Slashdot Mirror
New Dating Sites Match People Through DNA Tests
The Installer writes with this excerpt from an Associated Press report:
"A couple of genetic testing companies are promising to match couples based on DNA testing, touting the benefits of biological compatibility. The companies claim that a better biological match will mean better sex, less cheating, longer-lasting love and perhaps even healthier children. 'How many dating services can you think of where they can suggest you might have better children?' said Eric Holzle, founder of ScientificMatch.com, one of the first online dating sites to use DNA. ... The idea is that people tend to be attracted to those who have immune system genes that are dissimilar from their own. Biologists say the HLA genes of the immune system — which are responsible for recognizing and marking foreign cells such as viruses so other parts of the immune system can attack them — also determine body odor 'fingerprints.' And people tend to be attracted to the natural body odors of those who have different HLA genes from their own."
"Incest Is Best Inc"
Nice genes...
Yeah... Submit your DNA profile to a for-profit corporation that lets you do things with it through a web interface. Your info will never be hacked. Your info will never be sold. Your info will never be given to government agencies. Trust us.
What could possibly go wrong here?
It's bad enough that I'm legally blind but now I can add it to the list of attributes that might reduce my chances of procreating (as if analyst and programmer weren't bad enough).
Enjoy your gene pool, jerkwads!
crazy dynamite monkey
'The companies claim that a better biological match will mean better sex, less cheating, longer-lasting love and perhaps even healthier children.'
They're lying.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
I don't think I would ever want to date anyone who even remotely resembles me.
That is, they are trying to create "Hybrid Vigor" - matching people whose DNA matches the LEAST. Among other things this should reduce recessive traits. No more blond haired/blue eyed children, but also no more hemophilia.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Indeed - Wikipedia states that the US was one of the first countries to start sterilizing "undesirables", all the way back in 1907. Heck, Oregon had a Eugenics board until 1983...
From TFA...
The idea is that people tend to be attracted to those who have immune system genes that are dissimilar from their own.
Which has been correlated to body odor, I remember from past studies (or a past study), and was referenced in TFA.
But it's a well balanced article, they poke holes in it and share the 'just a money making ploy' contrary side of researchers who found happily married couples with similar immune systems instead of complementary.
In similar news, I'm starting a match making service based upon environmental chemical exposures.
I would like to see the result of this study:
-Take the DNA of all freshmen
-Let the males and females smell each other one by one (in rooms so dark that beauty could be eliminated) and have them rate each other.
-Let the males and females see and rate each others looks (like a criminal lineup)
Now throw all that into a computer to find correlation between DNA / smell / looks.
Now you can build the database to match couples based on DNA. A lot of interesting research could come out ot it too. Exactly which genes likes which genes, and which detest each other. Are there some universally unlikable genes, and what do they code? Are there some universally likable genes, and what do they code?
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
This is why the HTML 6 specification will include an olfactory tag, so that biologically compatible people can agree or disagree on the basis of body odor, rather than the meaning of their words. The W3C is also considering the inclusion of an IQ tag, to further facilitate meaningful communication. It is hoped that an advanced markup system will improve the basic functionality of the internet, while also mitigating many of the problems associated with the wrong people getting together online, for understandable but regrettable reasons. The W3C considers the biggest preventable threat to tomorrow's information exchange to be the population of children born as a result of those unfortunate online hookups.
And people tend to be attracted to the natural body odors
I think slashdotters would have this market cornered.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
I didn't RTFA, because I can proudly say that I was involved in the group that produced MHC mediated sexual selection studies that ScientificMatch.com uses to claim their rationale. A few comments: First, if Scientific match has any wits about them, they'll also consider other information. I don't think anyone's stupid enough to think there's a single correlate to mate selection. But the worry about people who are too different is poorly founded - MHC diversity is strongly retained throughout most human lineages. We've had negative frequency dependant since we were swimming in the ocean, and as a result, if you sequenced any given allele, you'd find that it's just as related to Gorilla sequence as it is another randomly chosen allele. My ex-boss used to have students do this as an exercise to illustrate the point. Because of this, you're just as likely to find someone very MHC (or in humans, HLA) dissimilar next door in these modern, mobile times, than you are in, say, in a distant country.
;)
;)
Second: They're only (to my knowledge) matching at MHC for disassortative matings, not the rest of the Genome. How is this better than picking someone based on hobbies? Because research actually shows that mating patterns in humans follows this pattern. It is a bit of a crock, since the odds of you picking two people at random with similar MHC complements is low, but let's not get into that.
Finally, let me just say, I'm proud that so much scientific blood, sweat and tears into understanding the maintenance of the immune system, and what drives host-parasite co-evolution, has been distilled into an online dating site. Forget having worked with a Nobel laureate, this the highest honour a scientist can know.
In similar news, I'm starting a match making service based upon environmental chemical exposures.
Hey, exposure to ethyl alcohol is strongly correlated to time of conception for a majority of slashdotters.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
And here I thought Smurfs were only a cartoon.
Indeed, but even the Spartans tried to select for some sort of meaningful attribute, as opposed to "poor", "Catholic", "black" and so on.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Now *that's* marketing!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
A cat tag!
When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
why would anyone want a lifetime membership if the company were successful?
There's a lot of potential good that can happen from deliberate changes to how we select mates.
The key word is "we". WE choose, not anyone else. If you're talking about individuals picking and choosing their spouses, that's their own business. Once you move from that to outside forces choosing for them, it's evil.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The football team captain will get the girls.
This was "demonstrated" on a japanese tv show: they had one of the animators of the show and a stunt actor running for 10min to make them sweat and thus emit more pheromones, before putting them in separate boxes with a hole at chest level and had them removing their shirts. Then, six girls were asked to smell them and designate which was the most sexy (without knowing who was in which box). All six of them chose the stunt actor. Apparently, girls are attracted to "bad guys", because they would have more manly pheromones.
(Note: I am neither a biologist nor a native japanese speaker so I might have missed something...)