Republican United States Senate candidate from Pennsylvania Mehmet Oz defended incest in a February 2014 interview with a morning radio show that was unearthed on Tuesday by Jezebel.
"The Breakfast Club" host Angela Yee had read Oz a question on the topic that was submitted by a listener:
I'm going to ask you this and you tell me if this is safe for this person, okay? Well, he said, 'Yee, I can't stop smashing my cousin.' That means sleeping with. 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?
Oz, whose struggling campaign was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, offered his medical opinion.
Oz:
If you're more than a first cousin away, it's not a big problem.
Yee:
Okay, so second cousin is fine to smash.
Yee's co-hosts also weighed in.
Charlamagne Tha God:
It's so funny, cause I knew that.
DJ Envy:
How did you know that?
Charlamagne:
Cause I'm from the country! Third cousins?
Oz:
Yeah. It's fine.
He explained the risks that incest poses to the health of offspring:
Every family has genetic strengths and weaknesses. And so the reason we naturally crave people who are not so like us is because you just mix the gene pool up a little bit so that if I had one gene for, let's say, hemophilia, which is a classic example where you bleed a lot if you cut yourself, I don't want to marry a cousin who has the same hemophilia gene, because the chance of our child having both those genes is much higher.
He continued:
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. My daughters hate my smell.
Yee quipped to Oz that "maybe you just smell."
Oz replied that "my wife says she likes the smell."
Not long after the video surfaced, Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman – Oz's Democratic opponent – tweeted, "yet another issue where Oz and I disagree."
