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.

Was a few centuries back though when society wasn’t so enlightened

They do. I have a relative who is a misldwife here in Ireland and it's definitely an issue. I know for example galactosaemia is tested for at birth and mothers are advised to avoid breastfeeding until babies are tested. There are others like Hurler syndrome and brittle bone disease. The infant mortality rate is more than 3 times that of the general population.

I answered your question and told you it’s all easily Google-able if you want to read about it.

I am not a member of your staff having to hand in a report to the big boss. Are you one of these fannies who works in a corporate environment and are used to having minions to tell what to do and get miffed when people don’t comply?😂

Have a look yourself - stop being so lazy.

And I asked you a question too which you didn’t answer…so are you in favour of it or not?

Wow, thanks that’s really interesting. And very sad.

Ban it and anyone married to their cousin shouldn’t be allowed a visa to holiday or stay.

what a waste of kidneys the cost to socialised health care is ridiculous

If it's illegal, I think expectant mothers will be less likely to be honest with midwives / medical professionals due to shame or fear.

It is appalling that it still exists - I wish a ban would work as it would be simple.

Wow, really?! Are you in NI or England? Had no idea -PP has shared couple of studies for travellers.

Yanbu. We need to outlaw first cousin marriages.

We also need to educate the Muslim community, who predominantly practises these marriages.

We have a large number of settled travellers in one of our primary schools. They all intermarry within a few ' acceptable 'familes. The girls barely attend school once there are several smaller ones at home ( they are needed to help mum) and the boys leave/ are expelled by the end of the first or second year of secondary. They are lost educationally due to this but most are the result of cousin marriage so incapable of engaging with education anyway. Their genetic fate is sealed from the second they are conceived

I don’t believe they don’t know.

Apart from keeping the money in the family and making sure that the next generation are not influenced by other cultures - what are the advantages of first cousin marriage?
I can see the advantages for a misogynistic society as the patriarch of the family doesn’t have to cede any control to an outsider.
I can’t see much advantage for a mother who runs the risk of severely handicapped children.

It was the norm in Europe until the middle Ages when the Catholic Church banned it to dismantle tribalism and promote individuality.
Other religions haven't gone down the same path.

You need a special dispensation from the RCC if you want to marry your first cousin which is still common among the Traveller community.

It's unhealthy for aristocrats and for the poor to marry their own bloodline and the government need to step up with education programmes on this.

The Pakistan government needs to also as over 60% of their population are married to their first cousins which is a genetic timebomb waiting to go off.

Galactosemia and PKU are 2 of those metabolic conditions.

The graveyard in my hometown has loads of Traveller graves & the headstones tend to be very elaborate with carvings and photos. There are so many graves of babies & very young children & it's clear from the photos that there was something wrong.

So why were world experts calling for screening nearly two decades ago?

www.theguardian.com/science/2008/may/17/genetics#:~:text=Professor%20Alan%20Bittles%2C%20a%20genetics,among%20communities%20considered%20at%20risk.

Oh my god that actually made me laugh - I might add that as a strap line for my CV.

But back to the point: maybe don’t provide a quote to try and prove a nonexistent point in future?

Can’t be a coincidence that cultures actively continuing with cousin marriage are also cultures that lean towards large families and young brides.

As the risk of ill children rises, the patriarchal response is to force out a higher number of them.

If it’s banned, it’s likely those arranging the marriages will simply pursue religious marriage without civil marriage

Also, banning it in the UK won't prevent first cousins from marrying in countries where it is legal and then living in the UK.

The Isle of Sheppey, off the Kent coast, also allegedly had problems with inbreeding. I once met a retired midwife who said 'Everything you've heard about the Isle of Sheppey is probably true'. Until quite recently there were older people who had 'never been off the Island'. But that was only a very small population.

Our local cemetery is full of stillborn or toddler aged children with the same names appearing again and again. Tragically some parents have lost multiple children, some one every year.

I'm in NI

Yes, but the point was the genetic line died out because the remaining heir wasn't capable of reproducing

I’m still waiting on that point but that poster has just called me a fanny so I doubt they’ll respond to my query…

You’re quite right about Irish travellers. It’s long been known they have high rates of disabilities in that group.
However, anyone proposing education is quite naive in my experience of travellers. In Ireland travellers have their own distinct culture and live very very separate lives to rest of Irish population. They absolutely wouldn’t take too kindly to ‘outsiders’ telling them not to marry their cousin. Not exactly sure how a ban would work.

I can’t speak for south Asian populations. Maybe they would be more inclined change as a result of education.

People have disabled kids. Most society’s frown upon marrying a relative probably at an instinctive level. Most people fundamentally would prefer not to raise risks of having a child with disabilities not because they are hateful bigots but because many people just want our kids to have better and easier life’s then we had. It’s hard to understand how the risks are ignored so willfully when so many children have zero quality of life.

like may things in life there is no easy answer

Isn't the Isle of Wight another hot spot for this

Because its a slippery slope once one thing is banned its easier to ban other

Banning something surely has some effect on lowering the incidences of it? Obviously people do all kinds of things that are illegal but it doesn’t mean there’s no point to the laws.
I also think having a negative reaction can be beneficial. Being too accepting of things gives people the impression that it’s fine.