Why does inbreeding cause birth defects?
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People have two copies of every gene. Some copies are broken, but the second copy makes up for it, so they’re healthy and develop fine. If a developing fetus has two broken copies, sometimes this causes birth defects.
You get one copy of each gene from each of your parents. If your parents are closely related, the chances they both gave you bad copy of the SAME gene is much, much higher than if they’re not related, because they share so many genes to begin with.
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