Time to outlaw cousin marriages?

[mrsruffallo]

Interesting article here
Would you support it being made illegal?

Just outlawing it isn't going to change deeply ingrained traditional/cultural practices.

[weegiemum contemplates a namechange to weirdymum ]

i had no idea it was legal.

darwin was married to his first cousin.

so was edgar allan poe.

One of my ex-pupils married her 1st cousin immediately on leaving school in Year 11. They had buried three babies in three years, due to congenital abnormalities, last time I heard from her. Education is paramount I think.

My friends (first cousins) had a ds with 6 fingers/toes on each hand/foot - they cut the extra ones off; problem solved. Would like to know what the baronesses REAL motives are for bringing this up out of the blue. Sounds like yet another bout of bullying Muslims IMO

Wonder if my ex-pupil could 'cut off' her tears when burying baby number 3?

I think we need some statistics to understand how it stacks up against fetal alcohol syndrome etc. This is hardly a newsworthy issue unless it can be shown that the rate of such deformities has risen recently. I live in an area with many people in arranged marriages (themselves the products of arranged marriages) - I know of a single case where this has definitely given rise to congenital defects. You can't educate people about their own culture from the outside without really knowing what you are talking about.

There have been detailed studies done with other communities that marry within a small group; the Amish and Hasidic Jewish community were two that I studied.
Not Muslim bashing in those cases.

Just having a rummage now

www.online.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowFulltext&ArtikelNr=16189&Ausgabe=225416&Pro duktNr=224224

www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Nov09/QatarGeneticsConf.html
There's a lot more studies out there.

There is a problem in certain communities with repeated cousin marriage. Definitely.

Education is the key and encouragement from community leaders.

I feel a bit uncomfortable with it being labelled "a Muslim issue". Cousin marriage isn't forbidden, but it's not strongly encouraged either.

"Just outlawing it isn't going to change deeply ingrained traditional/cultural practices."

Am not sure about this. Don't know about the whether or not it should be illegal, but making it illegal would make a difference. It wouldn't stop it, but it would be a signal for change.

eg look at child labour laws: making child labour illegal hasn't stopped it but hopefully it will, eventually: sending a signal that it is not acceptable culturally or not.

eg more trivial example: seat belts: that law changed the way people think. You hardly need to enforce it now.

Laws can and do change the way people think.

Agree the problem seems to be not one off marriages but marriages through generations which is obviously cultural and will come up against racism and discrimination accusations.

The threepc birth rate as against 75 pc recessive disorders rate is absolutely shocking.

And I can't imagine anyone is so prejudiced against Asian communities as to imagine their children don't matter.

I find it all fascinating
Lived in Bermuda for a short while yrs ago and I often wondered about the small genetic pool of native bermudians.
Must be true of all small island communities.

There is a risk but it is for individuals to ultimately decide whether they wish to take it - I would let my ds marry his cousin if that is what they wanted even though my only knowledge of arranged marriage has been gained from friends (mainly Muslim and South American catholic).

electrofags - that is a silly thing to say as it has nothing to do with race or religeon. The problem is not solved by lopping off the extra toes FGS - it is about the genetic code and what could be lurking to come out later when that child again marries another cousin who also has a recessive gene!!

1 in 10 children born to cousins in Birmingham die in infancy or develop life threatening genetic disease from recessive genes.

Would that not put you off marrying your first cousin??

I am sure the 1 in 10 ratio does not apply to people over 35 Riven and that isn't due to recessive genes etc which could come to the surface over and over again when their offspring does the same thing and again and again.

People aren't saying it is to be done as disability is wrong or distasteful they are saying that it is so prevalent and preventable that the community should be educated as to why it is happening and that it can be stopped.

I know that I was only describing an easily treatable condition and complications can arise when there have been cousins pairing off in every generation.

If I had had a first cousin and I had fallen in love with him, then yes, I would definitely have married him; knowing that there has been no arranged marriages in our family before, the risks would not bother me unduly.

The same applies to ds who has a female cousin a year younger than himself. There are advantages to arranged marriages too - making sure that the family's wealth remains unaffected and a spouse could not walk off with the family heirlooms and a load of real estate after ten years.

I wouldn't know who my cousins where if they came round to my house with a sausage roll and a cream cake. I haven't seen them in 40 years!

But MadameC you're talking about a community which sounds like it's getting more and more inbred with each generation, which is a completely different thing to what I and others have mentioned where it is a one off.

And Riven is right. How far do we take this? Do we do away with anything that causes a genetic defect?

Bad bad typos!! 'were' I meant!!

Sorry - you are saying keeping the family's wealth is more important than cutting the risk of 1 in 10 children dying??

If someone on comic releif said - here give us £5 and we will guarantee to stop 1 in 10 kids dying or contracting a life threatening disease you would do it - I would give more than the £5, to stop one in 10 kids in my community dying I would bloody walk tot he end so f the earth.

Maybe Riven - my first scan gave a less than 1 in 100 risk for both of my pregnancies and I was 25 and 30 so I think we can strike off that arguement when we are talking about interfamily breeding.

And the incidence of Down Syndrome is not repeated again and again as the gene mutates further as more family members marry.