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.

There needs to be a two fold approach. Education (should be taught in schools and mosques) and legislative.

No one I know in the last 15 years is marrying their cousins because of issues they have observed in the wider community. What is harder to control is Endogamy.

Unfortunately where there is poor paperwork to trace lineage issues can arise.

Why wouldn’t anyone want to give their children the best chance in life.

You are correct @M9009

It's 2026, this should be outlawed. Its not racist to stop these type of marriages. It would save suffering of these children born with preventable defects. It would also save the NHS money (9 children all needing dialysis and kidney transplants!)

I believe that Iceland has a huge problem with unintended cousin dating/marriage. They started with a limited founder pool and had many generations of isolation, as a result just about everyone on the island is related to each other. I beleve that they have now started proper lineage records so that people can check how related they are before dating!

That's just about possible on an island like Iceland, I can't see it happening in larger, poorer countries.

Agreed. And how very sadly foolish must the parents be? They repeatedly conceive again and again after each child in turn is born with the same terrible disability. They seem wholly unable to understand the medical advice they're given?

And it's their children who will pay the very great emotional price in their continued suffering. And it's the UK who will pay their huge financial bills.

It has to stop.

There are studies showing that marrying cousins lowers the IQ even in children without an obvious disability.

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1977Natur.266..440B/abstract

We MUST legislate to ban cousin marriages and non-legal religious marriages urgently.

one child in every 10 Phakistani child of consanguinous marriage (1 in every 7 in some communities in the North)

One in every ten or one in every seven are what?

@Muffsies
Absolutely, just look at the uk and european royal families. Any wealthy or land-owning family did this.

I can’t speak for European landowners or wealthy families but in UK in the second half of the nineteenth century landowning families with huge houses looked to America for the daughters of rich families as they didn’t have the same rules of primo geniture.
What would be the point of marrying the daughter of a landowner in UK if she brought no dowery? Unless she was an only child and even then everything may have gone to the cousin who inherited the title.

I read somewhere that in the 16th and 17th centuries eldest sons of landowning families married daughters of rich merchant families who were only children, or only surviving child, as if there was no son then they would inherit.
However in those days most people had large families so in the case of only children there may have been a genetic problem having children which the daughter inherited and as a result aristocratic families died out. (Sorry, irrelevant to first cousin marriage).
I wish I could remember where I read this.

That’s really interesting to know. The issue is in countries like Pakistan they don’t see it as an issue which is where the problem lies.

Surely there has to come a point where education around this topic is simply not enough? How long does it take to get the message out; it's been decades thus far? The answer always seems to be throwing more millions at informative programmes and community outreach, but if they haven't worked by now, will they ever?

The only reason it hasn't been banned is because the vast majority of cousins who marry are muslim and heaven forbid we should tell the truth. Maybe the way to stop it is to make those that take part in these warped marriages pay towards the very expensive care of any children born from such a union. I bet they wouldn't continue such a medieval practise.

Disabled, have you been following the thread?

This is exactly the kind of bigoted nonsense that these threads invariably attract. The UK Jewish community practices endogamy just as much. Similar issues with Amish globally. Comparatively small communities where people marry inside the community.

Endogamy is not the same thing as consanguinity.
You are confusing the issue.

This is very disingenuous. Are we applying this logic across the board?

We have had years and years of education around smoking and obesity, both of which cost the NHS far more, yet we don’t say there’s enough education..

Education and proper healthcare pathways are the only way this work with legislation.

Legislation alone won’t work.

Are you going to apply this logic to smokers, alcoholics, drug users and obese people as well? Or does it only apply to one group who might happen to be brown and Muslim?

This just isn't true. Cousin marriage has fallen from 60% to 46% in just 10 years amongst the Pakistani community in Bradford. A number of factors including education and integration are seen as the reasons why. In the subset of mothers who are born in the UK it's fallen from 60% to 36% in 10 years, that I'd a huge shift and doesn't at all back up your claim that 'they' don't want to change.

Im Muslim and Muslims do practice this, more so in the Bangladeshi, Pakistan and Afghan culture, not so much other parts.of Asia, Africa or Europe.

I was surprised when my friend said her cousin is her husband and her parents.were cousins and her aunty and uncle are also her father in law. Then another school mum is also married to her cousin and they live in a row of a houses and all in that 3 row are cousins.

Cousin marriage was done many years ago even in UK. But for it to be consistently through out the family like everyone is married to their first or second cousin does affect and thats when heslth conditions and disabilities happen. At least ine child per cousin marriage family has a condition/disability.

hundreds of years and years ago, it was only done in small communities when there were hardly anyone else to marry and first cousins carry 12% of the same dna/blood I think it was. But when youre constantly arranging and marrying cousins that's the big problem.

For me personally, I couldn't and wouldn't. But I know it is very common in Pakistan. Pakistan mothers either want you to marry your cousin or "a nice Pakistani girl" they dont really like mixing with other ethnicities. And ive seen it multiple times where the parents were absolutely disgusted that their Pakistan son who is a Prince in their eyes wanted to marry a "horrible African Muslim" girl. Even though theyre both Muslim and the African lady is very nice. Another example is a very famous youtuber who has discussed openly in front of her parents and the husband that it was a big thing for them to accept she was marrying a white Muslim.
My friend who is Bangladesh brought home an Arab that she wanted to marry and her mother looked.him up and down like he was dirt and she said to me my mum only wants me.to marry a rich Bengali man. She even told me dont tell my mum youre married to.a black man. She will be outraged pretend your married.to a white man. I.didnt bother because im.not ashamed of the man i married. Im white hes black and i dont care. But then when I saw her.mother in town and in her language (the basics i learnt) she told me my husband was very nice and good-looking and was admiring our car and children. And said we all look very happy.
There are some who are more accepting but I have seen many things over time at weddings etc where the bride and groom are both the same ethnicity because she could be kicked.out for being a Pakistan girl.married to a Ghana man.
Ridiculous really.

How is it daft? Do they think they would have chosen to have 6 children if they lived in America with no NHS, and their medical insurance would no doubt refuse to pay for the treatment.

Why did they continue to have six children after the first few all had these severe issues?

Why is it wrong to suggest that people should be held liable and accountable for their poor decisions and the burden of those decisions shouldn't fall on the average tax payer.

I recognise a lot of what you’re saying and with your background you’d think posters here would listen. But it all gets very uncomfortable if you talk about anyone being ‘racist’ other than white people.

Yeah, thats what I was talking about.

My friend is married to her cousin.

Her parents are cousins
And his parents are cousins and it continues right up until the great grand parents.
And probably even beyond that.

Yeah exactly that. Im.simply discussing what happens in certain cases but im not necessarily painting all with the same brush.

I watched a Marriage programme and it was based on matching Muslim men to single Muslim ladies and whenever asian families came on they kept asking if the girl he chose at the event was their own ethnicity. And kept repeating over and over we hope shes a nice Pakistani girl. Not even a nice girl. But a nice Pakistani girl. I do not know in person any Pakistan sister who has not married her fellow Pakistan man or her cousin. I really dont. They all say their husband is from Pakistan or their husband is their cousin. And on documentaries and stuff its clear they don't really approve of marrying outside the family/the country.

People asked me was it hard for your parents/his African parents to accept your marriage. And I was like no, they dont care. In fact my fil calls me his daughter and his aunty repeatedly says how happy she is for this marriage...

Everytime you have your midwife 8-10 week booking in appointment, they do ask are you married to your cousin.

@Judgejudysno1fan , I have made this point frequently, 1 cousin marriage may well cause no issues, but it's the constant cousin marriage generation after generation that causes issues. I also think, on another point, that in many cultures there is a general distaste /taboo for having sex with your cousin. It's often a source of jokes that marrying your cousin is a sort of 'hillbilly' practice. I had some very pleasant male cousins but would no more have married them than I would have married my uncle.

Using your examples, I disagree. The largest factors in reducing smoking were taxation increase, banning it in public places and nicotine replacement therapy. All government interventions, not information campaigns - they were proven to be largely ineffective. Smokers couldn't afford a daily £25 for a packet of fags, so switched to vaping, which conveniently up to this point has not seen massive tax hikes. Currently, the most sustainable and effective method to reduce the obesity epidemic is weight loss injections, not sitting around listening to talks on nutrition and health. Direct action and legislation works, awareness campaigns do very little.

I am not anti-legislation but legislation on its own does not work. Without education engagement and cultural understanding it either fails or pushes practices underground. We have seen that repeatedly.

The examples being used do not actually undermine that point. Vaping is a ticking time bomb not a solved problem for smoking. Weight loss injections help some people but as soon as they stop the weight often comes back.

Neither of these work long term without education and behaviour change alongside them.

Cousin marriage is already declining. If the aim is to reduce it further the way you do that is policy plus education not punitive rhetoric.

The trouble is that despite a couple of decades of education and awareness raising plus it being socially unacceptable in our culture, the reduction in numbers through his strategy is painfully slow. Some Muslim groups wish to maintain their own cultural practices and not adopt ours.

This means that thousands more babies will die or be born severely disabled. This is a serious and costly public health issue that those in charge won’t even dare criticise.