I am not having sex with the rosebushes no matter if we are closely related or not. But that is just me.
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“‘We hooked up at a young age and now in our 20s, she still wants it. No matter how much I want to stop, I always give it to her. Help me.’ What advice would you give that person?” host Angela Yee read to Oz on air.
Second-cousin relationships aren’t, necessarily, a problem. There’s a marriage between second cousins in my ancestry, and I turned out finetwitch.
But that’s not what he was asked. That was a young man feeling guilty about his relationship with his cousin, who was trying to stop it, and asking for advice on that. The consanguinity was a complication on the real problem of a relationship he was trying and failing to end.
No matter how much I want to stop
is the core of the problem. It’s just that everyone seems unable to get past the “cousins” bit.
Or am I misreading it?
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The basic mistake is somebody thinks “Doctor Oz” could be a source of good advice—the actual nature of the caller’s problem is hardly relevant
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Also fair.
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I guess we know Dr Oz’s favorite movie.
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Yawn.
Now, if Jerry Springer reunited him with some kid who called him “Uncle Dad!”, it might have more of an impact on his base.
At least in Europe, “concern” over cousin marriage is often a disingenuous way to stigmatize cultures where arranged marriage is common (since the two are closely related), and that would include Turkey. So Oz proxies could paint this as a racist attack, you know, if they wanted to be assholes.
As folx have said, there’s no shortage of better and more current things to attack him for.
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Nice Arrested Development reference.
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By “most people” you mean the morality police, right? Consenting adults who aren’t breaking any laws should be left to their own devices.
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It actually is a pretty big problem in Iceland.
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The above is facetious of course, but replace kids/parents with grandkids/grandparents and you have the first cousin situation. Full disclosure, I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a grandparent, but I especially can’t imagine what it’s like to say “I have 7 grandkids… 4 of them are married to each other.”
The second cousin situation is a little more fair at least in sparsely populated areas. But I can’t help thinking it’s a little insulting to the greater community to be like, “none of you all are suitable for marriage, it had to be someone from Great-grandpa’s bloodline.”
So, Bunbain’s rule: don’t marry until all common ancestors are naturally deceased and in faded memory.
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“Slippery elm” turned out to be a misnomer.
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I think you’ve nailed it. Instead of addressing the fact the man was in an intimate relationship he wanted to end and giving him advice about how to do that, Oz instead said “Don’t worry bruh, cousins are fair game!”
And, to be fair, many of the comments here seem to miss that point. Even I’ll admit that my first thought was “well, genetically speaking Dr. Oz is right”. But that’s not the sympathetic reaction, we’re just conditioned to focus first on the lurid details of a story (which are lurid because the media and other interests make them so).
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Reading the article, it doesn’t seem like accidental incest is a big problem in Iceland. Something that may happen from time to time, but not a widespread issue that threatens their healthcare system or society at large. It seemed like more of an interesting add-on to a larger project - useful for promotional purposes, and it certainly got a lot of media attention at the time. Also, it wasn’t a government funded thing - it was students working on a competition being run by the operator of the database. If inbreeding depression were a big issue in Iceland, you’d expect the government to be more heavily involved.
Also, when young icelanders “bump”, it’s probably not the case that they’re looking to get pregnant and they are probably using some form of contraception anyway.
The app was released in 2013 and the links from the article were all dead… I wasn’t able to confirm the app was even in existence still.
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Hey, it’s not a serious issue if only a small number of people start linking up with cousins. If lots do we might need to talk cause there could be some poor outcomes. So far as does it morally or ethically bother me and should we care… not really. I mostly find it hilarious that Oz thought he was connecting to ‘his voting demographic’ by telling them it’s okay to have sex with their cousin.
(My understanding of the science is far from perfect so please feel free to correct me.)
Right? It’s a totally fucked up leap to go from someone asking, “hey, I can’t seem to get out of this relationship,” to, “it’s okay, you won’t make mutant babies.”
It was probably framed to him as a medical question, but the fact that he didn’t include any empathy or comment about how “if you don’t want it, it’s non-consensual and you should not feel like you need to keep doing it,” totally speaks to what kind of leader he would be. As if we didn’t already know.
The ramble took an odd turn a bit later:
“You know, that’s why children, girls don’t like their fathers’ smell. Their pheromones will actually repel their daughters because they’re not supposed to be together,” Oz said, and well, he kept going and added: “My daughters hate my smell.”
Weird volunteer of info there. And applying his particular experience to the entire world. That’s good science! 
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Saying you don’t care about the morals or ethics is not really true, since you obviously care about preventing birth defects due to inbreeding.
But my main point is that it’s not your science that’s wrong, it’s your (and many other people’s) assumption that all sex leads to babies.
Your point that not all sex leads to babies is fair, however I’m not sure I’m taking a moral position by saying it’s worth noting that sometimes having children with cousins can lead to issues. Especially since that is very clearly the context in which this article is discussing it. I don’t entirely disagree with you, but I also think you’re working really hard to try to shame me or get me to admit fault for something we never really disagreed on (unless you remove my comments from context) for a reason I can’t entirely understand. Anyways, it’s a tricky issue and one that Mr. Oz (can we drop the Dr. yet?) would be best to stay out of.
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