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.

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.

Devils advocate: I have a genetic defect that has 50% chance of being passed to my children. It causes bone tumors that range from stetic to life changing.

We only managed to ensure it wasn't with expensive DNA tests pre - implantation.

Should I be barred from marriage if I can't pay for that?

It's not a hypothetical

Only?

Right wing newspaper The Telegraph supporting right-wing MPs campaign to ban cousin marriage by cherry picking health service docs that aren't there to promote but giving guidance to health professionals on how to treat patients and have zero impact on whether people choose to marry their cousins or procreate with them.

The prevalence is higher in UK Pakistani communities like Bradford. Having a right wing politician cherry pick info they dislike about minorities to start a crusade against minorities is as old as time.

I didn't think reactionary right wing politics would get so much traction on Lemmy of all places. Critically assess your sources, who is publishing, who is saying, and why.

Next week. Right wing MP pushes to ban the burka as it has x% impact on pedestrian safety at road crossings. When racists cannot directly discriminate, they don't stop, they just go for indirect strategies.

You need to parse the sentence a bit. "85 to 90% of cousin couples do not have affected children" does not mean that the odds of one child being born with a hereditary genetic defect is 15%. It means that, for the average family size of a first-cousin couple, the odds are 10-15% that at least one of the kids is affected.

So, let's conservatively say the average family size among those who marry first cousins is 3. The odds of at least one in those three kids having a genetic defect are stated to be 15%. So that means the odds of any individual kid whose parents are first cousins having a genetic defect are a bit under 5% (the odds of a given event happening at least once in three independent trials).

The odds will be substantially lower if that 15% figure were based on a larger family size than 3.

As a baseline, tn the UK, the odds in the overall UK population of a genetic defect occurring are around 2.55%.

So the risk is roughly double the baseline for any individual child. But the way the numbers are presented makes it seem misleadingly high and has led to predictable screeching from the usual quarters. There is also no measure of severity. For example, despite my parents being unrelated, I have a genetic defect that causes high cholesterol levels in my blood. However, it's cheaply treatable (woo hoo, statins!) so its impact on pubilc health is next to nil.

I'd favour banning marriages where the partners have first-cousin and closer degrees of consanguinity, but I also see the point of not catastrophising the actual impact.

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"

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.

Roll tide!

Les cousins dangereux

They must make the best tory voters?

They have to justify the inbreeding of the monarchy somehow.

"I can count 6 reasons on my left hand why we should allow this...."

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.

This is what happens when people are afraid to criticize...

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.

I think this might be relevant

They add that “any discussion of the potential risks” to a child’s health “must also be balanced against the potential benefits” that come from “collective social capital” of such a union.

I wonder if they're also weighing the societal costs of having potentially serious birth defects in 10-15% of the population?

I won't live in a town that robs men of the right to marry their cousins!

What is the rate among the control group?

Of those 15% I bet 100% vote for Deform UK.

“It’s cultural”

“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.

I don't think marriage is the problem. It's having children

On the scale of things, I think this rate's a "who the fuck cares?".

I don't really care if cousins get married. I don't really care if they have kids together. I do care if they have birth defects and we should do things medically responsible to reduce or eliminate birth defects, but the whole cousin thing doesn't really bother me as long as there's no external pressure (like British royalty or stereotypical Southern Hicks).

Who is really that bent out of shape on this and why should we care?

An unfortunate aspect of Pakistani culture that has carried over to the UK.

Families would marry within the family to keep their wealth within the family.

Unfortunately after successive generations, this can cause serious problems.