After reading another story about a Pakistani performing deviant behavior (Danish Minhas), and the fact that the nation has been a failed state since it's conception, is alleged to harbor terrorists and Osama - there's a secret issue that many people aren't aware of. A couple years ago I was walking around the market place in a Muslim nation in the Middle East with my cousin. There were a couple merchants who asked us if we were married. When we said related, they encouraged the idea even more and showed us pictures of their kids who they conceived with their cousins. I thought it was extremely odd to see this outside of Pakistan (Amanpour brought it to my attention), but it turned out they had immigrated from Pakistan. If I was the kid's lawyer I would look at pleading the "Pakistani" argument over insanity. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3342040.ece http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/1697 50% of non-resident Pakistani marriages (in the UK) are between first cousins. The number will obviously be much higher in Pakistan where inbreeding is encouraged in rural landscapes. Autism rates are off the charts. What is the argument Pakistani's use for this system? What is the tradition behind it and why won't they adapt to scientific data against their tradition?
You don't have to look across the world to see examples of inbreeding. Just go to a Texas-OU game all you can see tens of thousands of inbred Okies.
Why does Western culture emphasize eating beef? What kind of lunacy is this? The scientific data consistently proves that beef is the least efficient of all meats. In terms of converting grain to pounds of meat, beef basically takes up almost double the grain pork does and triple that of chicken and eggs. Hell, we're not even talking about going vegan here. Even economic data indicates that we are deluding ourselves to the fullest, with a set of subsidies that pushes feed expenses and thus prices down so as to not reflect the true cost beef takes. Did George Washington eat beef or something? What tradition exists to justify this ignorance? oh well. Bob from Texas will probably say "I'll eat 50 beef burgers if you don't eat beef jackass" and appropriate ethnic name from Pakistan will probably say "I'll marry 50 of my cousins if you don't marry yours, jackass". It seems crazy to see the irrational traditions that other cultures have but it's not like we in the West are particularly good at objectively integrating scientific data in our lives either. Why should we expect others to change their ways just because we dislike their practices when we clearly would not do the same for them?
Although inbreeding between first cousins does increase the genetic disorder rate I didn't think it was this high. From the information I heard of the incidence in this country it was about on par of a woman having a child after 35. Still, it's a horrible practice...keepin it all in the family isn't a good thing, unless you're in a bible story.
I really don't think there is much wrong with it, although I tend to discourage the practice. I know in some more rural or tribal areas (and yes, that includes right in your own backyard in the good ol' US of A) families encourage their kids to marry from their extended families to strengthen family ties and because they consider it to be the safer choice: you would be marrying someone that you have known for a long time, and there is more than just marriage that ties you into that commitment, so you have an extra incentive to make it work and not risk alienating your community. A lot of rural families prefer this. The genetic thing is overblown. While there are risks, the chance of something going wrong is still highly unlikely. I am pretty sure if they saw a high percentage of their kids disfigured they would have plenty of incentive to stop the practice. Either way, I discourage it and would tell people to only consider it as the very last option.
Did you really just compare someone's choice of meat to marrying your own cousin? It might be the worst analogy I've heard on this board, and that's reeeeally saying something.
Doesn't this kind of practice apply to basically poor, rural regions everywhere? At least that's the way I've always figured.
It was common in the ruling classes of old(Egypt, Europe) as well. It was a way of keeping the power in the family.
I remember hearing somewhere that the genetic risk are overblown but I'm wondering though if that is dependent on how much the family overall is marrying outside of the family. While two first cousins procreating might not be that big of a genetic risk if they themselves are products of several generations of first cousins procreating it seems like the genetic diversity of the overall family would already be pretty narrow.
In laws will actually like each other. No long distance holiday traveling. And you know what you are getting, so no marital surprises. Brilliant! The real question is why it is not done more?
This practice occurs in many more places than just Pakistan....... ...interesting article, I thought the risk would be much higher with the stigma that surrounds it...... http://www.physorg.com/news149249286.html Cousin marriage laws outdated In an opinion article published in the US open-access journal PLoS Biology, University of Otago Department of Zoology Professor Hamish Spencer and Professor Diane Paul, a Research Associate at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, argue that laws against cousin marriage are ill-advised. "Neither the scientific nor social assumptions behind such legislation stand up to close scrutiny," says Professor Spencer. For example, a 2002 expert review of studies regarding birth defects in offspring of cousins found that the risk was much smaller than generally assumed, he says. The US National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) report estimated the average risk as 1.7 - 2 per cent higher than the background population risk of congenital defects and 4.4 per cent higher than general risk for dying in childhood. "Women over the age of 40 have a similar risk of having children with birth defects and no one is suggesting they should be prevented from reproducing. People with Huntington's Disease or other autosomal dominant disorders have a 50 per cent risk of transmitting the underlying genes to offspring and they are not barred either," Professor Spencer says. In the USA, there are 31 state laws that either bar cousin marriage outright, or permit it only where the couple obtains genetic counseling or is beyond reproductive age or if one partner is sterile. "Such legislation reflects outmoded prejudices about immigrants and the rural poor and relies on oversimplified views of heredity. There is no scientific grounding for it," Spencer adds. The article can be viewed at http://biology.plosjournals.org/ . Source: Public Library of Science
