Midwives have been told about the benefits of “close relative marriage” in training documents that minimise the risks to couples’ children.
The documents claim “85 to 90 per cent of cousin couples do not have affected children” and warn staff that “close relative marriage is often stigmatised in England”, adding claims that “the associated genetic risks have been exaggerated”.
“I can count 6 reasons on my left hand why we should allow this…”
6 fibers used to be fairly common, until they started getting lynched and burned at the stake due to religiously zealotism. Or so I read one time sheet watching the princess Bride
British teeth explained.
Brits actually have among the healthiest teeth in the world. A while ago they were joint first with Germany, but now they’re only joint 7th with Sweden, after the likes of Denmark, Finland, and others upped their game.
The cousin fucking is very much a Pakistani immigrant problem, so not really related to the unfounded American meme about British dental care.
Lots of things lead to increased risk of birth defects, like having children after the age of 30. I thought it was pretty well known that the risks associated with inbreeding drops off pretty sharply at the cousin level? At that point I think the appropriate reaction is social stigma, but not legal ramifications.
We are talking of a huge difference between risks to a child by parents over 30 compared to a clear 15% risk with cousins having children. The actual risks are higher where there are recent (parent and grandparents) who were also more closely related.
It’s not a clear 15% risk. The actual risk to an individual child is in the 4-5% range, compared to 2.55% for the population as a whole.
Isn’t that likely compounded if children of first cousins end up reproducing with children from first cousins, and so on? As a one-off, those figures might be the case, but could well increase if the practice is endemic.
It also compounds over generations; if you’re the child of first cousins, you really should seek someone who it would take genealogy research to find a common ancestor with. If you’re not, it’s still a serious risk to have kids with anyone too closely related, but level ramifications seem really harsh, especially thinking of situations like adoption where someone could end up there accidentally. And to your point, it isn’t the only way to end up with that kind of risk profile.
Good thing that it’s possible for a couple to take a test that gives a good measure of their degree of consanguinity.
This is a particular risk not only in countries with first-cousin marriage, but in those with small founder populations. For example, Iceland, where the government provides this measure to any couple who asks, so that they can make an informed decision about the risk before reproducing.
And ethno-nationalists can choke on this fact: the best strategy to reduce the risk of genetic defects is out-marriage. The less closely genetically similar two partners are, the lower the odds of autosomal recessive disorders afflicting their offspring. So I did the rational thing, and married someone whose ancestors came from a different part of the world than mine.
Excuse me! Loads of Western European countries allow full incest (e.g. Belgium, France, Spain, etc.) so let’s not pick on us Brits for allowing cousins to fuck.
not making illegal and support from the national health service are vastly different things. 15% is a disastrous rate for public health.
But it’s not a 15% risk. Unrelated couples have a 3% chance of having a child with a birth defect while cousins have a 5% chance of having a child with a birth defect.
Isn’t the problem being that the probability increases with each subsequent generations? That’s why having a child with a cousin should be discouraged, to prevent the accumulation of bad recessive genes.
If you have one person with recessive genes and one person with dominant genes, then the baby will have the dominant gene. So if the grandparents were cousins both with recessive genes it wouldn’t matter, as far as I know.
theres also dominant alleles that are the disease state, it also gets complicated when theres partial penetrance since its only half an half.
The thing is, with subsequent incestual generations, the likelihood of the recessive gene manifesting increases a lot. So, the problem is not a single generation of incest, it’s the normalisation of incest that might lead to multiple generations doing it.
Oh I see what you’re saying. I did some reading earlier that said that in a lot of places 20% - 40% of all marriages are to first cousins.
Yeah, plenty of places where first cousin marriages are still not uncommon.
The stats I saw show a 2.55% risk across all UK births. So a bit under 3%.
It’s more about immigrants
US yanks in red states too.
It’s a fun stereotype, but you may find this map interesting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_law_in_the_United_States
“Brits are like US Southerners” is, arguably, a worse insult then calling them incestuous.
For who? The Brits or the southerners? Lol
Whichever has more teeth
Fun fact: Most of the places it’s legal in are blue. Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina are the only red states it’s legal in, out of 17 total states. If we include states where it’s conditionally legal (usually based on age/fertility) it’s Utah out of 7 states.
I’m partially agreeing with you, but just because other countries say it’s OK, it doesn’t mean that we should.
Haven’t looked at the data, but still, 15% risk is high. From a social a health care perspective, this is horrible for those children too.On the other hand, you can have marriage without children and children without marriage.
Unless you start punishing them for having children, it’s naive to ban marriage.
Define “full incest”. Pretty sure siblings are not allowed
Pretty sure they are. Incestuous relationships between consenting adults (with the age varying by location) are permitted, including in the Netherlands, France, Slovenia, and Spain. Why not check before making such a statement?
Not only wrong, but also childish about it. First, this topic is about marriage. They are not taking about letting them be in a relationship, but marriage.
And marriage between siblings is not allowed in several countries you mentioned, which you would know if you checked instead of being “pretty sure”.
Not go be a wrong ass somewhere else.
Oh do fuck off, there’s a good chap.
“It’s cultural”
keep it in the family. mcpoyle over a 1000years in the same bloodline.
Are we trying to explain the Royal family again…
Midwives have been told about the benefits of “close relative marriage”
Nice spin. They do not list benefits but advocate that the risk have been exaggerated.
I wonder where this 15% figure comes from. All the research I can find estimates the probability for these disorders at around 2-4% for first degree cousins. This is about the same as becoming a mother at 40 with a non-related man.
The article only talks about some NHS training documents and is very opinionated in style. Smells like a snappy headline about a controversial topic was more important than proper research.
Yep, this is rage-bait or some sexual kink thing surfacing as a news story because the authors know it will get shared to hell and back. While I have absolutely no doubt that there are plenty of right-wingers with weird sexual hangups that they’re trying to make everyone’s problem, cousin-marriages are pretty low on the list of things we need to worry about. As long as everyone is adult and consenting I literally do not care what people do with their peepees.
Plus in the absence of any power dynamic* why shouldn’t absolutely anyone be allowed to choose to be in a relationship with literally anyone else? Especially as people are increasingly choosing to not reproduce.
- If this is even possible
Usually the argument goes into the ethics of bearing children in a way that, knowingly, creates a significantly and markedly higher risk for every kind of disorder reducing the child’s QOL. I don’t usually find this argument anywhere near airtight, since there’s a plethora of other ways to do that that aren’t banned AND this veers into eugenics territory. But that’s the argument I’ve seen, at least.
Not defending cousin incest, but it sounds like the NHS is at least backing up its viewpoint with evidence.
Now as to unstigmatising cousin marriages, that’s a no from me. There are 60 million other people in the UK, there’s gotta be at least one that’s right for you that’s not also your cousin.
P.s. Trump should really have left the US out of this conversation given how infamous some of the Southern States are for this sort of “matrimony”
ITT: Blatant ableism disguised as concerns.
Should you be allowed to have children if you are a known carrier of some bad but not inmediatly deadly risk gene like fragile x, chorea huntington, mucoviszidosis, diabetes 1 (let’s ignore the worsening of fragile x and chorea huntingtion across generations for a moment)? Should you be allowed to have children if you have trisomie 21, or some other mental disability? If you say no i think you are ableist and can’t comprehend that people with special needs are still people that can be happy and can have desires. If you say yes why can’t two cousins have a child? What if they have two forms of birth control and just want to fuck? What if they are the same sex? I my experience most people who are against two cousins having sex do not give a flying fuck about some theoretical chile but just think it’s icky. Which is a fair feeling you are allowed to have but should not be basis for a law.
This. I haven’t seen an argument about incest that doesn’t immediately devolve into eugenics, or talking about power imbalances that aren’t present with adult cousins
Children of first-cousin marriages have a 4–6% risk of autosomal recessive genetic disorders compared to the 3% of the children of totally unrelated parents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage
Is it eugenics now to say people should avoid conceiving children that are likely to have birth defects?
I don’t know, but do you also think it should be illegal to have a child if you’re over 40?
Do you also think that it should be illegal for people with heritable disabilities to have children?
Because your argument isn’t anti-cousin-marriage, it’s anti-birth-defects, and there are a whole lot more sources of them than incest, and ones that are way more common.
Also, yes, preventing people from having children who would have birth defects dates back to the original eugenics movement, it is literally a core belief of the eugenics movement.
24 US states ban cousin marriages. No states ban people over 40 from having children. You want to equate the two but there is a line between that that you can draw, as evidenced by half of the USA doing so.
I’ve expanded on my views elsewhere in thread.
25 US stated by my count, but also I let my ethics develop separately from the law. There’s been a lot of very questionable things in the law in the past, and as such it’s not exactly a trustable guide for ethics imo.
That’s not the point you presented here, though. The point you presented here was birth defects.
The point you brought up there I still object to, though. While there can be power dynamics between cousins, it’s fairly rare for those to continue into adulthood, and I have long taken the stance “I don’t believe the state should have a say in what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home.”
The line that’s been drawn is people allowing their disgust to inform policy at best. If it were based in anything else the policies would be different.
“I don’t believe the state should have a say in what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home.”
So that’s why it’s a marriage ban?
Why did you bring birth defects up if marriage is the concern? You don’t get birth defects from a wedding.
Also in basically every state where it’s illegal to marry your cousin it’s illegal to have sex with them, too.
(When I say basically I mean I’m too tired to check half of the US’s laws on this, and the source I’m using says sexual contact is generally not permitted)
Found a cousin fucker.
Solid observational skills! They have, however, failed you. Just because someone is pointing out that certain arguments don’t actually hold water doesn’t mean they engage in the activities the arguments are against.
I just don’t care if two cousins wanna fuck because the arguments against it are things that I’m actively opposed to, or don’t apply to the situation.
You’re not as persuasive as you think you are…and you’re not fooling anyone.
What, persuasive about not wanting to fuck my cousin? I don’t particularly care if anyone thinks I do. If I did, I wouldn’t be in a thread about fucking your cousin saying I think it’s fine to fuck your cousin. I know that people will make assumptions about my sex life based on my position alone.
If you mean about the arguments against it being eugenics, I care more about that point, because they are, and eugenics is bad.
…jfc dude
Fun fact: Most of the places it’s legal in are blue. Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina are the only red states it’s legal in, out of 17 total states. If we include states where it’s conditionally legal (usually based on age/fertility) it’s Utah out of 7 states.
I… Don’t even actually see the point here? I have access to the internet, and know how to use a search engine? You can literally look that up on Wikipedia, are you trying to imply that because I looked at a Wikipedia article for this post that I want to fuck my cousin?
What a strange outlook on obtaining knowledge. If just knowing what states it’s legal again, something that takes about 30 seconds to find, makes you a cousin-fucker, wouldn’t that make you one too? Or is it just the first person in the thread doing it?
What law makes it illegal?
Having children with disabilities via voluntary incest is a choice. Same with having kids with a terrible genetic disease. It’s also questionable how good a parent, if not person, you are for willingly wanting to bring in someone who will suffer into the world. Especially when there’s adoption available. If you can use technology to prevent a literal disease, that’s different.
People who get kidney failure or lost an arm definetly didn’t make that damn choice.
If anything is ableist it’s your opinion; people with disease or injury don’t want to have it, or made the choice to have it - let alone have they’re loved ones get the same thing. It’s about not judging the person’s potential abilities in specific areas or mistreating them despite the disease.
But advocating for the spread of the disease is fucked up. Your logic is no different than advocating a blind parent should have the right to blind their child intentionally.
Should disabled people be blanket banned from having sex or children? No obviously not. Not really workable anyways and quite morally hazardous to put into law, as you point out.
Should people with disabilities ought to (in a moral sense) have children that are at high risk of sharing their disability? Also no. To be frank, there’s a reason we call it disability. Even though they can have good, rich, valuable lives, they much more often don’t.
This is definitely a question of degrees. Society and medical support can change this line. Like where diabetes used to be a death sentence now it’s serious but treatable. So less problematic to pass on diabetes today vs 200y ago, but why would you want to?
Finally let’s get to cousins. Beyond the additional risk that they have children with health problems, there’s a question of consent. Even between cousins (like siblings) there’s often a power dynamic that makes consent hazardous. So IMO, obviously immoral. Making this illegal is not very restrictive (it affects you banging like 0-100 specific people out of literally billions) and codifies what was a taboo anyways (which is like, a pretty significant amount of law). 24 US states agree with me.
The issue I have with your argument is you can use the exact same argument for sibling incest. If two cousins can have a child, and we’re dismissing the birth defect risk argument, then why can’t a brother and sister have a child? What if they just want to fuck? What if the entire family is into the aristocrats style gang bang?
Your argument doesn’t draw a line between cousin incest and parent-child or sibling incest. If one is okay then the other should also be okay and I don’t know about you but I’m definitely not okay with the latter. I’m not saying you’re in the wrong but I do disagree with the argument you made for it.
Parent-child incest has the power dynamic issue. Its basically impossible to consent in that relationship. As to siblings, I’d argue that the logical conclusion is that it is probably okay, unless there’s a limit to how much birth defect risk is allowable, which as noted above, comes with other issues.
Siblings definitely have power dynamics that make consent very hazardous. I’d argue first cousins also have such dynamics. Perhaps to a lesser degree, but there’s no real benefit from having cousins marry and there is an increased risk of birth defects, so better to disallow it.
“85 to 90 per cent of cousin couples do not have affected children”
So imagine 10 couples: 1 couple has an affected child, the other 9 couples do not have any children. In this case, 90 percent of couples do not have affected children but 100 percent of children are affected. I wonder why they presented the statistics using that particular, odd means of phrasing.
They have to justify the inbreeding of the monarchy somehow.
Alabamba hootin’ and hollerin’ intensifies
Am I the only one that thinks 15% is way too high of a chance to be rolling the dice like that? I’ve played enough XCOM to know that even a 99% success rate will still bite you in the ass.
That’s because like NHS in this case, X-COM *lies *.
It lies in your favor, though. On difficulties below the highest, the modern games have hidden modifiers that affect the hit chance that you can’t see, but all of them are cheating for you. IIRC your hit chance secretly increases when you have missed shots recently, when you have dead soldiers, when you are outnumbered, and maybe some other things.
Now tell them vaccinees have less than 15% chance of causing autism.
While it’s true that the chance is less than 15% you missed about 10^-5 0’s there.
Yeah, but what can the NHS do with that?
They just treat folk. People will make those choices regardless.
If we ever get Medicare for All, I hope our national insurance agency doesn’t put out a paper extolling the virtues of fucking and impregnanting your cousins.
It looks as though the goal was to encourage midwives not to stigmatise people for marrying their first cousins. That seems a good policy when they’re delivering healthcare services. But the way the numbers were presented made things appear worse than they are.
I indulge in some risky behaviors (martial arts, skiing, cycling). I don’t want lectures about the risks of those, either. If I break a bone, I want it treated, and if the NHS takes a view on the activity that caused it, I’ll want to hear it later from my GP, and definitely not at the time I’m seeking treatment.
Did you read the article?
‘Benefits of cousin marriages’
The NHS guidance, meanwhile, goes on to describe the benefits of cousin marriages.
The papers explain how “marriage within the family can provide financial and social security at the individual, family and wider kinship levels”.
If that’s not extolling the virtues of impregnanting your cousins, I don’t know what it is.
Er, we do. It’s called the NHS.
They must make the best tory voters?
Badoom chicka wow wow.
Actually the opposite since they’re mostly immigrants and those vote largely Labour
