To think first-degree cousins should not marry?

[Onestonetogo]

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And I wanted to point out the complexities,and how much is still unknown.

It's all about knowing the risks, taking everything into account and taking the action / risks you feel most comforable with.

We don't know what has caused DS2's problems, and chances are we never will, which makes the decision to have or not to have another child exceedingly difficult. I am grateful with having them both, but if we had had DS2 first we may have only had one child .

How do you know it's enough to form an informed opinion? And as for the Israel/Palestine conflict - it should just stop, eh? Well, fuck me - why has nobody told them that?

Oh, I give up. I'm in a bad enough mood today as it is.

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But as I said, prenatal screening cannot eliminate the risks for women over 40 - there are many increaased risks that are too rare in themselves to be screened but are collectively increased in women over 40 (for the curious onlooker - I was 43 when I had dd and did not have an amnio - totally understand why someone would though).

So you cannot get out of it like that. The fact is that there are many, many louse judgement calls made when people ahve children and it would not be feasible or welcome to legislate for them all (although I'm sure we all have pet issues we'd vote for - mine wouldn't be older mothers or cousins, personally I think there are worse and alas more common parenting errors).

It's the banning issue that is the problem here as others have pointed out.

Most hospitals offer genetic counselling in the event of a known problem I believe. Things like translocation are very hard to manage though because it only take one parent with it for a great many foetuses to be affected, and the decisions involved are a bit of a Hobson's choice. I do think counselling should be enough- no need to legislate what two adults can decide about for themselves. I do think that all families need to be given this information though, including poor and ethnic minority ones for whom consanguinity may be a cultural thing. They may simply not realise what is causing the health problems in their families, and how they can avoid them.

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What about people who have other hereditary conditions? People who are blind for eg and there is a good chance their offspring will be blind.

I have a birth abnormality which no-one ever really decided whether it was hereditary or not. I took a risk having DD - so far she is fine (fingers crossed).

What about people who have a lot of alcoholism in the family - it is thought that that has genetic markers - should they not reproduce?

Many many people have things in their families which are not ideal. But it is rare that this is enough to stop people taking a chance. Even when there is a good chance that whatever it is will be passed on.

it's not just cousins marrying, but all sorts of people. We all take pot luck. the very small increased risk for cousins is nothing in the scheme of things.

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Fio- I think it entirely depends on whether you have any autosomal recessive diseases in your shared bloodline. The chances of them arising increase with every successive consanguinous generation though, hence the worry about areas where first cousin marriage is more common or is a cultural norm.

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FF, I think the risk in non-related couples is about 1-3% and the risk for related couples is double this.

But there maybe other factors which would make the risk much higher eg some families will have a very high chance of having effected children (like the effectively 1:2 chance mentioned on here in the family with 8 children where 4 of them are effected) and in other families (also mentioned on here ) it appears to be zero.

Luck has to play a role though..

We were also asked, it is obviously recognised to be a very significant factor otherwise the drs would'nt ask it...

Evolutionarily speaking inbreading can provide a rather ruthless method for weeding out defective genes - in olden times double recessives would have had low or zero reproductive fitness. It is also a way of consolidating optimal gene collections. None of this works quite the same nowadays with family planning becoming more common. Natural selection isn't what it used to be.

''Jazzhands, like I said before, having the gene mutation that predisposes us to become alcoholic does not mean that we were born alcoholic or that we will ever turn into one! There are environmental factors that contribute to it. Prevention is the key in this case imo.''

But the fact is that even controlling for socio-economic factors etc those with a predisposition are significantly more likely to become alcoholics (dh and I both have a ton of them in our families - I see to have everything mentioned in this thread!). You cannot simply rely on having a nice home environemt to prevent.

This kind of mate-choice is thought to be acting on the prevalence of an number of seriuos psychopathologies.

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No, you cannot carry a gene for murder as far as we know. 'Murder' is not a disease, like alcohoism or depression - it is an action.

Do you think people can just 'defy' depression or bipolar disorder (and yes I think some people can to some extent at elast some of the time but to a limit). These are diseases with a strong genetic component - they are not actions that we can just choose or not choose.

And the serious diseases issue is still a risk for the over 40s as for the cousins and you still haven't said whether given that these risks are the same you would legislate agianst both.

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Having a genetic predisposition for a disease is very different to a personality trait that lies within the normal population range.

Many diseases require environmental triggers as well as genetics - few are actually entirely genetically determined and it is this few that you are entirely basing your argument upon.

If both parents have BPD or are alcoholics there is a definitle increased risk - and your argument is all about risks - not certainities.

And what about the older mothers - why is that not wrong if they know there is an increased risk of serious genetic disease?

''Someone may be born with the likelyhood of developing bipolar disorder later on in life, but it's not a 100% given, as this person may live a happy life without developing the disease.''

And neither it it 100% given that cousins will have diseased babies!

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But an amnio and scans cannot eliminate the risk as it only looks for a few common disorders. There are many others.

Just wanted to say I am still reading this thread, and am at some of the posts.

I think OP has an alteria (sp?) motive on this.

I just thank God she is not running this country.