Swapping spit: The term takes on a more refined meaning at the new dating site ScientificMatch.com. A prerequisite for signing up -- in addition to having a bit of cash to spare -- involves swishing a cotton swab inside your cheek and mailing a juicy sample of skin cells and saliva.
What do you get in return for your DNA-laden drool? A chance at genetic and olfactory harmony. ScientificMatch.com -- perhaps the first company to combine the commercial potential of genetic testing, dating and the Internet in one package -- offers to find you a lover who smells good.
But not simply a bathed-and-used-deodorant kind of good smell. If all goes well, you'll get a lusty good smell, the kind that makes you bury your face in your mate's pillow the next morning to catch the lingering scent. The kind that, after a week of backcountry camping, actually increases your partner's sexiness quotient.
Of course, it takes more than an alluring eau de mate to build a good relationship. So the company, launched in December and now offering a discounted lifetime membership fee of $995, boasts a panoply of "member benefits" for its scientifically matched opposite-sex couples: better sex, increased fertility, healthier kids, less cheating and more orgasms. (Actually, only women are promised more orgasms. Men are, however, encouraged to imagine how this could be a perk for themselves as well.)
"All of the benefits that I've listed are supported by, and derived from, peer-reviewed scientific research," says Eric Holzle, the founder and president of ScientificMatch.com and a mechanical engineer by training. Though he won't reveal membership numbers, later this year he plans to expand his service -- now available only in the Boston-Providence area -- to other cities, possibly including Los Angeles.
Holzle's matchmaking efforts rely on published but still-preliminary results from a growing field of science: the genetics of mate attraction. (People looking for same-sex partners are welcome on the site, although studies have yet to look specifically at genetic attraction in gay couples.)
Researchers have long studied how certain traits -- square jaws in men, narrow waists in women, facial symmetry in both genders, for example -- seem to signal good genetic fitness to potential mates. But recently scientists have zeroed in on specific genes that might play a surprising role in how we choose hookups -- and possibly settle-downs.
