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by the frequency he found in the U.K. Biobank, an anonymized research database: One in 7,000 people, according to his unpublished analysis, was born to parents who were first-degree relatives—a brother and a sister or a parent and a child.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.

    • MagicShel@programming.dev
      73·
      8 months ago

      You’re overplaying your hand here. Parent/child incest implies rape if the child is underage. Adult sibling/underage sibling implies rape. But incest of siblings who are similar age (whether adult or child) doesn’t necessarily imply rape. Even incest of a parent and their adult child doesn’t imply rape.

      Statistically I’d bet this is predominantly rape and you are largely correct, but by saying incest = rape you’ve overstepped a bit.

          • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            71·
            8 months ago

            That dude sounds like he’s projecting. You’re just trying to clear up something that matters when talking about these sort of topics.

            • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
              41·
              8 months ago

              Yeah, it’s like those aggressive pedo hunters who DEFINITELY aren’t pedophile, but then get caught with a massive CP collection or during an attempt to woo a little kid.