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The discoverer of evolution made the evolutionarily unsound decision to marry his cousin.
During his lifetime, Darwin wondered if marrying his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, might have contributed to the poor health of their 10 children. Three of Darwin's children died before the age of 10; the rest were sickly and struggled to have their own children.
In a new study, researchers at Ohio State used a specialized program to analyze genealogical data from the Darwin and Wedgwood families. They concluded that Darwin's children suffered from a moderate degree of inbreeding, and this fact was probably a factor in their bad health.
Kind of puts a new spin on the old Darwin Awards.
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Comments:
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Monday 10 May
By Ultrasly
Had me known Mendel before, then it would have been unsound. I doubt it puts a spin on anything. Einstein married his cousin too, but that was before one gene one protein hypothesis (I think). It means nothing.
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Thursday 13 May
By Dan
The Darwins and the Wedgewoods (of Wedgewood china fame)were pretty much the only high status families in that area, so there was a lot of intermarriage over the years (Victorian england was all about class and status, so lower class families wouldn't have been considered suitable for marriage). So it wasn't just that they were cousins, there were multiple other paths of interbreeding too in the relationship.
Be that as it may, genetics was in it's infancy, and there is evidence that Darwin had received Mendel's paper on Genetics in peas, but that he likely never read it. I believe the journal was found in his personal effects after his death, but that the pages had not been "cut" indicating he never read it (you had to physically cut open the pages of periodicals at the time to read them). It's a fascinating "what if" to think of what Darwin would have done with such knowledge. His musings on the subject of inheritance and genetics were pretty far off the mark, and he would have been among the first to say he didn't know how genetic information was inherited.
Monday 10 May
By MrEverdred01
I thought that Darwin realized the error of his ways in his lifetime. I learned about this way back in middle school and that's what the teacher said, but she could have just been assuming he figured it out.
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Thursday 13 May
By Frankii
But that was common then. We might find it odd but it was something people had done for centuries up to that point so that can't really be the explanation
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Friday 14 May
By Dean
exactly. sick and royal crazies and wacko pharaohs were all too common.
Thursday 13 May
By joe
Eienstein too.
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Thursday 13 May
By Dane
Darwin only had just developed the Idea of evolution, he didn't publish his book until he was old, and when someone ells started to have the same Idea. People coming out of Europe, mainly Catholics had warped view of how they saw themselves fit into the world, so such things as marring within the family, and other things was ok then. But the rest of the world already knew that was a bad idea. let's also not forget that upper class family's tended to only go for other upper class, so they had a small gene-pool
The native Americans at least had rules set up so that someone cannot marry withing their won tribe or clan. (A crow can't marry another crow, but all the others are ok)
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Friday 14 May
By Amethyst
In Britain at that time it was fairly standard practice to marry your cousin, particularly amongst the more well-to-do. At a time when genetics wasn't understood (Gregor Mendel was only just about doing his experiments on inherited characteristics of peas), no-one realised exactly what potential problems marrying your cousin could cause.
Take a look at the European monarchies at around the same time period; they all married their cousins, and look how they turned out.
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Wednesday 19 May
By zark169
The problem isn't ONLY because Darwin married his cousin. There's two things that need to be pointed out.
1) Scientists have found that, in most cases, first cousins can marry without any problems because the incidence of genetic diseases is about the same as that of couples of completely unrelated individuals
2) The families of Darwin and his wife had intermarried quite a bit so their genetic similarities were much greater than that of most first cousins.
As such, marriage between cousins isn't automatically bad, the individuals involved should just get checked out first.
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Friday 28 May
By pullyourheadoutofyourass
Darwin was a pigeon breeder, he new quite well what are the advantages and disadvantages of inbreeding.
How do you think (for example) the chihuahua dogs were made? It just happen that thousands of them poop out of wolfs arses by accident and men thought it was fun to keep? No... they were made by selective inbreeding.
Sure you could get a "bad perk" out of it and it will be not pleasant for society but the human species will be always fine. If is not "helping" by a better adaptation for something it will be fazed out by natural selection. Is not like people with bad genetic diseases are the most sexually attractive and breed like crazy...
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