This year's Darwin Award goes to... Charles Darwin?

[SunnyD]

lulz.

Charles Darwin's family suffered from the deleterious effects of inbreeding, suggests a new study that serves as ironic punctuation to the evolutionary theorist's life work.

Pioneer of the theory that genetic traits affect survival of both individual organisms and species, Darwin wondered in his own lifetime if his marriage to first cousin Emma Wedgwood was having "the evil effects of close interbreeding" that he had observed in plants and animals.

 

[Anubis]

lol

 

[sandorski]

oops

 

[destrekor]

What's interesting, is at the time, he was probably one of the few to even consider what biological impacts making babies with a cousin might actually create.

That was at a time when marriage with blood relatives wasn't rare, not at all.
FDR married his fifth-cousin. Granted, I don't know how much blood relation remains that many steps down the line, but it just goes to show it happened. Especially in well-off and large families.

 

[SunnyD]

What's interesting, is at the time, he was probably one of the few to even consider what biological impacts making babies with a cousin might actually create.

That was at a time when marriage with blood relatives wasn't rare, not at all.
FDR married his fifth-cousin. Granted, I don't know how much blood relation remains that many steps down the line, but it just goes to show it happened. Especially in well-off and large families.

And yet that still didn't stop him...

 

[AznAnarchy99]

The time when marriage with your cousin was sexxxyyyyyy

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

What's interesting, is at the time, he was probably one of the few to even consider what biological impacts making babies with a cousin might actually create.

That was at a time when marriage with blood relatives wasn't rare, not at all.
FDR married his fifth-cousin. Granted, I don't know how much blood relation remains that many steps down the line, but it just goes to show it happened. Especially in well-off and large families.

It's my understanding that after first cousin it basicly doesn't matter as far as genetic defects go, but I'm not sure not something I go out and test personally : p

 

[shiner]

And Queen Victoria became Empress of India. She never even fucking went there, you know?

She was one of our more frumpy queens… they're all frumpy, aren't they? Because it's a bad idea when cousins marry! Bottom of the gene pool, you know. You're just scraping the barrel there, “We've haven't got enough for any more of you royals there, sorry.” First rule of genetics: spread the genes apart! But the royals are just obsessed with, "Are you a royal family? Are you a royal member? Well, then you can marry me ‘cause you're same gene pool, and our IQs will go down the toilet.” Fantastic! That's why there's no crazy royals, they're all kind of, "Hello! Hello, what do you do? You're a plumber! What on Earth is that?"

 

[zinfamous]

What's interesting, is at the time, he was probably one of the few to even consider what biological impacts making babies with a cousin might actually create.

That was at a time when marriage with blood relatives wasn't rare, not at all.
FDR married his fifth-cousin. Granted, I don't know how much blood relation remains that many steps down the line, but it just goes to show it happened. Especially in well-off and large families.

Biologically speaking, no--the general knowledge wasn't there as to why such close breeding was bad. Before Darwin, Mendel theorized about a "gene," before he could properly describe how it worked. Darwin also picked up the notion of the "gene," a century before the structure of DNA
was discovered.

However, the general educated public knew that inbreeding was bad mojo, in that it caused real problems. Laws existed for centuries that forbade marriage and/or mating between brothers/sisters, first cousins(?--mostly frowned-upon, at least), etc.

When you look at Royal lines, of course, the relative inbreeding is massive. While it was accepted that they can't very well take their sisters into bed with them, long-established exchanges and generations of fornication had created a pool of available family members commanding thrones all over Western civilization--mostly distant cousins. And this interrelatedness survives today, and even in the US!

The Clintons and the Bushes are distant cousins, related through the Windsor family tree, of all things.

 

[tk149]

Biologically speaking, no--the general knowledge wasn't there as to why such close breeding was bad. Before Darwin, Mendel theorized about a "gene," before he could properly describe how it worked. Darwin also picked up the notion of the "gene," a century before the structure of DNA
was discovered.

However, the general educated public knew that inbreeding was bad mojo, in that it caused real problems. Laws existed for centuries that forbade marriage and/or mating between brothers/sisters, first cousins(?--mostly frowned-upon, at least), etc.

When you look at Royal lines, of course, the relative inbreeding is massive. While it was accepted that they can't very well take their sisters into bed with them, long-established exchanges and generations of fornication had created a pool of available family members commanding thrones all over Western civilization--mostly distant cousins. And this interrelatedness survives today, and even in the US!

The Clintons and the Bushes are distant cousins, related through the Windsor family tree, of all things.

http://www.livescience.com/health/080207-kissing-cousins.html

But Bittles notes that first-cousin unions were quite common and highly regarded in Western Europe and the United States in the first half of the 19th century. "But as the century progressed, a suspicion that the offspring might not be healthy began to emerge," he said, "and this trend continued throughout the 20th century, resulting in ever fewer first cousin marriages."

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Interbreeding studies do not bode well for sample sizes under 1000.

 

[zinfamous]

http://www.livescience.com/health/080207-kissing-cousins.html

yeah...I mentioned that there weren't really laws against first-cousins, but that it was frowned upon, generally. Maybe not as much as I thought, though.

Tons of people married their first cousins. I'm reminded of that simpsons episode where Jebediah Springfield and Shelby are taking those pioneers to settle their new land, and it is revealed that Shelby's entire understanding of forming a new colony is so that everyone can marry their first cousins. Hence, the forefathers of Shelbyville!

 

[foghorn67]

I thought they generally knew about this due to breeding dogs and war horse husbandry. :shrug: