Phuppi ki Beti, Mamoon ka Beta

Intersting article. I beleive that an odd cousin marriage here and there is ok but it shouldn`t be actively encouraged. I don`t know what all the fuss is about regarding Muslim values etc. In the case of arrange marriages, there are ``rishta karanay walay `` people, family friends, people in neighbourhoods, people one works with etc. The only people who are worried about some sexual revolution taking place are those who are unaware or are unable to have decent work/study/friend realtionships. With regards to further proof, just make a trip to Bradford, Birmingham and other parts of the UK where there are large Kashmiri/Punjabi populations . One visit to a predominantly Punjabi/Kashmiri neighbourhood and you can see so many minor and major disbailities. For such a small population to have so many disabled people, it can`t just be the diet or something similar. These people have actively intermarried for generations and still insist on doing so. the result : you now have disabled people being married off to their disbaled cousins! One can only guess what their next generation will be like. As youthlife says, adoption and change is the only key to survival.

The only reason humans have existed thus far is due to adaptions and changing. Apart from simply the mankind, all animals have evolved to some degree so that they can survive. After all, it is survival of the fittest, as animalistic as it sounds. The point is that diversity is the key to adaption and evolution. For example, we all possese genetic deformities and most of us are carriers to different disorders, yet, these disorders do not show up unless the two people that breed together are both carriers. Being part of the same family increases the likeliness of the genetic makeup, thus increasing the chances of two people being carriers creating children with deformities. The thing that people fail to notice is that, inbreeding causes more problem than the naked I can see, it may cause weaker immune systems or other such problems. For example, if one takes a look at the European royal family, a line of color blindness is obvious in most males since royal families interbred to keep their gene pool ``royal.`` Basically, genes play much more a role than people realize and interbreeding is bound to cause more problems than people realize currently. Diversity is vital!

Nice article by Miss Zaidi. She did stick to the plot and tried proving her point. Very Cohesive article indeed. But this is only a theory. I don`t agree with author at all. I find a few hitches with this theory

This research is based on only genetics. I don`t think that genetics is sufficient enough to prove a problem with intercousin marriages. Has the author considered environment to be a factor. Maybe its the Food certain group of people take that is causing a problem. Maybe its the chemicals sprayed on certain food that is digested and can result in some kind of problem or disease. Or maybe its Just the Punjabi`s themselves. :-)

Were the specimen used in these statistics confined to or constricted to a certain strict diet? Were these specimen picked up randomly because they had problems and happened to be cousins inorder to prove the point?

More research needs to be done. And better yet the Research method should be changed. Specimens should be put under same environment, given same food and should be closely monitored. Maybe it will prove everyone wrong. who knows?

But problem still with that research is that no ``one person`` is similar to the other. and thus it will be very difficult to prove it. But ATLEAST it will keep you occupied and give you something to do ;-)

Re: # 41

It is like this.
The cousins, share certain characteristics, by way of having similar or common gene codes. Because they have both had some common ancestors.
When these cousins marry and produce an offspring, there isnt much variety in the gene pool created by the mother and father, to chose from.
If the parents are both short, there are more chances of the child turning out to be short. Agreed.
But this could as well have good results.
If the parents are both tall, there are more chances of the child turning out to be tall.

(The writer did his M.Sc. in Biotechnology from A.M.U., India.)

So far it couldnt be proved conclusively that the marriages between close cousins lead to increase in genetic defects of the offsprings. These marriages are not a new phenomenon they are there since centuries. If these marriages were resulting in probematic offsprings, the societies would have abandoned them long ago. Therefore, we can conclude that so far neither the scientific data nor the society`s experience conclusively supports the contention of the Author.

dr. zaidi,

it was easy for you to make this suggestion based on your scientology to discourage cousin marriage and encourage ``random`` marriages without giving us the details as to how should the pakistani population at large be able to choose partners at random. in my view, for complete random selection to happen, a social setup is required that would allow males and females to express their sex appeal openly and easily and thus be able to attract/choose each other just like any other species. this would have been simple and fair enough if we were talking about some chimpanzees.

luckily this experiment in humans is already underway in few societies around the world and the results, overall, in my view, are deplorable. there may have been a fewer cases of thalessemias and the alikes reported but what about the huge unmanagable load of teenage pregnancies, bastards, and single parents etc. etc. apparently human experiments are not that simple.

i work in a hospital where i do get a chance to see Amish population. they do have few problems attributed to their strict homogeniety but then they have a completely different ( and better perhaps) perspective on disease and more impotrtantly death&dying. this genetic subset (owing to their strong religious affiliation and social values) scores far better that average american family on many other accounts! perhaps the same can be said about jewish populations (how about preserving the ``good`` genetic pool!). i do not have data to support these claims because scientologists are in denial when it comes to metaphysical concepts of social values,religion and culture. and thus none cared to research on the beneficial effects of it.

the world is already getting multi-ethnic with the global village/immgration effect worldwide and inter-marriages are far more commom than say a 100 years ago. evolution of this kind is fine but i hugely disagree when you pointedly discourage cousin marriage making it actually ``bad`` without taking into account the prevelant social, religious and cultural norms particularly in the context of muslim societies.

i would suggest that you may kindly keep your scientology to your scientific meetings only. we are not christians and you are no gallelio. i would rather wait till an ashkenazi jewish geneticist comes up with a DNA remedy to treat thalessemia and tay-sachs

Hello Anita, no doubt about it cousin marriages would increase the chances of birth defects. But by how much? and is it significant? Being a mathematics teacher I am interested in how you would quantify the risk. I was amazed to read that the risk as you claim would increase 13 fold in theory. (If there is a defective gene with a frequency of 1/200). But in practice and here I am quoting your statistics that only amounts to 28% of birth defects attributed to consanguinity. I find that perplexing. Let me give an example. Suppose that someone claims that a company’s net revenue is related to the stock price. From one year to another the company’s revenue increases 13 fold, but the stock price only increases 28%. Would you not question that correlation? If anything those statistics would be grounds for rejecting the hypotheses that the stock price is solely related to the revenue. Would you not wonder as to the correlation and if anything draw the conclusion that the 13 fold increase in revenue may be a contributing factor, but there is something else going on. Similarly if the theoretical risks are 13 fold, and the practical data indicates a 28% increase, I would have to question the correlation on the grounds that it is insignificant compared to the 13 fold increase. In the case of a company 13 fold increase in revenue should at least raise the price by 5 times or double the stock price.Therefore I say that there is something else going on, and that either we have to adjust the theory or, explain the 28% birth defects in consanguineous parents by looking at other factors. This is a problem in statistics, where sometimes we attribute a major cause as the sole cause when many different variables are in play. I do not question your data, I am only suggesting that your own data points towards some genetic ADVANTAGES to cousin-marriages that you are unaware of. Because of these advantages the birth defects are 28%, when the risks are increased 13 times.
It is also possible that what you consider a disadvantage may be an advantage in the long run. For example the sickle-cell gene in certain African populations is an advantage because such carriers are resistant to the malaria infection.
A couple of other points that I would hope you can address. The example of cystic fibrosis comes to mind, where 1/1000 individuals are born with the disease. And you would think that the offspring of the two affected parents would for sure be affected. But the majority of children affected with cystic fibrosis come from normal parents (99%).
I would be interested to know what specific defects were found in the 28% of the Pakistani parents. And how many of those defects were due to recessive inheritance.
Cheers, I appreciate any information in this regard.
Azmat

it has something to do with genes or same blood that you dont find that special passion or attraction in marrying cousis. smells odours

it has something to do with genes or same blood that you dont find that special passion or attraction in marrying cousis. smells odours

it has something to do with genes or same blood that you dont find that special passion or attraction in marrying cousis. smells odours

it has something to do with genes or same blood that you dont find that special passion or attraction in marrying cousis. smells odours

I have read your article on discouraging cousin marriages. The thing which is troubling me is that when I wanted to do some research on this topic I found a lot of material on the internet which termed the belief against cousin marriage as a ``myth``. Most of the content ridiculed the way people have exagerated this ``myth`` even in the Western World. I believe you must have put in quite an effort on this research but if you try searching on the web for related views you may faced with an entirely different view. Most of the content on the web linked this belief to inadequate, irrational or obsolete data. My aim is not to blame you for the lack of updated information but to let me know whether what is spread is really correct or not. Are your views based only on a handful of cases,or specific to some geographic location or economic group or literacy level? I would be glad to know all this. Thank you.

I read Anita`s article and all I saw were a bunch of stuff about allel`s and flana` gene, tey dhimka gene. Nowhere does she tell us specifically WHAT will happen if we do continue to intermarry.

Why not ?. She says `genetic` mongeralisation.

A decisively vague term. I say, BS!.

I have been living abroad, however I grew

up in Pakistan and have traversed its lenght

and breadth. If you want to see genetic

sob-stories, come to these western countries

madam!. Aik sey badh ker aik sad case hey

yahan. Ms. Anita, your studies are nothing

but a load of psuedo-science.

Nowhere but in the west, are there a greater

number of people on Psychotropic medications

and BOY! do they need them!.

There is a huuuge rate of suicides in these

countries, which pales ours in comparison to

ours. Bottom line Ms. Anita, there isn`t

a more f * * *ed up society, hurdling towards

anarchy and moral destitution (khookhla-punn)

than these western non-cuz marrying societies.

Where has their diversity in breeding led

them ?. Give my country Pakistan the same

education and I tell you, there is so much

talent there that we could kick their coll-

ective asses back in time!.

I was 10.0 lbs when I was born. My bro`s were

12 1/2 pounds. Come around and look at the

rows of babies in the Cook County Hospital

in CHG where all the non-cuz marrying results

are laying in incubators, no longer than

the palm of your hand...

Doing math and counting allel`s is a great

past-time. Don`t confuse it with reality

on the ground. You and your science aren`t

capable enough yet, to figure out what goes

into the making of a simple thought in the

brain...how dare you try to make such giant

leaps of ridiculousness and try to micro-

manage our culture based on this quakery ?.

We are doing fine, alhumdulillah. It`s the

millions of mental patients in US alone,

who need your help figuring out how much,

of which drug, goes into which orifice,

at what time of the day. Maybe if they are

high enough on those drugs, you could convince

them of how much BETTER they are doing in

comparison to us ``50%`` Pakistanis. Good luck.

A Serial Cousin Marrying Fan With

One Sibling in The MIT PhD program

Adnan Khan

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Dear Anita,

From what I understand, no two population subgroups are alike! Your statistics are based on Norwegian population, hence unless you perform ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) tests on both subgroups to see if they are significantly different or not, I am afraid your conclusions regarding the Pakistani population would have a very low probability of being true.

As for marrying a cousin, I think it is a pretty tough topic. My parents are first cousins, and we are five siblings, and Alhumdulillah, all of us are in pretty good shape. But that does not mean that this happens in every case.

In my opinion, diseases come from Allah and HE`s the one who take them away. So if someone falls in love with a cousin and if you`re compatible, then I`d suggest, don`t quit just because of statistics.

Regards,

FT

I am married to my cousin and we have 2 boys

my wife wants a girl, but i am scared of doing more babys, what do you advise us?