By 2008, most of us have realized that the person you consider your “soul mate” is really just the carrier of some genes you think a mini You ought to carry in his DNA. But talking and spending time together are so 19th century, and they leave you blind as to whether the genes of your partner will create a child that can withstand an Ebola shower or one that will crumble at the first whiff of his own mucous.
So cancel your match.com membership and sign up with GenePartner, the online dating service that best matches your genes to prospective lovers’. For a fee of $199, GenePartner analyzes your saliva for its HLA (human leukocyte antigen) properties and allows you to see which members have opposite HLA. According to Dr. Wedekind (GenePartner gives no first name), a Swiss scientist who developed the method at the University of Bern, humans are most attracted to partners with different HLA, since it allows them to bear children with the highest resistance to diseases. We subconsciously evaluate someone’s HLA through our noses, says Dr. Wedekind and if someone’s great on paper but “just doesn’t click” with us, they usually just have unsightly HLA.
What do you do if you get paired up with the Elephant Man? The site doesn’t say, but you should probably ignore the jarring deformity and focus on the genes. It’s for the good of your kids.
More, I say, more.