Hi guys.
So yeah. I know.
That topic. A lot of people are very sensitive about it, and do not appreciate the terms associated with it, but we
need to have this conversation. It concerns not just Pakistan, but many other countries within the region too such as Iran, India, Afghanistan and Bangladesh (it also concerns the Arabs too). Here's a map showing it's prevalence throughout the region:
Many of you out there such as
@Horus believe that there is nothing wrong with marrying your cousin, others such as
@abcxyz0000 vehemently condemn the practice (or at least that's what previous threads on the topic give the impression of). Gentlemen, we are here to reach a conclusion based on the facts we have readily available. I will present my case, and I encourage others to do the same within this thread. Now, onto the discussion.
I'm going to structure this by busting some common myths in depth, and then reaching my own conclusion to share with you, here I go:
1.
Marrying your cousin is incest
Wrong, whilst different cultures might treat it as incest it is not actually incest. The definition if incest is "having sexual intercourse with a parent, child, sibling, or grandchild". Having a relationship with your cousin does not fall into this category and genetically speaking they are nowhere near as genetically similar to you as other family members are as these statistics clearly demonstrate:
Heck, even these statistics are the median/upper boundaries. First cousins can often share only 7% of their genetic make up with you. So it's far from incest.
The line only gets blurred when you talk about inbreeding, as the definition for that is to "breed from closely related people or animals,
especially over many generations". Some might consider cousins to be closely related, others not so much. Compared to marrying your other relatives, marrying your cousin is nowhere near as bad (especially when you get into third cousin territory). Also, the definition applies specific emphasis on the "over many generations" bit (more on that later). So even if you consider cousins as closely related, it's not really inbreeding unless done over many generations.
Also, please keep in mind that terms such as inbreeding and incest are often used as derogatory terms so even if you mean no offence, it will still make people upset or angry so please refrain from such language. That goes for all types of derogatory slurs in general.
2.
Having children with your cousin produces horribly mutated beings
No. No it does not. The percentage risk of the child having any defect of any sort (including mild ones such as poor hearing) is roughly the same as that of a child produced by a 40 year old women. Are you going to tell me 40 year old women usually produce horribly mutated babies? No, because that's not the case. Don't believe me? Take a look at what the statistics say:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...s-getting-married-scientists-say-1210072.html
https://www.cousincouples.com/?page=facts
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/02/people-stop-thinking-appropriate-cousins-marry/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage#Genetics
Even if you go by the argument of "an increase in risk is still an increase in risk", by that logic you should only marry people of completely different race for the most genetic diversity.
These sources do also bring up that infamous Pakistani Briton statistic, and explains it. In those cases, the cousins were mostly double cousins or cross/parallel cousins. In other words, these people had this practice going on for generations. So the risk for these guys would obviously be much higher, which is why they yielded many more disabilities. It's also important to take note that over 50% of Pakistani Britons are married to their cousins. The vast majority of them obviously do not produce children which are horribly disabled, as the British birth defect rate is at 2%:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/hea...in-50-babies-has-a-birth-defect-research.html
So it's clear that even the ones who continue the practice over generations, they do not always produce horribly disabled children (but the risk is significantly higher).
However, there's one topic that's a bit more controversial. IQ. There are many statistics showing children whose parents are cousins have low IQ's, such as this one:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/07/cousin-marriage-can-reduce-i-q-a-lot/#.WIuUvFN97IU
But fear not, because most of these tests have yielded contradictory results and the conditions for the tests have not exactly been fair. For example, it's unknown as to whether or not the students are the product of many generations of cousin marriage, or it's just their parents who chose to do so. Given that cousin marriage is legal throughout most of the world (including Western countries such as the UK), I highly doubt it would honestly affect IQ's. The students who score lower also tend to come from less economically stable backgrounds, which can affect IQ:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Genetics_and_environment
Not to mention IQ's do not predict how successful you will become in life. You can have a high IQ and still fail school, it's your effort which really matters. I think it's also fair to mention that I have known many people whose parents are cousins and have perfectly fine (some even superior) IQ's. If IQ's were really affected by cousin marriage, then Pakistan should have the lowest IQ worldwide due to it having the highest rate of cousin marriage worldwide, but it doesn't even come close.
Now, what about this statistic?
http://www.nairaland.com/1448664/muslim-countries-found-highest-rates
The above source clearly shows the countries with high rates of cousin marriage have high rates of birth defects. In fact, all these countries (with the exception of Benin) have high rates of cousin marriages. First of all, whilst high, Sudan (which tops the list) still has about 8% of it's population with birth defects. That's pretty high, but as with all the other negative statistics on cousin marriages, this one is because of people engaging in the activity for numerous generations. This is clearly evident because if it was purely based in every type of cousin marriage, Pakistan should come out on top for birth defects, but that's not the case (we aren't even in the top 10). Secondly, 8% is far from majority.
Conclusion:
Cousin marriage is fine so long as it is not done over numerous generations. What should be regarded as numerous is up for debate, not enough research has been done to conclude at which point the line should be drawn, but you should steer away from the practice if anyone in your recent family history has engaged in the act, and when I say recent I mean if anyone later than your great great great grandfather married their cousin, it's a no-no for you unless some compatibility tests prove otherwise (and they have to be from a reliable hospital). This has to be followed so we can ensure people are born healthy and without problems, whilst still being fair to cultural norms among certain people.
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