Hi cuz! How do you like these 3/4 length sleeves. Hot, no?
This op-ed by pretty-boy John Stossel is close to ridiculous but i admire his use of the radical idea to get attention to a column. Not that I ever do such a thing. Now the bullshit kicker to this is the off-handed matter-of-fact remark that 20-percent of ALL marriages are cousins is horseshit. I’d like to see that backed up with facts. Who does this guy have his eye on anyway?
Conventional wisdom says only primitive people who live in isolated places marry cousins. It leads to stupid children. But that’s a myth.
It’s the sort of myth that leads to stupid laws. Half the states in America have banned cousin marriage, but there’s no good reason for it. You can marry your cousin and have perfectly intelligent kids.
Take Albert Einstein — was he intelligent enough for you? His parents were cousins, and he married his cousin. So did Charles Darwin and Queen Victoria. Worldwide, 20% of all married couples are cousins.
Over here, marrying first cousins is not only allowed, it is encouraged to keep the wealth within the extended family. So it is done ALL THE TIME, generation after generation. I don’t know the real number but it could easily be 20%… and maybe more.
If marrying first cousins causes a lot of genetic deformities, it’s not very obvious.
One does notice more people in public with deformities but I think that is because deformities are less treated with prosthetics (or however) than in America.
I’ve never seen a real study on it but would like to. It is an excellent place to dO a huge case-study on in-breeding.
32 comments and no religious bickering yet? You guys are slacking off! Someone needs to bring up Cain marrying his sister! Ewwww!
http://www.divorcereform.org/rates.html
31, thats per capita, rating on 100 or 1.
they suggest its about 40%, but this dont count breakups before marriage.
Look at #3
Sex and marriage are related, but not always consentual. Ask any battered wife/husband.
If 2 persons are happy to remain together the REST of their lives, and wish to share the benefits, WHO CARES, besides them.
The Ojibwe (Chippewa) tribe used to punish marrying a close relative with death. They are very strict about such things. So much for saying ancient man made this a common practice; this is certainly not true everywhere in the world.
They don’t punish this by death anymore but it is still very very very much frowned upon. I know a guy who can’t marry anyone at all on the reservation he lives on because he has too many cousins.
BTW I think Hemophilia runs in families where close relatives mate.
Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest
Dormant genes CAN become dominant, when marrying to close, or to others with the SAME gene, it dont need to be relitive.
For those who were taught that in “High School Genetics” that there is a High risk of genetic mutation and illness better crack a book.
There is a statistically higher chance when cousins have childern, BUT the risk increase is so negligble that it falls into statistcal error and pales in comparison to other factors like diet and lifestyle choices.
Some research I have readabout indirectally makes the risk from occasional exposure to seconhand smoke a thousand fold greater.
“Worldwide, 20% of all married couples are cousins.”
This is obviously way too low an estimate. Far more than 20% of married couples are first cousins to someone, just not eachother.
Although the Chinese tend not to have any cousins what with the one child per family thing and they make up a pretty substantial chunk of the world’s population.
To add to what #14 was saying – and I haven’t had to think about this stuff for a long time but…
First a bit of background. Genes are the part of your DNA that describes the various characteristics that are uniquely you, ie; blue eyes; black hair; tall, immune to certain cancers, etc. Genes can be dominant or recessive such that if you have a dominant characteristic and your mate has a recessive gene expressing the same characteristic – the dominant gene trumps and the potential effects of the recessive one essentially disappears.
The thing is – most of all the really nasty genetic things that can happen to a growing body are hitched to a recessive gene. So it is usually not expressed physically. But if the parents should have the exact same recessive gene, then the offspring is more likely to inherit this bad gene which then instructs the body to get the disease, condition or deformity.
Close relatives are very similar genetically and if there happens to be a serious genetic weakness in the family, or one which is usually masked due to its recessiveness, their offspring has a better than usual chance of getting that gene and expressing it as the result of only recessive genes in the genetic mix. ie: 6 toes, webbed feet, high blood pressure, etc.
Mating outside the family is almost a guarantee that any lurking horrific gene will be neutralized by a more normal dominant gene.
That’s why marrying a cousin or close relative is frowned upon. And while civilizations didn’t know genetics, they knew its effects.
25 year-old rusty genetics here.
RBG
RBG: seriously, not trying to be mean, but why such a long post that is self tagged as 25yrs old and rusty (which it is)
Applying the dominant/recessive paradigm to “high blood pressure” isnt really valid.
Everyone against this practice is just being their NAZI like self. They want to make everyone else be just like themselves. It’s sad to see how narrow minded they are. After all, most part of the third world have a common practice of marring cousins. Look at how the live in harmony with the environment, they were environmentalist prior to our own home grown environmentalist. Maybe this explain the left, just a bunch of cousins. I’m really perplexed that anyone commenting would every offer a critisism of the Muslims, especially since they practice cousin marriages to a far greater degree than most other cultures.
I can only assume that the NAZI party is alive and well with all those that condemn this practice. Maybe if we practiced this type of mating we could also be more peaceful and environment friendly.
>he lost his crackers sometime in the mid-1990s.
So if he’s attacking business practices that hurt the public, he’s a hero, but if he’s attacking government practices that hurt the public, he’s nuts.
If you’re not into accepting long-winded responses, just scoot to the last line below.
40 I checked with a Doctor of Zoology – an Associate Professor – and a buddy of mine. He tells me that the probability of a genetic problem from one set of cousins in-breeding is elevated but still negligable. This is not the situation after four or five generations of in-breeding in which case there’s almost a 100% chance of genetic aberations. (Of course, not the usual situation in our society (though legal, I assume) but more likely historically and in certain geographic areas.)
41 I hope you’re not in the habit of discarding all knowledge that is over 25 years old. Usually subsequent scientific discoveries more often refine previous discoveries. I imagine string theory might be more accurate but E=MC^2 (about a hundred years old) still works for me.
With regards to the blood pressure example. I just stole that from my wife’s side of the family that has such a history. Besides, the evolutionary process requires a fantastically wide variety of gene mutation and transmutation. Look around you, everything alive is the result of a mutated gene or re-combination of genes. My point being that just about any condition or physical form is possible. Though most will not survive. I once saw a herd of goats that faint dead-away when they hear a loud noise. Now there’s some in-breeding.
You’re wrong.
RBG: 25 years in genetics is a long time. trying to explain high blood pressure in the context of dominant and recessive genes is simply incorrect. Most conditions like “high blood presure” can not simply be attributed to a “recessive gene”
Further, anecdotal arguments are weak. Your “Associate Professor” friend and wife’s family medical history mean nothing.
John Stossel is the guy who once said that the loss of rainforest in South America was a hoax because he went to see the Everglades and there were plenty of trees there.
44, William,
BUSH
Dang, I lost.
47 Yes, you’re right. I was wrong there. He’s an Associate Dean. You can meet him if you like and check each other’s credentials, if that’s your thing. I don’t have to rely on anecdotal evidence, you can. Ask your family doctor if high blood pressure related to a genetic disease can run through a family. And I have no plans to add footnotes to all my sentences either.
Besides, you’re missing the point . There are over 30,000+ human genes to choose from that tell how a person will be built. If you don’t like high blood pressure associated with a genotype, pick another one. My argument doesn’t much care which one you use.
46. That stone, like Newton’s formulas, still had to be discovered and utilized. Whether it is a simple conversion factor is immaterial. It still changed how we view the universe. That insight and it’s ramifications is still valid now as it was then. Which, of course was my point. Not whether you believe in String Theory – though I can imagine hundreds if not thousands of leading physicists do support it. No, I’m not going to list their names. And if you don’t like String Theory (it might have to be proved only by pure mathematics), substitute Quantum Mechanics – the point of my argument doesn’t care.
RBG
open up ppl. i know many ppl who married their cousins. their kids are fine.
It’s true that there’s a high percentage of cousin marriage world-wide, mostly in tribal or Muslim areas. These areas also have high rates of birth defects. In Pakistan, where marriage between 1st or 2nd cousins comprises 62% of all marriages, birth defects are also common. Pakistanis living in England have 3 times the rate of birth defects as the rest of the British population.
Stossel’s article fails to distinguish between 1st and 2nd or 3rd cousins. There is a HUGE difference genetically. His article also fails to consider the number of cousin marriages within one’s lineage. If yours is the first cousin marriage within your family, then your risks are a percentage point higher than average. But if your family has been marrying its cousins for the last twenty generations, then your risk is quite large.