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.

As I said up the thread, it's more to do with Jewish people tending to marry other Jewish people, and in small communities like, say the UK population of Haredi Jews (maybe 70k people spread across only a few main locations, most in Stamford Hill, though growing rapidly because of a high birth rate) where people marry endogamously and have lots of children (estimated 6.9 children per Haredi woman), you don't need to marry your cousin to be marrying someone with a high likelihood of carrying the same recessive genes as you.

Yeah, this one wasn't a discussion. It was a young ladybasking for advice on how to understand her family tree and why she cant be around her male cousins. Her aunty was worried she might kiss them or something because they were her brothers all along and her aunt had raised them as her own but lied to thr lady and her other siblings that they were her cousins

centuries ago. Not years ago.

centuries ago. Not years ago.

And the population was much, much smaller (population of England under 9m in 1801), so unless you travelled a long distance, the people in your social circle were often some kind of cousin.

The risks are greater with consanguinity though.

It Doesn’t really matter what the ethnicity is - whether it’s Irish travellers / Pakistani Muslims/ aristocracy or ultra conservative Jewish communities - cousin marriage is harmful for individuals and for society and should be banned.

It's not nonsense.
Prince Philip may have been the Queen's 2nd cousin once removed but they have many many shared ancestors so it's not the same as Joe Blogg's marrying his 2nd cousin once removed when that is the only shared bloodline.

Prince William and Prince Harry both married women with no connection whatsoever to aristocratic bloodlines. That was a deliberate choice.

Exactly and marrying close relatives is not "natural" except for remote tribes etc.

According to evolutionary psychology, women naturally seek partners who are genetically different to them. Male patriarchs do the opposite to keep wealth, resources and status in the family. It's not healthy for any community but it happens all over the world. China banned first cousin marriages as recently as 1981 to avoid all the problems that result from it.

The main reason first cousin marriage is taboo in the West is thanks to the early Christian Church who banned it in the 6th century. Not for any altruistic reason of course, it was designed to undermine the monarchs in Europe and to drive individuality in the belief that loyalty would switch to the Church which it did for a very long time. In any event, it did us all a great favour in relation to our gene pool.

Where are you getting this rubbish about William and Harry? They both met people among their social connections that they wanted to marry, just like most people do. They didn't make any deliberate effort to "marry out".

And every village had its idiot. Yes, well....

Infant mortality was high, and the causes may not have been only malnutrition and measles.

The child mortality rate in the United Kingdom, for children under the age of five, was 329 deaths per thousand births in 1800. This means that approximately one in every three children born in 1800 did not make it to their fifth birthday.

And transport was not really available, so your own village and the ones within walking distance were where the people you could marry were to be found.

However, I knew a village in Berkshire in the 1960s where a lad who found a bride from the nearest town was regarded as a bit Daring and as having taken a risk. The only thing he could do that was worse was choose a bride from the actual next village down the road, because the two villages in question had been fighting out 1066 every Friday night outside one or other pub pretty-much ever since the date in question, and it showed. One village was full of tall, blond lads with round faces who spoke slow and thought before they did it, and the other was full of small, dark, impetuous lads with Roman noses who never seemed to think before uttering an opinion. (The women mostly managed them for their own good, in each case.) There was a large proportion of what were kindly called "naturals", which was probably the price they paid for being insular.

I don’t understand what you say about the church having banned it. as lots of Christians married cousins, presumably be fore people realised it was dangerous.

Anyone who has studied their family history will confirm this.

The Catholic Church banned it in 590 ad … but dispensation was sometimes given ( inevitably to wealthy and powerful families 🙄)
Protestant churches? .. I’m not sure if there is an official ban .

Cousin marriage obviously is a bad idea, especially when it's done continuously throughout families as happens with British Pakistani families and probably some other groups too. I just don't think banning will work though, will it? People from those cultures have religious marriages as well, so won't they just carry on but have the religious marriages and not the civil ones, or do their marriages abroad? I'd worry that it will not stop the cousin marriages but make the women from those cultures, who are often already vulnerable in some ways, even more vulnerable as they won't have the legal protection that comes with a recognised marriage. I think a proper program explicitly teaching about the dangers of cousin marriage, done in schools and in mosques and doctor surgeries etc is what's needed.

The Table of Kindred and Affinity, printed from 1662 onwards in Church of England prayer books and drawn up by Archbishop Parker in 1563, reads

A man may not marry his:
Mother
Daughter
Father's mother
Mother's mother
Son's daughter
Daughter's daughter
Sister
Father's daughter
Mother's daughter
Wife's mother
Wife's daughter
Father's wife
Son's wife
Father's father's wife
Mother's father's wife
Wife's father's mother
Wife's mother's mother
Wife's son's daughter
Wife's daughter's daughter
Son's son's wife
Daughter's son's wife
Father's sister
Mother's sister
Brother's daughter
Sister's daughter

A woman may not marry her:
Father
Son
Father's father
Mother's father
Son's son
Daughter's son
Brother
Father's son
Mother's son
Husband's father
Husband's son
Mother's husband
Daughter's husband
Father's mother's husband
Mother's mother's husband
Husband's father's father
Husband's mother's father
Husband's son's son
Husband's daughter's son
Son's daughter's husband
Daughter's daughter's husband
Father's brother
Mother's brother
Brother's son
Sister's son

First cousins (parent's sibling's offspring) are not mentioned.

The CoE is not the only Protestant church, but it is the one that was mostly around in this country for quite a long time. What the Quakers, Methodists, Baptists and other non-conformists have had to say on the subject I have no idea.

dispensation was sometimes given.....

Quite often, and especially if your name was Habsburg. And not only for cousins; Philip II of Spain married his niece as his fourth wife. His first two wives were cousins.

The Habsburg jaw is already visible in portraits of Philip, though not as pronounced as it would be in later generations.

Agree the law needs changing to extend the definition of incest to inc first cousins - no marriage required.,

Its called GSA https://www.cumbria.gov.uk/eLibrary/Content/Internet/327/857/6802/42109163456.pdf

Pope Gregory the 1st banned it under canon law.
Any practicing Christians who wished to marry their 1st cousin had to pay for a special dispensation (exception) from the church to get married in church. Pope Gregory argued that such marriages were against divine law and often resulted in childless or “unhealthy” offspring.

Even without genetic testing at the time, there would have been a lot of examples of disability, child mortality and infertility. The Pharaohs had the same issue thousands of years earlier. Tutankhamun had a whole range of disabilities including a club foot, cleft palate, congenital scoliosis, Köhler Disease II and the inevitable infertility issues. He had two stillborn children who were not viable due to the level of consanguinity in his ancestry.

In this country we have a funny new-fangled institution called the Church of England which actually (gasp) doesn't obey the Pope! Hasn't much, for the last four hundred years or so. And as I noted above, the CoE doesn't have any rule against first cousin marriages.

Can I ask roughly where you live? Is it a Muslim area? I get if you'd rather not say.

I don't think it's like that in rural Pakistan...

It's never that straight-forward with royalty.

King Charles' marriage to Lady Diana was an arranged marriage as we all know.
He was (and still is) in a relationship with Camilla the whole time...

Diana also had to undergo medical tests before being cleared as his fiancée to ensure she was both a virgin and capable of carrying the heirs to the throne so it's likely genetic tests were carried out at that point too. She also had to pass the "Balmoral test" which involved spending time with the Queen to ensure she could endure the public scrutiny that comes with the job.

I doubt William would have been allowed to marry Kate if she hadn't passed similar tests before being cleared as his fiancée, given that he is heir to the throne.

Harry always had more choice as he was only the spare and was automatically demoted once William & Kate had children. After all Andrew dated an actress who had starred in a soft-porn film back in the day and it got steadily worse after that...

I thought the idea she had had to undergo virginity tests was later debunked? She was chosen partly as believed to be virginal though, which was icky enough.

I agree with you but I also think cultures can be more varied than we think. Clearly as I said in Jane Austen's time there was no 'ick' to her brother Henry marrying their first cousin Eliza who he'd known since youth(or in Pride and Prejudice, Lady Catherine literally says her daughter Anne was planned to marry first cousin Darcy 'from their cradles', which is shown as ridiculously snobby and controlling but not creepy in an incestuous sense.

Cousin marriage is awful for several reasons, but it's not necessarily true women in those cultures- or men- see it the way we do and are always forced- though very often they are. I don't agree with all of this article but I think it has some valid points.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=thecritic.co.uk/why-cousin-marriage-endures/&ved=2ahUKEwjpus6rm6-SAxWsgv0HHfNnE_EQFnoECCIQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3DFJLWLtmzcpm1GZbPxWBH

Thanks, this could be an issue where cooperation with church would help..

What?? Urgh...

Was he acting as her stepfather, like Woody Allen? No wonder his son is a creep..