Ethics not-with-standing, the biggest problem with incest is the potential for passing on serious recessive-trait birth defects to the children.
There was some accidental incest (yes, I know that sounds suspect, but they truly didn't know they were closely related, in either occurrance) in a branch of my great-great uncle's family, and again in his grand-daughter's generation. The child of that most recent incest (my cousin) is extremely tall (approaching 7'), has horrible back problems, has speech defects and several other nasty birth defects. |
