Your immune system drives me wild

Wanna partner with a hot immune system? The Scientist has a bizarre interview with the founder of a new website promising-- for just under $2000-- to match you with the immunological sexpot of your dreams, using your DNA sequences for the major histocompatibility complex (MHC).

Matching by MHC isn’t as weird as it sounds-- people apparently find the body odors of those who have MHC alleles which are different from their own to be more attractive than those whose are similar and women, according to one study, have more orgasms with men who are different from them in this fashion.

But the website-- and its founder, who is described in the article as “single my whole life,” deciding to start the site because he was tired of being broke and living with “one of his parents” (could that explain the lack of action?)-- is quite unusual.

For one, unlike most dating sites, it promises a full criminal background check-- allowing felons only if they haven’t committed sex crimes, violent crimes or Internet crimes and “clearly” labeling the felons that do get through this net (presumably nonviolent drug dealers, users and white collar criminals). No word if juvenile offenders can avoid the “prominent description” of their crime on their profile. The background check also includes age, seven year bankruptcy history and marital status.

Second, in addition to mismatching for MHC, it also claims to use a “fundamental core values” match process-- though it’s not clear from the site whether this is done only for those for whom there is a DNA "clash" first. This seems likely to make the possibility of any actual date-- particularly since right now it only serves the Boston area-- rather small. But who knows-- it's hard to find stranger criteria than some people use now to pick partners.