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Originally Posted by jewels
Despite what I've always thought, the article also states that:
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... inbreeding does not directly lead to congenital birth defects per se[citation needed]; it leads to an increase in the frequency of homozygotes. A homozygote encoding a congenital birth defect will produce children with birth defects, but homozygotes that do not encode for congenital birth defects will decrease the number of carriers in a population. If children born with this type of heritable birth defect die (or are killed) before they reproduce, the ultimate effect of inbreeding will be to decrease the frequency of defective genes in the population.
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I'm not sure if this is scientifically accurate, but surely someone knows.  |
This is true, however it vastly increaces the number of children who are born with severe defects. Inbreeding also eliminates many beneficial mutations through genetic drift. This is of concern among the
MHC complex, where a wide variety of alleles helps the effectiveness of the immune system.