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.

All mothers risk having disabled children. Repeated first cousin marriage increases that risk but the vast majority of kids will be healthy.

I dont see any advantage in first cousin marriage - my first cousin is a dick - but I have friends in my wider social circle who see it as a good thing in terms of family support and who have chosen to marry a cousin.

Well no, because theres some evidence that IQ is depressed, even if it’s a few points at a population level thats not great for any group. So it may not warrant spending by the NHS etc but it is no good for the UK to purposely do something that makes any group more disadvantaged.

Nasty and not true

It's like grooming gangs where people are willing to defend or hide abhorrent practice because of fear of offence. It is self evident housing marriage leads to genetic abnormalities and the children of these marriages will suffer for their whole lives as well as putting an avoidable burden on the tax payer. We have to move away from this attitude of unquestioning acceptance of cutlures which are essentially against value sets we universally hold including welfare of children and freedom of marriage.

The problem is that if an institution starts campaigning against cousin marriage in a community where such practice is prevalent then there will be inevitable political pressure to stop it.

It’s funny how delighted people to are to rant about this. It’s as though they’re delighted there’s an objectively serious reason for their ‘Ew’ response.

I’m starting to wonder if a lot of the income disparities we see between different asian groups can be explained by this as well. We have a large Pakistani diaspora and in Pakistan cousin marriage is something like over 70% of marriages. Theres a marked difference between Pakistani and Indian income deciles and given no long ago they were basically from the same country this is extremely interesting. Getting rid of cousin marriage may see an improvement in the material wellbeing of people from a Pakistani ethnicity.

https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/work-pay-and-benefits/pay-and-income/income-distribution/latest/

They weren't first cousins though.

Brilliant eloquent post.

There is a rational reason for an EW response and this has been for centuries in many countries.
Pope Gregory banned first cousin marriages in 590AD. (Although dispensation was given for aristocratic families 🙄 in certain circs)

There is a huge amount more to this though. Indians and Pakistanis weren’t basically from the same country they were broadly spit into religions, casts and tribes. This gap has grown since partition and today they are very different countries.

Then when you compare the economic circumstances of Indians who immigrated vs Pakistanis / Bangladeshis who migrated they look very differently economically and educationally.

the best examples is the Ugandan Indians, who are some of the most economically successful migrants in Europe.

It has parallels with a grooming gangs, there are too many non-British things we accept in the name of religion and community cohesion. This should go non-stand slaughter should go circumcision of little boys should go.. Frank that shouldn’t just be here.

I work in a community where this is prevalent. It's not just cousin marriages, it goes far beyond that.
Siblings from one family e.g. 3 sisters marrying 3 brothers who are their cousins. The children they grow up and are married. This narrows the gene pool even further.

The product of these marriages in the UK,
If male and disabled are then married to female cousins from abroad who are brought over to essentially be their carers. These ladies have a terrible life but we are seeing more and more getting married, having a child then leaving. Their child is a British citizen and they are then entitled to benefits for the rest of their life. Some would say, a small price to pay.

The reason it won't be banned is purely political.

Bullshit. Two first cousins are just as likely to have a child with mental/physical disabilities as two strangers on the street.

The issue is generational consanguinity. When the offspring of two cousins has children with another close family member, the likelihood of both being carriers of genetic abnormalities increases.

The purpose of education is to get a job and prepare for your adult life.
So, traveller boys go into business with their dad's and the girls get married and stay home.
So they don't need an education beyond primary school.
That is perfectly acceptable to the government.
I worked in traveller education and sometimes we had to go to their sites.

Your first sentence is categorically incorrect.

If they're siblings I guess it's not a legal marriage and just a religious ceremony or do they do it abroad?

I doubt it’ll be banned, because the communities where it happens are mostly Muslim, and many politicians are terrified of alienating the Muslim vote.

You misunderstood. 3 children from one brother marry the three children from another brother.

The children of those marriages then also marry each other.

It's a recipe for disaster, it's already costing the NHS and care services and taxpayers a fortune, but we all know that the reason it's not being banned is purely political.

I thought marriage between double cousins (products of two brothers marrying 2 sisters) was already illegal in the UK, although I'm not sure how it's policed, if at all.

Marriage between 2nd cousins being banned as some people are advocating would be difficult, as many people don't even know their second cousins and I believe you share very little DNA with them, unless there is a history of cousin marriages in your family.

I know a woman who is Roman Catholic and her parents were cousins. They had to get a dispensation from the Papal office to marry and this carried the condition that no more cousin marriages were to occur in the descendents for a number of generations.

its a thing. Google GSA

It’s absolutely forbidden to ever discuss this in my circles, so I’m glad that you brought it up OP.

Apparently it’s racist to imply that cousin marriage is wrong, and that certain countries are made worse because of it. Even if facts and data back up that point.

I don’t talk to anyone about this except my DH, who agrees with me. I hope that the public conversation will become more honest around this.

Both legal and frequently lethal unfortunately.

Even if you don’t ban cousin marriage, you could prevent anyone coming over on a spousal visa or obtaining a spousal visa if that person is a cousin of their spouse and make people prove that they are not in order to bring a spouse. It’s ridiculous that the NHS has pretended that there are benefits to it and that seriously undermines any claim to education being a good strategy - it’s not the same as having a baby over 35, because it’s never one cousin marriage (which might carry a risk that low), but cousin marriage perpetuated over a number of generations, where the statistics become very grim. When you look at certain areas of the country and certain communities, there simply is no way to explain the rate of child physical and mental disability other than long term consanguinity, unfortunately. You can’t actually fully screen for all health conditions in advance from two healthy potential fiancés and determine at the point of marriage whether they will have healthy children (which would be cheap) and if people really wanted to avoid potential bad outcomes they wouldn’t be proposing to marry anyway, so the idea that testing will solve the issue is just not accurate - down the line, you’re going to have to have very invasive procedures with IVF and screening (which still won’t catch everything) or disabled children. Education would only be useful if it delivered quite a stark message and the politicians and healthcare officials have been very reluctant to do it, hence the stupid leaflets saying it “has some benefits”.

I don’t think that banning cousin marriage does cause issues for others who may have disabled children to be honest. For starters, there are very few categories of people who know (or should know) that they are quite likely to have a disabled child if they ever have a baby with their fiancé at any age AND could easily avoid that by marrying someone else. Secondly, there are other distinguishing issues with cousin marriage - most people within British society wouldn’t marry their cousins without pressure, coercion or a severe lack of choices (ie lack of integration and independence), so it is also protective in other ways. Unfortunately, few politicians have been brave enough to make the case for integration in office, but living in the U.K. should come with responsibilities and not just rights. I’ve seen that Sajid Javid now says in an interview this weekend that that he wishes he had been braver and outlawed it when he was in a position of power, but it absolutely won’t happen under Labour.

According to John’s Hopkins, strangers 2-5%, first cousins 4-6%. Double first cousins jumps to 12.5%

Darwin didn’t see any problems with cousins marrying. 😂

So why did you write

"Bullshit. Two first cousins are just as likely to have a child with mental/physical disabilities as two strangers on the street."

and why are you bothering to quote me to tell me I was right to say that was untrue?

Darwin did not have current day knowledge of genetics.