It's typically the other way around. Inbreeding is very very frequently used with animals by breeders to help strengthen the stock and promote positive traits. Frequently the first several generations of inbred offspring suffer a high frequency of health problems, due to the pairing of recessive genes that were shared by both related parents. Such offspring have a much higher rate of infant (is that the right term when talking about animals?) mortality, and are much less likely to reproduce, thus culling these negative traits from the pool. After what is referred to by some breeders (at least rat breeders, in my experience) as the "hump"--the couple generations of unhealthy-babies--the stock will become much healthier and stronger, with fewer occurrences of defect than compared to non-inbred pairings.putaro wrote:You can have brother-sister relations and produce a perfectly fine child. In fact, you'll usually produce a fine child. Keep doing it for three or four generations though and you're going to get a mess.
This, of course, applies to animals and not people. There are the strongest of social factors that prevent human inbreeding from ever getting over that "hump". Still, it makes a catchy, if not strictly accurate, public service announcement: "Help improve the human race... fuck your sister today!".
