have a friend who just found out his bio - father was his mothers bio- brother. he is 46 and has lived a really crappy life, he is now concerned that he may have passed down , genetically, problems to his 5 children, is this possible or not ?
2006-06-26 07:34:41 · 6 answers · asked by just_12steps 1 in Health ➔ Mental Health
it can happen -- can affect the development of the baby. well, your friend was lucky with this one. usually when a child is conceived incestuously, they are a little on the "slow" side when it comes to brain development. i've heard a lecture about this before, kinda forgot about it though. i think it's because if the mother and father shared the exact same DNA pattern -- it's TOO compatible -- and it has a negative effect. a little variety does not hurt -- that's why we always find mates outside the family.
about passing the genetics with his children -- ofcourse im guessing that the wife is not his biological sister, is she? if not, then i would think there is about a 75% chance that they would be conceived normally. and also, if there were not genetic problem found in him, then more likely it would not be passed on to his children. (hopefully) it's still possible though, but very little chance
2006-06-26 07:45:52 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Yes there is a chance, genetically, although it's not 100% certain that he has or will pass on genetic defects. I would think though that the emotional effects are just as damaging, and hope that he goes to someone qualified who he could talk to about this, because it can't be an easy thing to find out, and must be a lot of unresolved stuff going round his head. I think he'd feel so much better if he could get some of it off his chest with a good therapist.
2006-06-27 03:01:19 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Inbreeding leads to an increase in homozygosity, that is, the same allele at the same locus on both members of a chromosome pair. This occurs because close relatives are much, much more likely to share the same alleles than unrelated individuals. This is especially important for deleterious recessive genes, which are harmless and inactive in a heterozygous pairing, but when homozygous can cause serious developmental defects. Such offspring have a much higher chance of death before reaching the age of reproduction, leading to what biologists call inbreeding depression, a measurable decrease in fitness due to inbreeding among populations with deleterious recessives.
Some anthropologists are critical of including biology in the study of the incest taboo, and have argued that there can be no biological basis for inbreeding aversion because inbreeding may in fact be a good thing. Leavitt (1990) is a good representative of this point of view, writing that "small inbreeding populations, while initially increasing their chances for harmful homozygotic recessive pairings on a locus, will quickly eliminate such genes from their breeding pools, thus reducing their genetic loads"
2006-06-26 11:01:05 · answer #3 · answered by purple 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Gentically speaking, when two people of similar genetic setup, more particularly when a disease is already running in the family tie the knot, yes, there is every chance that children may be born with that particular disorder
2006-06-26 23:29:13 · answer #4 · answered by dark and beautiful 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
it is possible it souds really strange why do that with your family? when there there are so many to choose from?
2006-06-26 07:39:08 · answer #5 · answered by cliff b 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
YES
2006-06-26 07:47:06 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋