Mr. James Russell of Cashiers, N.C., recently justified meat eating in the Asheville Citizen-Times by explaining that humans are biologically classified as carnivores. His reasoning was simple: The consumption of animal flesh is right because it is natural.
Unfortunately, Mr. Russell got his facts wrong. Zoologists place humans in the order Primates (family Hominidae), not in the order Carnivora. Furthermore, like rats, humans are omnivores, not carnivores. But more troubling is Mr. Russell's belief that humans should look to nature for moral guidance. He justifies meat eating in humans on the grounds that other animals eat one another. I suspect, however, that Russell does not approve of gang rape, adultery, cannibalism, and the consumption of feces, all of which are practiced in nature by our four-legged brethren. While moral codes exist in other species, when push comes to shove, humans have the capacity to operate on a higher ethical plane.
The (Nearly) Universal Taboo
This is why, on matters of morality, I generally agree with Katherine Hepburn's Rose Sayer, who quips to Humphrey Bogart's Charlie Allnut in The African Queen, "Nature is what we are put in this world to rise above." However, there is an exception to the principle that we should not turn to nature for moral guidance. It is the rule that says, "Don't have sex with first-degree relatives." First-degree relatives are the individuals with whom you share 50 percent of your genes: your parents, your children, and your siblings. Indeed, nonhuman animals have evolved a host of strategies to prevent incest (here). Even plants possess anti-incest mechanisms (here).
As University of Miami psychologists Debra Lieberman and Adam Smith documented in a recent article in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, humans have developed biologically based social and psychological mechanisms to deter incest. With very few exceptions, marriages between brothers and sisters and between parents and their children are verboten in every human culture. The primary psychological anti-incest mechanism is the "yuck" response. Even the idea of sex with Mom, Dad, Bro, or Sis is upsetting to most people. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt has found that nearly everyone is repelled by the prospect of brother-sister sex, even in hypothetical situations in which there is no chance of pregnancy (here).
The Biological Costs of Incest
This raises an interesting question: Just what's so bad about incest? Sure, having sex with your dad or your sister seems gross, but why? Some anthropologists have argued that incest taboos are simply learned social conventions. This explanation, however, doesn't make sense to me, as it does not explain the widespread existence of anti-incest mechanisms in creatures ranging from cockroaches to chimpanzees. Second, the incest taboo is about as close to a universal law as human moral rules get.
Why should mechanisms to avoid incest be so widespread in nature and across human societies? The answer is simple. The big problem with having sex with Mom, Dad, Bro, or Sis is that there is an astonishingly high chance that your offspring will be born with a serious birth defect. Take the results of a study of Czechoslovakian children whose fathers were first-degree relatives of their mothers. Fewer than half the children who were products of incestuous unions were completely healthy. Forty-two percent of them were born with severe birth defects or suffered early death, and another 11 percent were mildly mentally impaired. This study is particularly instructive, as it included a unique control group: offspring of the same mothers but whose fathers were not the mothers' relatives. When the same women were impregnated by a non-relative, only 7 percent of their children were born with a birth defect.
A group of genetic counselors reviewed the research on the biological consequences of sex between relatives (here). They found a surprisingly small increase (about 4 percent) in birth defects among the children of married cousins. Incest between first-degree relatives, however, was a different story. The researchers examined four studies on the effects of first-degree incest on the health of the offspring (including the Czech research). Forty percent of the children were born with either autosomal recessive disorders, congenital physical malformations, or severe intellectual deficits, and another 14 percent of them had mild retardation. In short, the odds that a newborn child who is the product of brother-sister or father-daughter incest will suffer an early death, a severe birth defect, or some mental deficiency approaches 50 percent.
Foolish Consistencies and the Politics of Abortion
The profound negative effects of incest on unborn children raise the issues of moral consistency and of abortion politics. I understand the pro-life argument. If you believe that human life begins at the moment sperm meets egg, it is perfectly logical to oppose abortion. But at what point do reasonable people temper logical consistency with compassion and common sense?
During the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, the Platform Committee struggled with an aspect of the argument against legal abortion. Just about everyone on the committee agreed that abortion should be banned, but committee members were split over whether official party doctrine should include exceptions to the abortion ban if a fetus was the result of rape or incest. In the end, ideological purity prevailed. The official Republican platform states, "We assert the inherent dignity and sanctity of all human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed." No exceptions, period, even for incest.
I grudgingly admit that the lack of any exception in the official Republican position on abortion is logically consistent with the "sanctity of all human life" provision. But in matters of morality, sometimes logic should be tempered with compassion. Emerson famously wrote, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
Forcing a woman already burdened with the psychological scars of incest to bear a child who has a roughly 50:50 chance of having mental retardation or a severe birth defect is perhaps the ultimate example of a foolish consistency that appeals to little statesmen.
Hal Herzog is the author of Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals.