Lab notes: Kissing cousins
In a paper in the journal PLoS Biology, Hamish Spencer of New Zealand’s University of Otago and Diane Paul of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology argue that the genetic risk to children born of cousin marriages is much less than widely believed. Risk is in the eye of the beholder, of course. But in 2002 an expert panel convened by the National Society of Genetic Counselors found that the risks of a first-cousin marriage are about 1.7% to 2% above the background risk for congenital defects and 4.4% above background (which is vanishingly low to begin with) for dying in childhood.
via Lab Notes : Kissing Cousins.
Given that scientists are fond of noting how genetically similar we are to apes, 1.7% to 2% does seem high. This is compounded when such a large percentage of the population is marrying cousins. Nevertheless, the article is worth noting.
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