Reasons why not to marry your cousin

Scene from “Arrested Development,” episode, “Fakin’ It”, George Michael (Michael Cera, L) and Maeby (Alia Shawkat, R) participate in a mock wedding to entertain Alzheimer’s patients

Human fertility increases the further away your mate’s hometown. Labouriau, Rodrigo, Amorim, Antonio, “Human Fertility Increases With Marital Radius,” Genetics 2008 178: 601-603

Marry a foreigner. A stranger. The new mysterious traveller. This assumes you meet someone you don’t know from far away who is not a psychopath.

Or, put another way, try to avoid having children with people who are in your family if you want to improve fertility.

“Love among Y chromosome haplotypes” original by Swivelchair, all rights waived totally if there are any (Modified from, Willuweit S, Roewer L, on behalf of the International Forensic Y Chromosome User Group (2007) Y chromosome haplotype reference database (YHRD): Update, Forensic Science International: Genetics 1(2) 83-87(external link) )

Here is a consanguinity interactive map from Murdoch University. You can click and see, for example, that Boston, in the 1980′s, had certain ethinic populations that had a high incidence of consanguinity. This is just a screen shot, click above or here: consanguinity interactive map for the map to get to the interactive map.

Here’s the abstract (after the jump)

Human Fertility Increases With Marital Radius

Rodrigo Labouriau^*,1 and António Amorim ^* Department of Genetics and Biotechnology, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Aarhus, DK-8830 Tjele, Denmark and University of Porto, Portugal and IPATIMUP, Rua Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal

¹ Corresponding author: Department of Genetics and Biotechnology, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Aarhus, Blichers Alle, Postbox 50, DK-8830 Tjele, Denmark.
E-mail: rodrigo.labouriau@agrsci.dk

We report a positive association between marital radius (distance between mates’ birthplaces) and fertility detected in a large population. Spurious association due to socioeconomic factors is discarded by a conditional analysis involving income, education, and urbanicity. Strong evidence of consanguinity’s deleterious effects affecting an entire human population is provided.

Tags: consanguinity, dating, fertility, hapmap, love, marriage, Marriage and divorce, mating, Men and women