Should it be illegal for 1st cousins to marry?

[brasty]

My DP's parents are 1st cousins, and DP has a genetic illness. Marrying your 1st cousin increases the chances of genetic illness. So I wonder if we should simply make it illegal for 1st cousins to marry? Obviously anyone married would stay so, it would only apply to new marriages.
AIBU?

For those communities where 1st cousin marriages are common, the increase in genetic problems doesn't come just from the risk of two cousins marrying, do they? It is also from the fact that the practice goes back many generations, so those two cousins are already much more closely related than first cousins would normally be, iyswim.

There's is the tradition of stealing brides in the Caucasus, hereyougo,
it's to widen the gene pool in the mountain villages.

FrancisCrawford

The tinnitus thing cannot be connected to genes really, on the surface of it, I said I only mentioned it through my own anecdotal evidence, that even the term tinnitus most Russian people never heard.

Everyone knows of 'ringing in the ears' but usually it's mentioned as something temporary, which everyone has experienced.
The thing is, I cannot really say tinnitus "runs" in my DH's family. Two people I personally know - MIL and a friend got it as a result of an ear infection, and it's in one ear. DH has it 'in the head' and his came on inexplicably and he was far younger than MIL was when she got hers. However we know MIL's aunt suffered from tinnitus too. Not sure what type of tinnitus but with 3 generations you are aware of you start fearing it as something 'running' in the family.

You'd think tinnitus as a result of ear infections should be roughly the same in all countries, but when DH got his and I did hours of scouring Russian internet resources it was obvious that there is infinitely far less anecdotal evidence for similar Russian sufferers, even if you compare only UK-based English speaking forums/articles and not all of the English speaking world. I cannot explain it. It is certainly true that DH was more or less dismissed here by GP saying 'just live with it, it's incurable', and in Russia everyone who got it was sent for loads of tests, MRIs, ultrasound scans, blood tests etc etc. And people would be prescribed medication, some of which I noted down and was planning to buy and offer DH (only I haven't managed to get to Russia for years and he is very suspicious of all unknown medication esp if not directly prescribed by a doctor, even though his tinnitus is really bad, far worse than his mother's and he'd give anything to not have it)

Maybe in Russia there is far less evidence of chronic tinnitus(say, of unexplained origin) because they actually do manage to treat and cure it so there are no endless forums of sufferers complaining theirs never went away? Or maybe it is true there there is something in the genes which makes nerves in the hearing system of the British people more vulnerable??

First cousin marriage disgusts me. It strikes me as incestuous. I have grandsons and grandaughters and the thought of them having sex turns my stomach. This would be my daughter's child marrying my other daughter or my son's child. It's just repulsive. It's one step away from siblings having sex!

it was more common in the UK in the past wasn't it?
Loads of old novels have cousins marrying each other - Cathy married both her cousins in Wuthering heights, and one was a double cousin (child of her father's sisters and her mother's half brother).

Francis,

I also wondered if it was environmental in UK, specifically connected to mercury dental fillings, plus mercury escaping into the drinking water system due to it still being so widely used here...they haven't been heard of in Russia for many years and are banned in many countries as far as I know. DH had some mercury fillings from his childhood, and then was given one new one without any warning/option, just as default on the NHS a few months before his tinnitus started. :( I think if the dentists called them mercury fillings instead of coy 'silver' fillings far more people would be going what the hell, of course I don't want one if there is a choice not to have it.

I just realised that if you marry your cousin each other's uncle's/aunt's become your MIL/FIL

I wonder if in Pakistani community marrying blood relations is far less common if you have highly educated or medical background.
Saliha, for instance, the winner of Masterchef, surely her parents are not cousins, being doctors, and she wouldn't contemplate marrying a cousin? She is married to a Pakistani guy who is also a doctor, so both of them potentially would be especially aware of genetic disorders in their community which wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for inbreeding...

I wonder if in Pakistani community marrying blood relations is far less common if you have highly educated or medical background
I work in academia. There's plenty. And I come across people new to the UK for whom the premise of cousin marrying being taboo or in any possible way harmful is a revelation.

My friend is highly educated and married her first cousin (a love marriage). Culturally it is just not a taboo. In fact, for her it made more sense marrying him as she knew him so well. She is very very happy.

Personally, I don't think it should be illegal, but it may well be inadvisable. My family is extremely close; my cousins and siblings all spent a great deal of time together growing up and my cousins are as close to me as my siblings. It would feel 'yucky' and incestuous to think of marrying one of them! However, I sadly know many families today who have little or no contact at all with their cousins and might feel differently about the thought of marriage to a cousin.

In times gone by where families tended to live in close communities; intermarriage between cousins was common and often had to do with keeping land/property in the family. Successive generations in the same family who intermarry have higher risks of genetic mutations/passing on recessive genes, etc. I think as a one-off it is not so risky. For anyone concerned there is genetic counselling available and should probably be a pre-requisite before considering marriage to a cousin (if you want to have children together).

There is certainly an issue among some Asian communities in the UK who have a high incidence of marriage between cousins for several generations and consequently have much higher than average birth-rates of disabled children:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11723308/First-cousin-marriages-in-Pakistani-communities-leading-to-appalling-disabilities-among-children.html

In Pride and Prejudice they want to marry a Bennet daughter off to a cousin (Mr Collins), as that will be the only way for the family to remain in their home once the father dies.

Maybe because I'm involved at the very heart of this issue, but I really don't see a reason for all the disgust. My partner and I are just two people, who never knew each other before adulthood, met and fell in love and had a baby. Yes, we're cousins. His dad and my mum are brother and sister, they were estranged, one with their father, one with their mother. We never met both of our grandparents. We share no history. We do share some of the same genes, fine, I get that that needed consideration. We dealt with our situation sensibly, got checked genetically and with no prejudice from any doctor or family. Our son is healthy. We are lucky. We are happy.

I find it much more unsettling that I have no clue for sure who my father is and I likely have brothers out there that I may have encountered in the past.

If nothing else, one of my aunts is a very difficult person and there is no way I could have ever faced her becoming my MIL! I hardly know my first cousins as they all live abroad but have certainly never considered them in a romantic light.

Aragorns I wonder whether people unwittingly falling in love with and marrying their cousins isn't much more common than we think - not everyone is aware of their paternity, for example. In fact there must be some couples who are half brother and sister without knowing it!

squishy exactly!

I'm not saying that anyone in this situation should ignore any potential issues and breeze through life, but I certainly don't think it deserves this amount of disgust. It's a case of being aware and educated, then acting sensibly. What works for one won't work for another. I'd rather have my lovely relationship with my partner than my shite relationship with my EA ex.

For what its worth, it doesn't disgust me.
I think it should be advised against, but that is more to with the group risks that occur if it were to happen in large numbers - not to do with the (low) individual risk when it happens occasionally.
And also, as has been mentioned before, the cumulative risks that occur through the generations within communities where it is common.
Congratulations on your ds, it sounds like you dealt with your situation very sensibly but it must have been a concerning time to go through, as ttc and pregnancy often is for a variety of reasons.

My dad was adopted, and his biological father is not named on the birth certificate, so it would be possible for one of my sisters to marry a cousin without ever knowing.

hereyougo
I have tried to sit on my hands but your posts are SO full of nonsense I just can't.

The trouble is there is so much going on I don't know where to start.

I will point out that the Russian parents I have worked with (and there have been many) are utterly bemused when they have a disabled child. I have heard 'we don't have this disability in Russia' several time.
You do. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
You might want to think about why you don't see it.

Then come back to me.

As for this
Fair enough to try for a baby after 40 (with awareness of risks) if it didn't happen before for whatever reasons, but most people who have children already by 40 don't just go trying to conceive after 40 thinking oh it will be fine....

What does this even mean?

Thank you!

It was at times, we needed an enhanced scan in London to check for issues, but that was it. As I have a son with life changing issues that may have come from me genetically we had to think ahead which is why we had genetic counselling to check our risk level. I think that if all couples had their risk level assessed professionally prior to conceiving then there is no problem with cousins conceiving (when their risk is deemed low).

I come from a family of doctors on one side and had never heard of it, and here it seems to be very common. After reading this thread I discovered that the frequency of cystic fibrosis in UK is one in 2.500, while in Russia is one in 10.000. I truly suspect now that's island living and your ancestors marrying your relatives to ''thank' for.

There are theories that copy of gene offers protection against cholera and possibly TB - which would have been much more of an issue in early crowded dirty industrial British cities than in more rural less industrial Russia.

www.nytimes.com/1994/10/07/us/clue-to-why-cystic-fibrosis-has-survived.html
www.newscientist.com/article/dn10013-cystic-fibrosis-gene-protects-against-tuberculosis/

It's likely a selective environmental pressure.

Also - had Roman's from all over their empire, German tribes and then later Vikings settling then small genetic input of French Norman plus we've always traded with associated movement of people all over UK and world - think idea of isolated island is bit odd. Even had trains first - which helped mover our population round in record numbers.

I don't think first cousin marriages need to be made illegal more education seem way forward for affected communities.

One place we lived very static population, and very insular, white British but with large number of rare genetic diseases - they weren't marrying family members but it's likely the settling immigrating Irish population most descended from may have come same town or area and then ended up congregating together which meant a smaller than usual gene pool - odd accident of history.

hereyougo

After reading this thread I discovered that the frequency of cystic fibrosis in UK is one in 2.500, while in Russia is one in 10.000

1. Learn about CF, mutations in CFTR and why those mutations are not just supported in a population but selected for in times of epidemic illness. The oldest CF mutation is 40,000 years old, but CFTR mutations occur and reoccur over and over. This is because people living with a single CFTR mutation are thought to have health advantages over those without.

Care to address the remarkably high and often cited lack of variation in mutations in BRCA1 (breast cancer, ovarian cancer) in the Russian population? The founder effect - where a large population of people come from a small population bottleneck - is strong. Very strong. Unusually strong. If one were using it as a measure of population inbreeding, it might be interesting....

big long-eyelashed eyes kind of upturned on outer corners, and very upturned tips of noses, identical noses, big cupid-bow mouths
That's what you've got? Upturned eyes, upturned noses, big mouths? Describes me pretty well and I'm white British/Irish.

though actually now think I have a varied genetic pool to thank for too
See my previous point on the Russian bottleneck.

You'd think tinnitus as a result of ear infections should be roughly the same in all countries, but when DH got his and I did hours of scouring Russian internet resources it was obvious that there is infinitely far less anecdotal evidence for similar Russian sufferers
You can't imagine why infection rates for different things vary country by country? Really? And maybe you just don't wash your ears out as much in Russia?

plus mercury escaping into the drinking water system due to it still being so widely used here
Russian drinking water is far lower quality than that in the UK. And you're chucking out enough mercury to pollute oceans.

I am curious about the quality of record keeping on genetic disorders in a country that still routinely places disabled children in isolated 'orphanages'

What sort of classification do they use?
How are causes of disability determined? For example if a child was disabled due to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Radiation poisoning, infant abuse etc would those things be diagnosed?

Just curious.

Of course there is disability in Russia, my own cousin is severely disabled with a very rare genetic disease (through his mother, not my blood relative). And because of her struggles I have a good idea of disabled people's, esp. children's, world in Russia.

I specifically mentioned the frequency of CF(already has been explained to me here), tinnitus - I said it was mine and my friends' anecdotal experience and unlikely related to genes but still strange, and wondered about autism, but said it might be to do with underdiagnosing. I know in my childhood all/most disabled kids would be hidden away, abandoned by their parents etc.

But now that I'm over 40 most of my friends have 4-6 children, live in Moscow and of all them and in their environment no one knows of any children on the spectrum, here with much smaller sample of friends/acquaintances I know a couple. Their parents are not cousins, I didn't imply that!
School run time...

So the Russian children I work with with ASD did they get because they were born in the UK?

I really do know a relatively large amount of Russian children with ASD as well as many other issues.

Mind you a fair few of the parents moved to the UK to try and get treatment for their children. IME (and this is only my experience) the notion of 'incurables' is still common in many parts of Eastern Europe and resources are withdrawn after short periods of treatment.

I have met some incredibly brave and dedicated parents who have given up everything to seek a better future for their children.