The risk of birth defects in children born to couples who are first or second cousins isn't as high as many experts had believed, according to a study that sheds new light on a practice that is stigmatized in many Western cultures.
According to a study released Wednesday by the National Society of Genetic Counselors, based in Wallingford, Penn., married cousins are still more likely than unrelated couples to have children with a birth defect, significant mental retardation or serious genetic disease.
"The common sense point of this is that there is a definite risk, but the risk is rather small," said one of the researchers, Dr. Arno G. Motulsky, professor of medicine and genome sciences at the University of Washington.
Marriage of first cousins is illegal in 30 states and is taboo in many Western cultures, but that is not the case in other places, particularly the Middle East, Asia and Africa. In some countries, up to 60 percent of the population is related by blood, and cousin marriages are preferred to unions of unrelated couples.
While this research does shed light on the actual risk and tends to eliminate some of the misconceptions widely held in Western culture, we have to wonder, in our Midwestern ignorance, who was the control group? The analysis of six already published studies appears in the April issue of the Journal of Genetic Counseling. The six studies involved thousands of related couples.
Additionally, we have to ask, don't we as stigmatized Westerners already know better than to inbreed? Do we need this kind of research? We should be curing hereditary diseases instead of finding ways around them. This study does little beyond giving inbreeders everywhere renewed hope in "keeping it in the family."
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