A British politician has caused quite a stir with his statements regarding the defective results of the arrangements Asians accede to…
A minister who warned about birth defects among children of first cousin marriages in Britain’s Asian community has sparked anger among critics.
Phil Woolas said health workers were aware such marriages were creating increased risk of genetic problems.
The claims infuriated the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) which called on the prime minister to “sack him”. [BBC]
As far as Woolas is concerned, he’s bravely confronting a worrisome issue which is politically incorrect; he has been quoted as saying he has an obligation to bring this up. He isn’t attacking the marriages as illegal or even a religious problem, his point is that this is a cultural practice which should be examined. Children of such unions are 13x more likely to suffer from recessive disorders.
“The issue we need to debate is first cousin marriages, whereby a lot of arranged marriages are with first cousins, and that produces lots of genetic problems in terms of disability [in children]. If you talk to any primary care worker they will tell you that levels of disability among the… Pakistani population are higher than the general population. And everybody knows it’s caused by first cousin marriage….Awareness does need to be raised but we are very aware of the sensitivities,” [BBC]
Critics wonder about his motives, since his political position deals with the environment instead of health. The timing for this hullabaloo in the empire’s orchard is awesome:
His comments follow the storm sparked by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who suggested some aspects of Islamic Sharia law could be allowed in Britain. [mirror]
Anti-green team, please note, both Woolas and the the cabinet minister who has his six, Geoff Hoon, are taking pains to point out that this conniption about cousin-coupling doesn’t involve the “wider Muslim community”; oh no, this backwardness is alll Asian.
The junior Minister has other vocal supporters besides Hoon:
Ann Cryer, MP for Keighley, said she was delighted that Phil Woolas had triggered a public debate on the issue which she said affected some sections of the Pakistani population in her constituency.
An expert in genetics, Steve Jones, also defended Woolas today, saying that first-cousin marriages doubled the risk of babies being born dead or disabled. [Guardian]
Cryer, like Woolas, reps significant numbers of Pakistanis. She has plenty of gasoline for this fire:
“I am delighted we are talking about. I have been fretting about this for 10 years and at last we are having a debate about something that is having a very large impact on my Pakistani constituents,” Cryer told the Today programme.
She stressed that she was only talking about “certain sections” of the Pakistani community. The problem related to families who engaged in “trans-continental marriages” because most of those marriages were between cousins.
There was often “a price to pay”, she went on. “The price to pay is often babies being born dead, or babies being born very early or babies being born with very severe genetically-transmitted disorders.” [Guardian]
“This is to do with a medieval culture where you keep wealth within the family.”
“I have encountered cases of blindness and deafness. There was one poor girl who had to have an oxygen tank on her back and breathe from a hole in the front of her neck,” she added.
“The parents were warned they should not have any more children. But when the husband returned from Pakistan, within months they had another child with exactly the same condition.” [BBC]
Anyone seen Razib? 🙂 Someone page him. He HAS to chime in on this…
This has been grossly misinterpreted in popular media. The topic has been discussed very well here by Mr Saunders. I have to say, he has quite a hook in this line.
Any how, Mr Saunders tells us that Archbishop Williams, acting as the direct spokesman of she who is appointed by God and is the ruler of England in her mortal shell, was in truth arguing for a greater civic authority for churches. the sharia diversion seems to have put paid to that movement.
Keep in mind that it’s misleading to discuss the “risk” of first-cousin marriage without attention to the baseline of how often it’s gone on in the family in the past–i.e., as a “one-off” event it’s not especially dangerous, but if practiced over generations it gets increasingly risky.
I can only imagine what the reasons for bringing this topic up right now are, but it certainly shouldn’t, in the abstract, be any kind of taboo topic. Especially not if you’re in a welfare state like the UK, where the (economic) costs of birth defects are borne by the society rather than just the birth-family.
as a first year medical student, I was surprised by all the genetic studies where Pakistanis through inbreeding, were the reason for genetic breakthroughs as they allowed investigators to see what pathways were adulterated in these offspring causing medical defects. One was the hormonal regulation of hunger where these two siblings, had voracious appetites caused by a genetic disorder via inbreeding. What caused the hunger, was identified because of these brother/sisters.
I agree with you “future”. Finally, Pakistanis have a chance to make a positive difference in the world, lets not dash their hopes.
/sarcasam
Anyone seen Razib? 🙂 Someone page him. He HAS to chime in on this…
the problem is worst than just first-cousin marriages. the problem is pedigree collapse. clans with breed with each other over generations start to get really inbred to a far greater extent than a plain “first-cousin marriage” would imply.
another thing, the risk in any given first-cousin marriage for a deleterious recessive is low (ignore the fact that pakistanis might have really inbred lineages going back generations). but, most deleterious recessives (or an enormous number) may be due to first cousin marriages. that means that though on the individual level it might not rise to the threshold of concern, when it comes to publish health cousin-marriages are going to be a major cost you can easily calculate because of the statistics.
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2005/08/cousin-be-perty-part-n.php: Condition – % of affected children whose parents were first cousins Total color blindness – 15 Albinism – 21 Xeroderma Pigmentosum – 23 Ichthyosis Congenita – 35 Tay Sachs – 40
(for the USA)
so, a common assertion is that the risk of birth defects is 2-3% assuming no relation. and 4-6% assuming first cousins. now, if your first cousin is HHHHOOOOTTTTTTT perhaps you’re willing to take the extra risk. but if 1/2 of the marriages are between first cousins, well, you can do the math in terms of how much more medical expenditure will ensue…..
Who cares–gov’t will pay–yes, we can! 😉
btw, the common number i see is that first cousin offspring are 5 points dumber in IQ than they would be otherwise. so is this a thread where it’s cool to point out that these practices are turning pakistani muslims into inbred tards? i mean, they really are. additionally, the problem isn’t limited to pakistanis, cousin marriage rates are really high across the middle east in part because of new found wealth (oil) and the nature of islamic laws regarding inheritance.
the siblings in question who had uncontrollable hunger came from a lineage of people who had married within family, it wasnt like razib points out a one-time cousin marriage type of thing. This inner marrying I think has something definitely to do with many people in villages looking for spouses outside of the village when arranging marriages and sometimes marring within a very small village itself is looked at as incestuous even when there is no identifiable blood relation between the two people.
since i doubt comments can handle the requisite HTML, in words inbreeding coefficient is proportional in large part to the number of recent common ancestors. in the united states first cousin marriages are between people who have 2 recent common ancestors. in some societies that’s no true, “first cousins” are actually more closely related than that because they have recent common ancestors all across their family tree.
Who cares–gov’t will pay–yes, we can!
european gov. might demand selective abortions. that can mitigate some of the cost.
my understanding is that part of the rash of cousin marriages among pakistani britons is that it is a way to get family members to the UK through regular immigration channels. so it isn’t just “islam tells me i should do this,” there’s a strong personal incentive to bump-uglies with your cousin cuz then they can come to the land of fish & chips.
map of near-relative-f*king by region: http://consang.net/index.php/Global_prevalence
Wait, how does inheritance law promote cousin-marriage? I thought Islamic inheritance law is pro-male (compared to, say, French inheritance law)–so, wouldn’t you have an increased desire to marry daughters up (b/c they get less $$)? And wouldn’t that be feasible with polygamy (again, compared to France)?
also, the problem isn’t only in deleterious recessives. those major diseases are public health concerns and what not, but inbred people are just susceptible to disease in general. that means probably more lifetime infections and so forth. it isn’t just the big rare diseases; but endemic pathogens probably hit the immune systems of the inbred more harshly (no offense to the inbred SM readers ;-).
Wait, how does inheritance law promote cousin-marriage? I thought Islamic inheritance law is pro-male
well, i guess i mispoke, cuz i might not be islamic law per se. but i do know from an israeli arab friend of mine that cousin marriages are seen as a good way to pool money across families where otherwise there’s too much distrust. so i guess it’s more of the lack of transparency of capital?
also, it’s pro-male, but women are supposed to get 1/3 i think (depends on details of which sharia, etc.). ethnographic studies i’ve read suggests that it doesn’t work that way a lot of the time.
Just came across this. http://in.rediff.com/getahead/2008/feb/11cousin.htm Interesting!
Yeah, good point–family ties in general are more important the less well you have the legal system working between relative strangers!
chitta, those were optimal for 3rd and 4th cousins. 1st and 2nd cousins had fewer kids than expectation. i blogged a possible reason.
btw, from the article:
MPAC spokesman Asghar Bukhari said Mr Woolas’ comments “verged on Islamophobia”.
and later….
Research for BBC2’s Newsnight in November 2005 showed British Pakistanis accounted for 3.4% of all births but have 30% of all British children with “recessive disorders”.
god, it’s so easy to hate muslims 😉
one reason that many muslims i’ve talked to give for cousin marriage is that
1) you’ve seen your cousin when you were younger, so you know if she’s fugly or not if the whole purdah thing is happening
2) you don’t get to socialize with non-relative females. so you hit it where you can….
btw, re: fake marriages. full disclosure, my mom tried to convince me into one of those so that one of my cousins could immigrate to the USA. my parents are generally pretty ethical, but if they thought about it has to be a really common rationale. and it isn’t just brownz, kurds in denmark do the same. it’s a way of bringing relatives over and maintaining old country values by pairing western born with those who might not even know the local language.
Yeah, but is it a Muslim thing, or a “from the pind” thing (like West Virginia in the US!)?? My experience is limited, but in my experience you wouldn’t find first-cousin marriage in any significant frequency in the Oxbridge Pakistanis, or the wealthy Pakistanis in NYC or LA. . . .
Yeah, but is it a Muslim thing, or a “from the pind” thing (like West Virginia in the US!)?? My experience is limited, but in my experience you wouldn’t find first-cousin marriage in any significant frequency in the Oxbridge Pakistanis, or the wealthy Pakistanis in NYC or LA. . . .
when you have frequencies on the order of 1/2 it can’t just be rednecks. in the arab world elites do it plenty. one of sadam hussein’s wives was his first cousin.
4 · Sanjeev Jain said
You don’t have much of a commenting history, but from what you have said on this blog, I’m going to have to call you on this. The sarcasm tag won’t save you, it’s not real HTML.
Razib can ask an outrageous question about “bringing up how they’re inbred tards” or whatever because he has shown over the past four years that he’s not a bigot. He’s not anti-Islam or anti-Pakistan and he has thousands of data points among our archives to indicate that.
Follow the comment policy and all will be good. If you don’t want to read it, here’s the spark notes version: please keep the haterade to yourself, thanks.
…sorry about the crack 😉 i’ll be good from now on, but it was just too easy….
here are tables on inbreeding rates. i’m going to post some of them here in a moment….
27 . razib said
Well, lucky for you I laughed out loud when I read that line, so you sailed right through the Manish Vij Memorial “Unless they’re funny”-clause. When our forefathers drafted these guidelines they truly were visionary thinkers.
You may be right and correct in the big picture, and I’m not speaking from any deep or even thorough knowledge of Arab culture, but Saddam was a total “redneck”/thug/”lumpen prol.” in terms of his class background in Iraq, just to keep things honest! I guess he obvioulsy became top-dog for quite a while, but–please let’s not compare him in terms of class sophistication to the Hashemites or the pre-’79 persian ruling class, or the current Moroccan royal family, etc.
the coefficient of inbreeding of first cousins assuming no other recent inbreeding is 0.0625. here are some data from the linked table with location and the mean coeff of inbreeding (how closely the couple is related):
pakistan: lahore – 0.0269 mianchannu – 0.0236 muridke – 0.0240 sheikhpura – 0.0271 gujrat – 0.0277 jhelum – 0.0262 rawalpindi – 0.0286 faisalabad – 0.0286 gujurunwala – 0.0323 sahiwal – 0.0295 all-punjab – 0.0280 lahore – 0.0242 all-pakistan 0.0332 quetta – 0.0217 swat (urban) – 0.0163 swat (rural) – 0.0166
i’m going to put b-desh and india numbers for comparison
bangladesh matlab – 0.0015 teknaf – 0.0101
india west bengal muslim – 0.0135 bihar (muslim suburban) – 0.0150 bihar (muslim rural) – 0.0249 bihar (all-muslim) 0.0076 east india all-region muslim – 0.0097 madhya pradesh hindu – 0.0033 madhya pradesh scheduled tribes & castes – 0.0145 madhya pradesh muslim – 0.0215 madhya pradesh christians – 0.0098 all muslims central india – 0.0168 dehli sunni muslim – 0.0100 lucknow shia muslim – 0.0202 udaipur shia muslim – 0.0218 dehli sunni muslim – 0.0180 lucknow hindu – 0.0001 lucknow muslim – 0.0095 all north india muslim – 0.0130 andhra pradesh – 0.0195 andhra pradesh – 0.0324 andra pradesh vedde – 0.0185 karnataka hindu – 0.0333 karnataka muslim – 0.0160 karnataka christian – 0.0173 all karnataka – 0.0299 kerala – 0.0118 kerala – 0.0075 tamil nadu – 0.0231 tamil nadu (rural) 0.0367 tamil nadu (urban) – 0.0203 tamil nadu brahmin – 0.0124 pondichery – 0.0449 bombay hindu – 0.0039 bombay muslim – 0.0095 bombay christian – 0.0012 bombay parsi – 0.0096 maharasthra – 0.0175 all west india muslim – 0.0201
27 · razib said
I missed the crack, too? You guys never tell me about anything!
please let’s not compare him in terms of class sophistication to the Hashemites or the pre-’79 persian ruling class, or the current Moroccan royal family, etc.
sure.
30 · rob said
Right. “Only Royals can be inbred.” Where have I read that before?
the hashemites are relatively outbred. you can check out their genealogy online. the current king is half-british. one of his father’s brothers married a pakistani woman so he has brown looking cousins (queen noor is 1/4 arab, 1/2 swedish and 1/4 wasp i think).
My comment #30 is, of course, the perfect opportunity for my to disclose my own frequent “self-hatred” (thanks, Jai, by the way, for disputing (over multiple threads) the applicability of that term–I use it, in your honor, only in an ironic sense) for pining over some Persian “Banafshi,” for example, when I fully realize that, as Puliogre has nicely pointed out, the super-charged economic action on the sub-continent is in the 4 southern provinces–of course, when I start thinking too much this way, I always end up drinking Amarillo at some West Village Italian place that is pressing good food on me to go with my drink, so–ultimately, what do I know?
btw, one generation of outbreeding can abolish almost all of inbreeding’s negative effects through genetic complementation.
Didn’t East is East have those inbred sisters (twins?) as the scary arranged marriage prospect for one of the kids? And that one was written by a Bangladeshi/Pakistani guy.
ss
Absolutely! And in comparison, Saddam–well,, not so much. My ultimate point is that any kind of South-Asian-based pro-Arab bullshit is, well–bullshit. . . .my family has lived in Northern India for millenia, and we don’t buy into any sort of pro-Iran or pro-Arab bullshit. Not that those civilizations are bad, just that we don’t need to draw on them any more than we draw on China or the British.
My ultimate point is that any kind of South-Asian-based pro-Arab bullshit is, well–bullshit. . . .my family has lived in Northern India for millenia, and we don’t buy into any sort of pro-Iran or pro-Arab bullshit.
well, the arabs had an influence mainly in south india, in kerala (they ruled sindh for a bit obviously). in north india it was all turk and persian. but what do you mean “pro-arab” bullshit? north indian hindus are exogamous, so their practices are at sharp variance with their muslim neighbors. muslims often justify their cousin-marriage practices that muhammad married a cousin (i think one of his many wives though, which anti-cousin marriage activists point to in terms of quantity).
40 · razib but what do you mean “pro-arab” bullshit? north indian hindus are exogamous, so their practices are at sharp variance with their muslim neighbors.
Razib, I’m not sure what you mean here. Aren’t most North and South Indian groups exogamous? I guess you might mean to track some variance between North and South Hindus–I think a lot of that comes (historically). I’m not sure I think that my South Indian family has more endogamy than a North indian family–in fact, we would often make fun of the North Indians on that issue. (There is the stress from the north-western invaders, who are not Hindu (you even have the modern Sikhs who I think of as casualties of that civilizational collide–I respect the Sikhs though my sense is that they would deny that they arise from that Muslim-Hindu collision), shall I find it easy to mention! ;-)–but, at the end of the day, you have the Muslims fighting against the smart non-Mulsim math-types!).
Razib, I’m not sure what you mean here. Aren’t most North and South Indian groups exogamous?
south indian hindus on average have a lot more endogamy. look at the numbers above and the coefficients of inbreeding. or look at the map. in south india among various hindu groups cross-cousin and uncle-niece marriages are common.
kerala has lower rates of inbreeding than the other 3 south indian states. i do not believe that uncle-niece marriages have ever been prevalent there (these marriages have twice the inbreeding coefficient of first cousin marriages).
42 · razib in south india among various hindu groups cross-cousin and uncle-niece marriages are common.
This is, admittedly, the soft-spot in my world view!
44 · rob said
Yes, I know far too many southies to not be soft in this area either. I’m guessing there’s no data to correlate inbreeding with low cognitive abilities or even income levels? (I’m thinking of the many high-achieving, high-IQ southies I know who are from communities that feverishly search the globe for ONLY marriage partners descended from a village a few miles from their own ancestral village).
I’m guessing there’s no data to correlate inbreeding with low cognitive abilities or even income levels?
as i said, quantitative genetic studies indicate that the “cost” of a first cousin marriage without extra inbreeding on top is 5 IQ points.
e.g., assume that IQ is 0.50 heritable and you have a population mean of 100. you have individuals whose IQs are 110 and 120 who produce offspring.
if the two individuals are not related, the expected IQ of any given offspring is 107.5. if the two individuals are cousins the IQ is 102.5 per the 5 point “penalty.”
FYI, saudi arabian hospitals are becoming very specialized in the area of treating rare recessive diseases….
Hopefully this will be another reason for Western countries to change there immigration policies to make harder for people to go to there homeland and marry someone who has nothing in common and instead marry someone there backward relatives want them.
Countries like Denmark,Holland and Beligum have seen the light and changed there immigration policies make harder for there kind of marriages. But Canada and United Kingdom are clueless and if there current immigration rate of people who come in like so there countries have would no longer be 1st world countries.
I can speak from personal experience, but being in arranged marriage is a nightmare.
But Canada and United Kingdom are clueless and if there current immigration rate of people who come in like so there countries have would no longer be 1st world countries.
Sorry, I should double check what I write before I post. It’s just the issue of arranged marriage is very touchy to me.
What I meant to say is, that Canada and the United Kingdom are gonna be hurt in the long run, when they keep letting in so many people from the south asian, who are uneducated and have no chance of intergrating into western society. If this keep up, soon Canada and United Kingdom instead of being 1st world countries, but instead nothing but a cesspool of multicultrism.
Regarding the welfare state, I’m not sure the point even really matters. In cities in West Yorkshire, you’ll find Asian populations to be completely self-segregated with their own doctors, grocery stores, etc. Asian immigrants don’t take advantage of socialized healthcare because it isn’t culturally sensitive AT ALL.
i’m confused, way back when my parents tried to arrange my marriage, they wanted me to marry within our subgroup “Agarwal” clan and they named about 16 different last names that would be appropriate, when i questioned the possibility of inbreeding they stated that would be avoided of course, but over time, even though the Agarwal clan is quite large (containing Mittals, Guptas, Tayals, etc.) I can’t imagine how there could not be some element of narrowing the gene pool. Scientifically, inbred populations do provide great genetic material to research, i’m sure us south asians aren’t the only ones who encounter this…