# DNA Tests Are Uncovering the True Prevalence of Incest  ## Metadata - Author: [[Sarah Zhang]] - Full Title: DNA Tests Are Uncovering the True Prevalence of Incest - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: Widespread DNA testing is revealing that incest is far more common than previously thought. The taboo around discussing incest has made the subject difficult to study, but DNA testing is providing new biological proof of its prevalence. One geneticist found that one in 7,000 people in the UK was born to first-degree relatives, while a genetic genealogist has worked on over 1,000 cases of people born from incest. Many people are discovering the truth about their biological parents through DNA testing, and while some are finding support through online groups, the emotional fallout can be significant. - URL: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/03/dna-tests-incest/677791/ - Source File: web-only ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > 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by the frequency he found in the U.K. Biobank, an anonymized research database: One in 7,000 people, according to his unpublished analysis, was born to parents who were first-degree relatives—a brother and a sister or a parent and a child.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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hsnb1nwhyma56smt7b7eb7a6))