How does inbreeding in humans cause birth defects?
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Peoples DNA contains defects. The benefit to mating with a stranger is that if your DNA has a defect, theirs can be used instead. If their DNA has a defect, yours can be used instead. This ensures that wherever there is a defect in one of the parents DNA, it won’t be passed down to the child because you can just take the ‘good’ DNA from the other parent.
People who are related have very similar DNA, so if there’s a defect in one of you, you can’t just ‘borrow’ the good DNA from the other person because there’s a good chance they have that same defect too. The result of not being able to replace that defect with good DNA is that the defective DNA manifests in the child in some sort of disability.
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