• Question: if you mate with your third cousin is there a risk of you offsprings being geneticly disabled?

    Asked by ciara2219 to Charlotte, Jo, Kevin, Louise, Valeria on 19 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Kevin Mahon

      Kevin Mahon answered on 19 Jun 2012:


      Not really – we have a percentage for measuring effect of inbreeding on offsrping. This percentage is called “inbreeding coefficient and is computed as a percentage of chances for two alleles (form of genes) to be identical by descent. The higher the number, the worst the effect.

      For brothers/sister (like in Game of Thrones) it’s 25%

      But for third cousins it’s only 0.39% so the risk is there still but it is obviously much less. From a biological point of view at least, obviously in humans there are other considerations to take into account!

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