denny Ethnic & National book

Dispatches When (Muslim) Cousins Marry Part 2 ***watch all the parts in one go, goto my homepage and click playlists*** Dispatches reveals the tragic consequences of first cousin marriage in Britain. Every year such marriages cause hundreds of children to be born with terrible disabilities; one third of whom are so ill that they die before they are five years old. The practice is most common in Britain's Pakistani community, in which more than 50% of people marry their first cousin, and in Bradford 75% of ethnic Pakistanis follow the tradition. It is also common in some Middle Eastern and East African communities here, and in the UK's Bangladeshi community, nearly a quarter of people marry their first cousins. It also happens in the white British community: Dispatches features a couple, first-cousins-once-removed, whose daughter died of a genetic disease. The medical risks include infant mortality, birth defects, learning difficulties, blindness, hearing impairment and metabolic disorders. As adults, the offspring of these relationships also risk sporadic abortions or infertility. Reporter Tazeen Ahmad meets affected families, including one with three children with serious degenerative genetic diseases. Tazeen's own grandparents were first cousins: five of their children died before the age of ten, and three of her uncles were deaf. Dispatches questions why no major national publicity campaign warns of these health risks. At-risk couples in some areas are offered genetic ...