To be disturbed by wilfull ignorance around genetic inbreeding?

[M9009]

I've come from a country were cousin marriage and indeed marriage to any close relative if illegal.
I've recently started working in a dialysis unit and I'm so disturbed by how many parents are young children born of first cousin marriage. Usually from South Asian backgrounds.
Today I was speaking to one parents who has 9 children, all in need of kidney transplants. The eldest 2 have already had theirs. Parents are first degree cousins and each have various medical problems of their own.
Why, as a society, do we allow these marriages? It seems so cruel to the children who are born with medical and genetic problems.
Maybe I'm easily shocked, I don't know.

When we visited Iceland we were told that third cousin marriage is the absolute limit, and most people prefer fourth to be safe. There’s even a database where you can check how closely related you are to your date - if you dont already know as it’s such a small, enclosed population.

He didn’t argue in favour of cousin marriage he argued in favour of a strategy that he believed would work better than an outright ban. I’m guessing because he is familiar with the community and understands what would and wouldn’t work.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were first cousins, not all of their children were healthy.

It isn't a single marriage that is usually the problem it is when a number of generations intermarry, the gene pool gets smaller and smaller.

Try this to illustrate the problem, get a plate, salt and pepper. Put roughly even amounts of salt and pepper on the plate and mix them up. That's the genetic mix of the first generation child. Take a teaspoon of the mixture out, that's your first child.

Now add more salt and mix in, take a teaspoon of the mix out, then add more salt, and take a teaspoon out, and more, keep going.

Eventually your teaspoon will only contain salt.

There are a few things causing problems. The small gene pool that is getting smaller.

Families used to be able to make a match with a bride of groom in Pakistan who might be as closely related. That is not an option now.

The Muslim faith (or how it is interpreted) teaches that you must not use contraception, and also that having a disabled child is a blessing.

You know full well that they cannot or will not pay the medical bills for medical issues as a result.

When that happens, who suffers?

The child with the medical issue.

You're crazy (and cruel) and I'm out.

It was in some countries historically to preserve land in families etc. Keep wealth in side the family. But that seems irrelevant nowadays so i dont think it should still be happening.

can you not see it’s a bit of a daft suggestion though? How is your average family going to pay for 6 kidney transplants? So the children die untreated?

I agree with you completely. I think it's time we made cousin marriage illegal. I can remember many years ago there was a campaign explaining the risks of marrying cousins. We haven't really progressed and, as others have noted, the problem isn't the occasional 1st cousin marriage it's the fact that it carries on through the generations with the gene pool getting progressively smaller. In addition many religious people feel that it's the will of God if they have disabled children. It's almost a fatalistic response.
In trying not to upset certain communities we are actually ruining lives.

This must be an issue about lack of education about the risks. If the goal of cousin marriage is the protect the family line and provide financial security then surely no culture in the world would believe that having multiple, severely physically and educationally disabled children would achieve this. A health campaign in effected communities might achieve more than a ban.

Same here. I'd say about 80% of children were born from cultures that practice consaguinitous marriage. I voiced my opinion on this once and was told that this isn't something open for discussion. My neighbours are from Pakistan (I am white but live in a mostly South Asian neighbourhood) They have 3 children. The two eldest are boys and hardly a week would go by without an ambulance being called. There are both in special schools. Their daughter is about 12 months old and so far seems to bee fairing well. My neighbour, child's dad said he felt blessed that he and his wife were able to have children as they were 6th generation cousins and some of his relatives were unable to conceive. They are from a huge family, very pleasant and neighbourly by mu God, most of the kids ( and many of the adults) have the most awful birth defects. Severe dwarfism,learning difficulties, mobility issues, physical abnormalities. When my siblings got married in Europe they and their future spouse had to take dna tests ( France) this was 30 odd years ago. I think us British are too bloody scared of being told we're being racist. There's nothing racist about baning incest.

There have been campaigns with mixed results.

The BBC did a study/programme on this last year:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c241pn09qqjo

Not sure if this is already mentioned, but in the following countries cousin marriage is illegal:

China: first cousins
South Korea and north korea: first, second and third cousins
Taiwan: first and second cousins
Philipines: first cousins
Norway: first cousins
Sweden and Denmark: legislation re first cousins in the pipeline
Many states in the US: first cousins
Uzbekistan: legislation re ALL blood relatives in the pipeline

There were cousin marriages in certain families where I grew up. And kids with birth defects - never seen the like of it anywhere else. 😔 Feel so sorry for those kids.

For decades, probably centuries, inbreeding of livestock and pets was discouraged because of the known rsk of birth defects so whis is first couin marriage still allowed in the uk?

Yes I thought as a one off it wasn't an issue but it happening over multiple generations was dangerous. I do know one couple who are cousins white British but it is unusual.

Wouldn't that be hard to enforce? I've got no idea who my third cousins are. Would you have to produce family trees to prove it,?

What about other people who fall in love with a family member where it is illegal to marry them?

Oh yes, I'd forgotten that bit. But I think it was more of a 'thank goodness the boys won't want to marry her if we bring them up together, because if they met later in life they probably would want to, and she's too low class'. So the possibility of cousin marriage being likely in general is implied, just not, as you say, if they are brought up more like siblings.

Also lady Catherine de bourgh intends her daughter for her first cousin Mr Darcy, with little negative comment on that aspect of the potential relationship from anyone.

It's interesting to consider which countries and religions practice this and how much that impacts their mental functioning and their success as an individual and as a whole population. No way in gods green earth would I even dream of shagging anyone in my own family 🤢

Exactly. It’s what happened in the Spanish royal family centuries ago where the inbreeding led to profound physical and mental development issues over several generations.

No i agree he doesn't groom her sorry, I just found on a re read knowing what's coming, that the early part where he is so much older and playing an almost paternalistic role a bit icky! There's such a power imbalance. Which i think is in real life a potential issue with marriage within families as well as the genetics.

And I agree about Emma even though they are not genetically related. I hope their children don't marry her sisters children though - double first cousins!

Seriously, I know I've gone down a fiction rabbit hole, but these many examples in literature which are not portrayed as negative or unusual, coupled with royalty like queen Victoria, and the people I and others know, does suggest it was more common place in UK within the past few hundred years than some people realise. I'm surprised so many people on here didn't know it was legal.

This is hysteria

The vast majority of kids born to first cousin marriages are fine.

Who else is "putting their kids at risk" and needs to have them taken away as a lesson to the rest of us?
Women marrying men with ASD traits?
Women over 35?
Deaf people marrying other Deaf people?

One of the arguments against specialist schools for Deaf children was that Deaf people would marry other Deaf people and thereby have more Deaf children. Not all Deaf people see Deaf children as a disaster.

Make it illegal.

The problem with guidance and education is that guidance and education may be against deep rooted and cultural norms. If someone is religious NH S guidance isn't going to change their views of religious dogma or centuries of cultufe.

Not all cultures are equal and we as a country need to move swifter and be more decisive when it comes to calling out practises that are by one the pale.

I always thought we couldn't really make it illegal because of the queen and Phillip.

This was never really true, in south asia women generally don’t inherit and divorce would just leave you destitute. No woman whether she’s your cousin or not, easily takes wealth away from any of the male line of a family. It’s a nonsense argument.

Plus if it were true we could see that people who marry their cousins are significantly more wealthy. You are more likely to end up poorer because people start suffering from ill health and cognitive damage.