(Soundbite of song "All You Need is Love")
THE BEATLES: (Singing) All you need is love. All you need is love. All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.
RACHEL MARTIN, host:
Sure, maybe it's all you need, but it's not so easy to find. This next story piqued the curiosity of the single folks on the BPP staff, not many of them, by the way. There's a new company that's offering up a scientific approach to finding love. All you have to do is swab the inside of your cheek, put a sample in the mail, and two weeks later, you'll have your match. Not just someone who likes the same stuff you do, pina coladas, walks in the rain, but someone who is your exact genetic match.
ALISON STEWART, host:
Is this just a Steven Bishop reference?
MARTIN: It's what I really like.
STEWART: OK, sorry.
MARTIN: And yes, it was. So it's not so romantic really to send a sample of your saliva in the mail, but ScientificMatch.com says using your DNA is the best way to maximize your chances of finding chemistry - actual real, true, physical chemistry with your match. So does this really work? Are our genes the answer to finding long, true, lasting love? Eric Holzle is the founder and president of ScientificMatch.com. Hi, Eric.
Mr. ERIC HOLZLE (Founder and President, ScientificMatch.com): Good morning.
MARTIN: Good morning. Thanks for joining us. So let's - tell us what gave you this idea to start this kind of dating site.
Mr. HOLZLE: Well, I'm very entrepreneurial, and about five years ago, I was trying to think of what to do on my next project, and I was up late at night watching educational television, and I saw a documentary about the infamous sweaty t-shirt experiment. And the sweaty t-shirt experiment took place on a college campus over in Europe, and they had a bunch of guys - a bunch of male students wear t-shirts for a couple of nights in a row to sleep in, and then they had a bunch of female students sniff the t-shirts after the men were done sleeping in them and rating the t-shirts according to their degree of attractiveness.
And what they found was that when the difference between the immune system genes of the t-shirt wearer and the t-shirt sniffer were very different from each other, the t-shirts were rated smelling very sexy. And when the t-shirt sniffer and the t-shirt wearer had very similar immune system genes, the t-shirts were rated as smelling very unattractive. So there was a really wide range and it was dependent on the difference between the immune system genes of the two people. And when I saw that...
MARTIN: So opposites attract?
Mr. HOLZLE: I thought that's a great idea to start a dating service on, and I embarked for the next five years on doing much deeper research and development, and the more I learned about it, the more I realized that there are a lot more benefits than just the fact that you'll like your spouse's dirty laundry.
MARTIN: Like what? What's so great about finding your genetic match?
Mr. HOLZLE: Well, we list six on the website, just to give you some background. Nature - the evolutionary reason that nature wants us to be attracted to other people with different immune system genes is because it produces the healthiest children, and that's true because we inherit our immune systems from both our mother and our father equally, and that's a little bit different than you might think of like your eye color.
You typically get your eye color from your mother's side of the family or your father's side of the family, but you don't get both. But with your immune system you do get both. It's defined equally by your mother and your father. So if your parents both contribute similar immune system genes, then you will have a smaller range of immune system genes yourself, and you'll be more sickly, and your immune system will be less robust.
But if both parents contribute different immune system genes, then the resulting offspring will have a wide variety of immune system genes. So that tells you right off the bat that if you do meet someone through our website, your chances of having healthier children are increased, and there are a bunch of other things. There are studies that show you'll have a higher - greater rate of sexual satisfaction with your partner. And in fact, with women it was shown in one peer-reviewed study that women actually enjoy a higher rate of orgasm with their partner when their immune system genes are very different.
MARTIN: Now these are very lofty promises.
Mr. HOLZLE: They are, but let me just point out, though, that all of the things that we state on our site are based on peer-reviewed scientific studies, and we cite - we put the citations right in the text of our descriptions of chemistry, and we list at the bottom of the page in detail, each one of the citations. But to put that in perspective, there's no other matchmaking service anywhere in the world that you can cite one single peer-reviewed scientific study to support what they do.
MARTIN: OK, Eric, how many matches have you made?
Mr. HOLZLE: Say it again?
MARTIN: How many successful relationships have you put together this way?
Mr. HOLZLE: We actually - it's weird. We're building the website. It's completely up and running, but we have some more things to add to it, and one thing that we're not able to do yet is to monitor how many matches we've made, unfortunately. So we can poll our customers, but to date, we don't think we have any true success stories. We're very young. So it takes a while for love to build.
MARTIN: So if I'm going to do this, you can't even guarantee me a match? What do I get for sending in a cotton swab of my saliva to you, if I were to do this? And by the way, how much is it?
Mr. HOLZLE: It's just under a thousand dollars.
MARTIN: OK, bargain price. So what do I get for my...
Mr. HOLZLE: It is a bargain price. That's for a lifetime, though. That's not for a one year subscription.
MARTIN: OK.
Mr. HOLZLE: And a typical offline matchmaker - it's rare to find one that's less than 3,000 dollars, and we're offering something that nobody else can offer.
MARTIN: So what do I get then in return, after I send in my cotton swab?
Mr. HOLZLE: Well, you get a lifetime membership, and you get matched with - we actually match people in three different ways. We match with the DNA, but we also have a really, really good personality-matching section. We think it's the best in the industry.
MARTIN: So you do use traditional dating site tools as well?
Mr. HOLZLE: Absolutely! It's important to realize that having physical chemistry with somebody doesn't mean that they're going to be your soul mate. It doesn't mean that you're going to fall in love with them, and it doesn't even mean that you'll like the other person. It just means that the pheromone-like substances that they give off will act almost as an aphrodisiac with you, and that you also have the increased chances of healthier children, and by the way, a higher rate of fertility.
But it doesn't mean that you're going to fall in love with them. So a lot is still left to the customer and the personality matching, for example, but it's important to realize that it's just one piece of the puzzle, and there's still a lot of parts about matchmaking and falling in love that we don't know that we still can't account for.
MARTIN: So it's the old and the new. It's the traditional - you have to have both pieces to this. It's not just physical chemistry, but...
Mr. HOLZLE: Exactly, and you have to explore the relationship with the matches we give you. You're not going to fall in love with everybody we give you, or you know, not even a certain percentage necessarily, but yeah, there's still romance involved. There's still the question of does this person intrigue me and am I interested by this person and are we indeed a good lifelong match?
MARTIN: And the lesson is, maybe I should pay more attention to what people's dirty t-shirts smell like?
Mr. HOLZLE: Yeah, definitely. But you know, the modern society has really done a good job of covering up our natural odors and it's really kind of sad because it removes us away from finding the right partner, as does oral contraception, by the way, also. But when you consider all the laundry detergent we use and the scented soaps and perfumes, it's very hard to figure out what a person actually smells like these days.
MARTIN: Well, that might be a good thing! Eric Holzle, the founder and president of ScientificMatch.com. Hey, thanks, Eric.
Mr. HOLZLE: Thank you.
MARTIN: Take care.
Mr. HOLZLE: You, too. Bye-bye.
STEWART: And I have to issue a correction. Although I do love Steve Bishop, it was Rupert Holmes who created this classic. Or not.
MARTIN: Oh, I could sing it, but it's just not as fun. If you like pina coladas!
STEWART: OK, Ian, do you have that track, so we can stop Rachel?
MARTIN: And caught in the rain.
(Soundbite of song "If you like Pina Coladas")
Mr. RUPERT HOLMES: (Singing) If you like pina coladas And getting caught in the rain. If you're not into yoga...
STEWART: Oh yes! Sweet! This is the BPP from NPR. Thanks, Rupert Holmes. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.