New App Prevents Icelanders from Sleeping With their Relatives

Re:New App Prevents Icelanders from Sleeping With their Rela... by saidajigumi on Tuesday April 16, 2013 @08:29PM (#5561830)

I recall one of Heinlein's books addressing this problem by a different means: a genetic comparison to determine whether a bad genetic reinforcement might occur, rather than relying on the proxy of relatedness.

For Iceland's case as addressed in TFA, that's perhaps a more relevant metric -- that you might end up "crossing" with someone outside of known family, yet who is still closely related enough to present a genetic risk.

I sense a market for a Square-style "DNA chip on a headphone jack" to augment this app. ;-)

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Re:New App Prevents Icelanders from Sleeping With their Rela... by StavrosK on Tuesday April 16, 2013 @08:52PM (#5561909)

> yet who is still closely related enough to present a genetic risk.

Isn't that basically just siblings, and maybe first cousins?

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Re:New App Prevents Icelanders from Sleeping With their Rela... by Turing_Machine on Tuesday April 16, 2013 @09:22PM (#5562022)

Not necessarily. The closer the relation, the greater the probability of bad genes pairing up, but it is, in fact, a probability.

Your fourth cousin might have a copy of the same bad gene as you while your first cousin doesn't.

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Re:New App Prevents Icelanders from Sleeping With their Rela... by StavrosK on Tuesday April 16, 2013 @09:25PM (#5562047)

Ah, I see, thanks. It makes sense now.

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