Reply #149: Only very slightly. [View All]

It takes more than one generation of inbreeding for a significant risk of genetic deformity to occur. Think of the increased occurrence of Tay-Sachs disease among the Amish and the Ashkenazic Jews. These are communities that have been closely interbreeding for centuries, and both include descendants of a single man or woman who first had the mutation somewhere in Eastern Europe many years ago. That man or woman's first generation of descendants all had a 50/50 chance of having the mutation. So, it would have been a very bad idea for any of them to breed incestuously. But for any given genetic deformity, there is a much smaller chance that 50/50 that you or your siblings have it, unless you already know that one or both of your parents have it. Also, if genetic deformity is the concern, why not say, "in cases or rape or genetic deformity?" Congenital birth defects do not always result from incest, and incest does not always result in genetic deformity.