Iceland app prevents accidental incest

[DeSwiss]

AlJazeeraEnglish·Published on May 7, 2013

A new Icelandic app will allow potential romantic partners to check if their relationship could be a social embarrassment. In a small country like Iceland, where almost everybody is distantly related , entering a relationship can be a risky business.

A group of University of Iceland students developed the app that emits a warning sound if you are about to commit a social blunder. Users can simply bump their phones together and the app taps into a database of residents and their family trees dating back to 1,200 years.

Al Jazeera's Tim Friend reports from Reykjavik.

- What does one do if things are looking up, but the cellphone service drops your call?

[SamuelB]

1. Children born of close incestuous unions have greatly increased risk of congenital disorders, death

and disability at least in part due to genetic diseases caused by the inbreeding.

Inbreeding results in increased homozygosity, which can increase the chances of offspring being affected by recessive or deleterious traits. This generally leads to a decreased fitness of a population, which is called inbreeding depression.

If you want to keep the gene pool healthy then this app make logical sense in a country with 321 857 people.

[idwiyo]

2. That's really is a great app.

Below is BBC article about the problems associated with first cousin marriages:

The risks of cousin marriage
By Justin Rowlatt
BBC Newsnight

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4442010.stm