would have forged closer relationships with my extended family with the help of social media.

funkythings 8y ago

The author using the word "mansplaining" disqualifies her from any hint of professionalism

fouc 8y ago
The word wasn't used in the pejorative sense in the article.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Still, it's attempting to normalize this term in people's dictionary.
- i_am_nomad 8y ago
  Thanks for clearing that up, my nigga.
- nextlevelwizard 8y ago
  Considering how this and my comments have been flagged we hit right on the mark. You can't casually use sexist remarks towards women, but apparently not only is it OK to use them towards men, but mentioning it as negative results into flagged post.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

nextlevelwizard 8y ago

>Doug: (mansplaining)... and that's where the value of the blog post ends

akamel 8y ago
it was a joke
- serf 8y ago
  an excuse used by those who have made sexist comments since time immemorial.
- odiroot 8y ago
  The point still stands. We cannot allow to normalise such toxic language.

cm2187 8y ago

A relative of mine who is a doctor mentioned to me that the opposite is a common problem when children volunteer to donate an organ to a parent. They must test for DNA compatibility which often yields bad surprises. Apparently it is gradual. The DNA of the first child almost always matches, the second a little less, the third is where the odds reduce significantly. Granted that was in France...

narag 8y ago
That's not the opposite, it's the same thing looking from a different place.
- JdeBP 8y ago
  A different position is the primary meaning of "opposite". It does not necessarily mean "contrary".

yakshaving_jgt 8y ago

I'm curious of the legitimacy of this story, given one of the comments at the bottom: > Don’t believe the results. I’m retired FDA and investigated this company since its inception. 23and me swabs go to labcorp in NC. They aren’t a lab. They take the results and issue what is tantamount to a horoscope based on your demographic information. Save your $100 or whatever they are charging now.

svet_0 8y ago
This is a ridiculous claim. It might be less accurate than other options (although I doubt that), and misses some genetic features (repeats, insertions, translocations or deletions), but there's a huge distance between that and "a horoscope based on your demographic information".

petercooper 8y ago

We're all related, really. It just depends to what degree you want to consider "related". I'm related to my cat, to you, and even to the tree outside my office if I go back enough generations.

ig1 8y ago

It's touched upon in the article, but in reality they're probably not third cousins. 23andme gives relationship estimates for people based on percentage of dna shared, these estimates are based general population data. However they're not accurate for endogamous population like Ashkenazi Jews. Any two Ashkenazi Jews who get married are likely to show up as cousins to each other, simply because there's so much shared DNA within that community. This isn't an exceptional case, but rather the norm for such populations.

JdeBP 8y ago

Several commenters in this discussion have taken as read that the couple are third cousins. Reading the whole article, one finds buried at the bottom the fact that this turned out to be unproven, because the genetic tests are based upon general assumptions that are not true for their segment of the population.

esturk 8y ago

The author alluded to the link that her second child is autistic and the relatedness with her spouse. But what's more glaring is that her second conception occurred when she was 37 and her husband 39. There are studies that showed the increased incidence of child autism conceived from older fathers.

knbknb 8y ago

Here is the transcript of a recent, interesting audio podcast with Anne Wojcicki, CEO of 23andMe. https://www.recode.net/2018/10/20/18002614/anne-wojcicki-23andme-dna-fake-science-goop-gwyneth-paltrow-kara-swisher-podcast-recode-decode https://www.recode.net/2018/10/20/18002614/anne-wojcicki-23a... I think what she argues in the podcast is quite reasonable. Asked about the biggest mistake her startup made in the founding phase, she answered that " I think that we were overly optimistic about the state of scientific literacy in this country. " And that is true in general. I live in Germany, I am a 23andMe customer, and from my results I learned quite a bit about myself. Locally, whenever I tried to talk about this genetic testing service, I have never had a deeper conversation about this subject matter, even with highly educated folks. It's similar to non-conversations about email encryption and IT security many of you readers might have had.