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.

I don’t think it was ever “very common” in British societies. It did happen however though generally only once. A lot of the problems in Asian marriages is because cousin marriage isn’t a one off, it is repeated generation after generation so the health problems are exacerbated.

RICHARD HOLDEN tried. Read the thread.

Yes - it was more of an English version of the set up you see in A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. People usually married within their own social class and approximate wealth distribution. With small social circles, this meant that everyone was part of a complex web of distant relatives anyway. So it wasn’t cousin marriage by design, and first cousin marriages were rare but acceptable. They didn’t happen in successive generations either, so harm was limited.

Wowzers. Is that like diseases from alcohol use, or smoking. Or is your particualr form of despise just preserved for those with brown skin ?

Wowzers. Is that like diseases from alcohol use, or smoking. Or is your particualr form of despise just preserved for those with brown skin ?

The Bill. From the Tories 🙄
https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/debate/2025-06-18/commons/westminster-hall/marriage-between-first-cousins#:~:text=Debate:%20Marriage%20between%20First%20Cousins%20%2D%2018th%20Jun%202025

Yes, and was told he was racist:

“The bill faced opposition, with independent MP Iqbal Mohamed arguing that a ban would be ineffective and suggesting that the issues should be addressed through education and genetic counseling rather than legislation.”

Hmm.. Iqbal Mohamed. Funny that isn’t it?

A few families who were at the top of the heap as they were the only ones with any money..

Now it's people from the poorest sections of some immigrant groups so they can hang on to some patch of land back in Pakistan.

I see the result of this every day.

Looks like it

Indeed.

Imagine standing up in the British Parliament in 2025 to argue for cousin marriage.

Sick

What part of the quote you’ve provided mentions racism exactly?

The Tories tried to ban first cousin marriage. What is your actual point beyond racist?

No, my dad used to work with a man who was married to his cousin. White and working class. Two kids who seemed okay. I remember my mum remarking that it was strange and wrong iho.

What part of that quote is arguing for cousin marriage?

The Royal Family being a prime example. Around here they at least count the number of fingers and toes before they allow marriage.

@Somersetbaker Sorry, I don’t understand the second sentence. Are you saying apart from the Royal Family, people are not allowed to get married if they have a physical disability?

NHS England have said that the article should bever have been published and it has since been withdrawn. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/nhs-first-cousin-marriage-risk-birth-defects-b1250227.html

A family member of mine is a social worker in Bradford. It shouldn’t be banned because the cousin marriages will still happen but they will be religious marriages and not legal. The problem won’t go away and women will have fewer rights.

It clearly isn’t that uncommon for white British cousins to marry. There are plenty of examples in this thread.

One couple as friends of mine - they have five children together. Been together since they were 20. One is neurodiverse but they are all healthy.

There is one cousin marriage in the family too. It took some getting used to for us all when they first coupled up, but everyone accepted it because the woman was widowed after nursing her first husband with cancer for years, and the man’s wife went off with someone else, which he was so upset about. So although it felt a little odd them being together, there was more a feeling of relief that they were going to be happy. They now have two healthy children.

Are you a Labour voter by chance?

It was basically shut down for being racist. Google it yourself and look at the furore surrounding it.

It was all over the news at the time.

Than you

Is it a few defined genetic diseases or just a load of random ones? If the former maybe genetic testing like certain Jewish communities might be the way to go?

My aunt unknowingly married her 4th cousin. Her first child died after a long illness of an almost unknown disease, 3 cases in Europe at the time. Took them a couple of years to work out what it was. This was about 50 years ago, before genetic testing etc. The fact that we can now screen, makes it worse.

The NHS bloody well knows better; NFN is an NHS abbreviation.

"Normal For Norfolk" was originally used as a response to a problem with cousin marriage (and straightforward incest too, which is a whole lot worse) in that particular area, and especially in the rural part of it. I knew someone who worked there in the field of genetic medicine and she was absolutely clear that NFN was never intended as humorous, just as a straightforward comment on a probability. It must be said this was not confined to first cousin marriage; it was marriage in a small available population, and with added incest followed by hasty marriage if there was a pregnancy – just to complicate the issue. (The possibility of DNA testing identifying the father has dealt with that one at least to some extent.)

She also said that the situation had been a lot worse before the bicycle widened the pool of available mates for any given individual from just one village and the village next door to three or four villages beyond that.

She also said that modern medicine had meant more of the unfortunate children survived to puberty rather than dying in infancy of the conditions they suffered.

Grim indeed; but nothing to do with Asia.

That doesn’t answer my question: what aspect of the quote that you provided mentions racism? Because I’m not seeing it in the quote you have provided.

This thread is about first cousin, not fourth.

Nor public sources 🤷‍♀️