The geneticist Jim Wilson, at the University of Edinburgh, was shocked by the frequency he found in the U.K. Biobank, an anonymized research database: One in 7,000 people, according to his unpublished analysis, was born to parents who were first-degree relatives—a brother and a sister or a parent and a child. “That’s way, way more than I think many people would ever imagine,” he told me. And this number is just a floor: It reflects only the cases that resulted in pregnancy, that did not end in miscarriage or abortion, and that led to the birth of a child who grew into an adult who volunteered for a research study.

Most of the people affected may never know about their parentage, but these days, many are stumbling into the truth after AncestryDNA and 23andMe tests.

  • NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    It’s shocking to you that rape exists? Clearly its a bad thing and shouldn’t happen, and it’s upsetting, but I would disagree that most people would be shocked if you told them “more than zero rapes happened this year”.

      • flicker@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        1 out of every 6 women in America are survivors of attempted or completed rape. If you’re shocked someone tells you they’ve been raped, it’s because they’re brave enough to say it, not because it’s statistically unlikely.

    • HeadfullofSoup@kbin.earth
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      6 months ago

      And that just rape how much “keep it in the family” and “keep the blood pure” kind of people exist ? With the expansion of far right everywhere ( and yes i always see Far right people as inbred moron ) i would say a lot