|
Saudi Arabia Awakes to the Perils of Inbreeding
From The Middle East Information Center, extracted from an article in The New York Times (link found in Gene Expression).
When she was 17, marrying age for a Saudi girl, Salha al-Hefthi was presented with a husband. ... He was the son of her father's brother — her first cousin — and everyone, including the bride, agreed that "a first cousin was a first choice," she said. The couple had two healthy boys, now 22 and 20, but their third child, a girl, was born with spinal muscular atrophy, a crippling and usually fatal disease that was carried in the genes of both parents. Their fourth, sixth and seventh children were also born with the disorder. Spinal muscular atrophy and the gene that causes it, along with several other serious genetic disorders, are common in Saudi Arabia, where women have an average of six children and where in some regions more than half of the marriages are between close relatives.
| They do with each other what they won't let their sheep do... |
Across the Arab world today an average of 45 percent of married couples are related, according to Dr. Nadia Sakati, a pediatrician and senior consultant for the genetics research center at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh. In some parts of Saudi Arabia, particularly in the south, where Mrs. Hefthi was raised, the rate of marriage among blood relatives ranges from 55 to 70 percent, among the highest rates in the world, according to the Saudi government. Widespread inbreeding in Saudi Arabia has produced several genetic disorders, Saudi public health officials said, including the blood diseases of thalassemia, a potentially fatal hemoglobin deficiency, and sickle cell anemia. Spinal muscular atrophy and diabetes are also common, especially in the regions with the longest traditions of marriage between relatives. Dr. Sakati said she had also found links between inbreeding and deafness and muteness. ...
| ... and religious fanaticism. |
Mrs. Hefthi did not know it when her daughter was born, but Ashjan, now 18, would never walk. Her childhood would be filled with terrible colds, sore throats, assorted other illnesses and an obsessive longing to walk and run like her older brothers. "Why can't I walk," she would shout to her mother when she was 6.
| Because genetically, Mommy and Daddy are the same thing as brother and sister... |
"It is God's will," her mother would say. "In paradise you will walk." ...
Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-07-24 |
