Ok now don’t get me wrong there’s nothing wrong with being attracted to your brother/uncle/cousin as long as you live in a southern state where class is something that you stopped going to when you were 7 but researchers in the UK have found that The Pill may inhibit a womans ability to choose a mate genetically dissimilar to herself.
Science Blog: “Disturbing a woman’s instinctive attraction to genetically different men could result in difficulties when trying to conceive, an increased risk of miscarriage and long intervals between pregnancies. Passing on a lack of diverse genes to a child could also weaken their immune system.
Humans choose partners through their body odour and tend to be attracted to those with a dissimilar genetic make-up to themselves, maintaining genetic diversity. Genes in the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), which helps build the proteins involved in the body’s immune response, also play a prominent role in odour through interaction with skin bacteria. In this way these genes also help determine which individuals find us attractive.
Dr Craig Roberts, in collaboration with Professor Morris Gosling and Professor Marion Petrie from Newcastle University analysed how the contraceptive pill affects odour preferences. One hundred women were asked to indicate their preferences on six male body odour samples, drawn from 97 volunteer samples, before and after initiating contraceptive pill use.”