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by the frequency he found in the U.K. Biobank, an anonymized research database: One in 7,000 people, according to his unpublished analysis, was born to parents who were first-degree relatives—a brother and a sister or a parent and a child.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.

Most of the people affected may never know about their parentage, but these days, many are stumbling into the truth after AncestryDNA and 23andMe tests.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I’m sure they do a lot more tracking than that. It may also be that some of these niches are more likely to have “whales”. One whale might be more profitable than many/all freeloaders

    • Jarix@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      That’s a good point i haven’t heard anyone else mention. The combination of any style of porn with a built in plotline that connects to enough whales will probably proliferate damned quick one a few people get some success with it