Cousin marriage laws outdated
December 23, 2008Laws banning marriage between first cousins are based on outdated assumptions about a high degree of genetic risk for offspring and should be repealed, according to a population genetics expert.
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.plo … ournals.org/ .
Source: Public Library of Science
-
Synthetic drugs send thousands to ER
Apr 07, 2011 |
not rated yet |
1
-
Dilemmas of destiny: Genetic predictors of disease can raise thorny ethical issues
Feb 28, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Time travel? Maybe
May 11, 2010 |
3.3 / 5 (35) |
39
-
Study: Darwin was right to worry that marriage to his cousin affected his offspring
May 03, 2010 |
4.2 / 5 (10) |
1
-
New genetic test for cause of intellectual disability to be launched
Feb 26, 2010 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Engineers build first sub-10-nm carbon nanotube transistor
Feb 01, 2012 |
4.9 / 5 (30) |
30
-
Something old, something new: Evolution and the structural divergence of duplicate genes
Jan 31, 2012 |
4.6 / 5 (7) |
1
-
The hidden nanoworld of ice crystals: Revealing the dynamic behavior of quasi-liquid layers
Jan 30, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
1
-
Stock market network reveals investor clustering
Jan 27, 2012 |
3.9 / 5 (23) |
8
-
Of microchemistry and molecules: Electronic microfluidic device synthesizes biocompatible probes
Jan 26, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
More news stories
Chilean miners' rescue capsule on show in London
The capsule used to rescue Chilean miners trapped underground for two months goes on display Saturday at the Science Museum in London -- the first time it has been seen in Europe.
17 minutes ago |
not rated yet |
0
A frank discussion of the power law and linking correlation to causation
(PhysOrg.com) -- Michael Stumpf a mathematics professor at Imperial College in London, and Mason Porter a lecturer at Oxford have teamed together to write and publish a perspective piece in Science regarding the in ...
The question of life in the ancient world
Theres a general feeling that we dont get the Greeks ancient or modern. Many, including heads of state like Angela Merkel, visibly shake their head in exasperation, rightly or wrongly, at ...
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
1 hour ago |
not rated yet |
2
Soccer -- the link between managers and captains
Soccer managers regard their captains as an extension of themselves, according to new research from Northumbria University, which could explain why Fabio Capello quit as England manager following the FA row ...
1 hour ago |
not rated yet |
0
US workers are 'giving away the store,' costing firms billions
Nearly 70 percent of the nation's service employees give away free goods and services from hamburgers to cable TV costing companies billions of dollars a year, according to a groundbreaking study.
Other Sciences / Economics & Business
19 hours ago |
4.5 / 5 (2) |
8
The power of estrogen -- male snakes attract other males
A new study has shown that boosting the estrogen levels of male garter snakes causes them to secrete the same pheromones that females use to attract suitors, and turned the males into just about the sexiest ...
Clam fields found at deep, low-temperature Mariana vents
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have marveled at the unusual life forms thriving at high temperature hydrothermal vents of the deep ocean.
Seeing colors in music, tasting flavors in shapes may happen in life's early months
Famed violinist Itzhak Perlman sees a deep forest green whenever he plays a B-flat on his Stradivarius' G string. The A on the E string is red.
Could Venus be shifting gear?
(PhysOrg.com) -- ESAs Venus Express spacecraft has discovered that our cloud-covered neighbour spins a little slower than previously measured. Peering through the dense atmosphere in the infrared, the ...
Team isolates nerve cells involved in storing long term memory and gene proteins associated with them
(Medical Xpress) -- A research team in Taiwan has succeeded in isolating two nerve cells in fruit fly brains that are believed to be the major players in allowing for the formation of long term memories. Furthermore, ...
Is that sleepiness during pregnancy normal or a sign of sleep apnea?
(Medical Xpress) -- Most pregnant women complain of being tired. Some of them however, could be suffering more than normal fatigue associated with their pregnancy; they may have developed obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a ...
Dec 23, 2008
Rank: 4 / 5 (3)
Dec 23, 2008
Rank: 4.8 / 5 (4)
Dec 23, 2008
Rank: 5 / 5 (4)
Dec 23, 2008
Rank: 5 / 5 (4)
These laws were invented (and make sense) when the population is small and stagnant so the probability of wanting to marry a cousin is high.
Dec 24, 2008
Rank: 1 / 5 (2)
Dec 25, 2008
Rank: not rated yet
The second is genetic. If you want to lock in allele patterning, fixing traits for intelligence and the like, marrying like to like will get you higher and higher means of baseline performance, just like a thoroughbred horse.
The problem is that you then need to be cognizant of things like '4% of the mentally unfit create 33% of the next generation of same'.
And either sterilize or kill those whose contribution to the gene pool is questionable to select them out, Darwin style.
If you can't handle this Spartanesque approach, you will gain nothing but despair for your children or children's children and that this happens in places like Pakistan with it's microcephalic culture and generally inbred violence and poverty must be set against the reality of a 'global village' where countries like England not only are subject to inundation by high birth rate SWA communities rapidly threatening indigenous population at a economic level.
But their inbred children are causing massive headaches for the socialized medical system.
Overall, absent legalized GE for human traits, inbreeding is the only way to get towards highly evolved personality traits whose association is known-genetic (across several generations).
If you have 2,000 years, you can follow the path of the Ashkenazi Jews and end up with nearly a full standard deviation in intellect advantagement over the entire world _on average_. Simply by controlling whom is allowed to breed with whom. 'Keeping it in the family' being the simplest way to assure that, irrespective of social more`s.
At which point you are back to the practical economics of no longer talking about inheriting the family business. But having a stake in the wealth that decades if not centuries of IQ based social mobility have cumulatively made possible.
Don't think that Old Money breeds entropic decay. It breeds more Money. For a reason.
Dec 30, 2008
Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
What white power anti-semetic site did you pull that garbage from?
80% of the world's Jews are Ashkenazim and they certainly don't have any sort of rabbinical law ordering them to marry cousins, nor are they classed as any more or less intelligent than everyone else.
Dec 31, 2008
Rank: not rated yet
Right on the first count and wrong on the second. First, Rabbinic Law forbids marrying one's aunt, and traditionally the Jewish community has frowned on cousin marriages (although it did occur infrequently). On the other hand, every national IQ test of the past decades in the U.S. shows the Jewish cohort with a 116 IQ (tied with Asiatics) -- the highest of any group, and obviously significantly above the 100 median for the entire population. There are many possible reasons for this, some related to "cultural genetics" (how cultural predispositions might lead to genetic "improvement" or "decline"). For a wide-ranging discussion of the "Jewish genius" phenomenon I suggest reading Charles Murray's (he's a Gentile) very interesting article in Commentary Magazine from April or May 2007. The letters to the editor a month or two later are no less fascinating.
Jan 01, 2009
Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
If this is the case then why is the average IQ in Israel 90?
Jan 05, 2009
Rank: not rated yet
Source please?
Jan 05, 2009
Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
pick one.