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Dating site offers better sex and healthier babies through DNA matching!

An online dating website known as Scientific Match is offering DNA matching to its customers with the promise of a more satisfying sex life and healthier children for couples who are genetically matched.

Melbourne, Dec 18 : An online dating website known as Scientific Match is offering DNA matching to its customers with the promise of a more satisfying sex life and healthier children for couples who are genetically matched.

The website claims to help singles find their "genetic match" by analyzing their DNA and suggesting a partner with different immune system genes than themselves for a subscription fee of 1995 US dollars (2323 Australian dollars) per year.

The website's homepage reads: "Welcome to a new era of human relationships. We're the only introduction service that creates matches with actual physical chemistry," reports news.com.au.

When clients sign up to the website, they are sent a DNA collection kit containing cheek-swabs and a pre-paid return envelope.

Then their saliva samples are processed and matched with other users whose genetic profiles are different to their own.

The website promises that the benefits of its matching process are: A sexier smelling partner, more satisfying sex, healthier babies and a higher number of orgasms for women.

Currently, this US company, owned by Love Sciences, provides the service to singles in areas of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine.

Scientific Match indicated that its service is based on the theory that people with different immune systems breed "healthier" babies having a wider variety of immune system genes.

"Since nature's goal is to perpetuate the species, it encourages us to mate with others who have immune systems different from our own," said the company.

Another study that supported the theory was a 1995 experiment that found women were attracted to the scents of men with different immune systems.

"Nature attracts us to our genetic matches with our noses. The fact is, we love how other people smell when their immune systems are different from ours," said Scientific Match.

The company's founder Eric Holzle said that he believed genetic matching would "dominate the future of dating services", but the website was derided by one expert.

"(It) sounds like a complete and utter rip-off that preys on people's lack of knowledge of causation and correlation," said geneticist Dean Hamer from the US National Cancer Institute.

However, Scientific Match isn't the only website offering a DNA analysis based service.

It was also reported that, one of the problems with offering advice based on genetic profiles is that disease risks are often linked to a combination of genetic variations rather than just one,.

Journalist Thomas Goetz said the experience of browsing through his genetic profile was "simultaneously unsettling, illuminating and empowering".

"There's nothing intuitive about navigating your genome," he said after spitting into a cup and having his DNA analysed.

He added: "It requires not just a new vocabulary but also a new conception of personhood. Scrape below the skin and we're flesh and bone; scrape below that and we're code."

ANI