Its-time-confront-taboo-First-cousin-marriages-Muslim-communities-putting-hundreds-children-risk.html

By Sue Reid
UPDATED: 13:16 GMT, 14 November 2013

The man wept as he told how his beautiful, dark-eyed child died in a hospital cot with medical tubes snaking from his frail body as nurses fought unsuccessfully to save him. Sick with pneumonia, the two-year-old gave up the battle for life.

A rare tragedy, you might think, in modern Britain, with all the advances of medical science.

But in the terraced streets of Bradford, Yorkshire, a child’s death is anything but rare. At the boy’s inquest, coroner Mark Hinchliffe said Hamza Rehman had died because his Pakistan-born parents (shopkeeper Abdul and housewife Rozina) are first cousins.

Four years before, Hamza’s older sister, three-month-old Khadeja, had died of the same brain disorder which causes fits, sickness and chest infections. The couple had another baby born with equally devastating neurological problems.

A heartbroken Mr Rehman told the inquest that he and his wife were unsure whether to have any more children. The coroner expressed deep sympathy before saying that Hamza’s death should serve as a warning to others.

‘This highlights a cultural and religious issue relating to first-cousin marriages and the potential risk to children that some medical experts say can result from such unions.'

He said: ‘This highlights a cultural and religious issue relating to first-cousin marriages and the potential risk to children that some medical experts say can result from such unions.’

The coroner chose his words carefully, since he was addressing one of the most controversial — and taboo — subjects in multi-cultural Britain: marriage between cousins in the Muslim communities which has left hundreds, if not thousands, of children damaged or dead.

This week, leading geneticist Professor Steve Jones, of University College London, warned that ‘inbreeding’ in Islamic communities was threatening the health of generations of children.

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He said: ‘We should be concerned as there can be a lot of hidden genetic damage and children are much more likely to get two copies of a damaged gene.’

He highlighted Bradford as a city that was ‘very inbred’.

This is not the first time the distressing issue has been raised. Ann Cryer, the Labour MP for nearby Keighley, has said that cousin marriages are medieval, harm children and are arranged in order to keep wealth and property within families.

Critic: Keighley MP Anne Cryer has condemned first-cousin marriages

‘It is not fair to the children or to the NHS which has to treat them. If you go into a paediatric ward in Bradford or Keighley, you will find more than half the kids are from the Asian community,’ she said.

Since Asians form only 20 to 30 per cent of the population, that figure is clearly disproportionate.

Mrs Cryer recalled the case of a young girl in hospital who had to carry an oxygen tank on her back and breathe from a hole in the front of her neck.

‘Her parents were warned by doctors not to have more children,’ she explained.
‘But when the husband returned again from Pakistan, his wife had given birth within months to another child with exactly the same condition.’

Are the MP’s words, and those of Professor Jones, inflammatory or simply a truth that needs to be aired?

Sadly, the facts speak for themselves. British Pakistanis, half of whom marry a first cousin (a figure that is universally agreed), are 13 times more likely to produce children with genetic disorders than the general population, according to Government-sponsored research.

One in ten children from these cousin marriages either dies in infancy or develops a serious life-threatening disability.

While British Pakistanis account for three per cent of the births in this country, they are responsible for 33 per cent of the 15,000 to 20,000 children born each year with genetic defects.

The vast majority of problems are caused by recessive gene disorders, according to London’s Genetic Interest Group, which advises affected families.

Everyone carries some abnormal genes, but most people don’t have a defect because the normal gene overrules the abnormal one.

One in ten children from these cousin marriages either dies in infancy or develops a serious life-threatening disability.

But if a husband and wife both have an abnormal recessive gene, they have a one in four chance of producing a child with defects.

These include blindness, deafness, blood ailments such as sickle cell anaemia, heart or kidney failure, lung or liver problems and myriad complex neurological or brain disorders.

Even their healthy children have a one in four chance of being a carrier of a defect, with terrible implications for the next generation.

The problem is most serious in Bradford. A recent survey of 1,100 pregnant women in the city showed that 70 per cent have husbands who are first cousins — a higher percentage than the average of 50 per cent among Pakistanis across the whole of Britain.

Shocking: The practice of inter-marriage within Muslim communities is leading to some children being born with a raft of genetic diseases

It is no surprise therefore that more than six per cent of children in Bradford have health defects, with paediatric wards looking after countless children, including teenagers lying in nappies who are unable to speak and are fed through a tube.
Meanwhile, the city’s special schools struggle to cope with huge numbers of pupils with learning difficulties.

Bradford’s St Luke’s Hospital has seen an extraordinary rise in the number of different types of genetic disorders. Some are very rare and, hitherto, unknown in Britain.

In a typical health authority area, the range of different types of genetic disorder total 25 a year. But in Bradford, 140 have been diagnosed, according to Dr Peter Corry, a consultant paediatrician at the hospital.

Many are degenerative ailments which lead to a decline in the ability of the brain and spinal cord to function properly after a child is born, as in the case of Hamza and Khadeja. Their bodies weakened, and unable to fight off infections, they gradually faded away.

The British Paediatric Surveillance Unit says eight per cent of all UK children born with this kind of neuro-degenerative condition come from Bradford, although the city has just one per cent of the UK’s population.

Research into the city’s 9,000 disabled youngsters also revealed a ‘disproportionately high’ level of hearing and sight problems in Pakistani families.
But Bradford is not alone. In Birmingham, which also has a big Pakistani community, the city’s Primary Care Trust estimates that one in ten of all children born to first cousins either dies in infancy or goes on to have a serious disability because of a recessive gene disorder.

Devout: Muslims pray at a Mosque in Bradford. A study of the city's Muslim population found that 70 per cent of marriages are between relatives, with more than half between cousins

Yet cousin marriages — and the resulting consequences — remain a taboo subject. Few of the affected families will discuss the issue publicly.

Many NHS doctors, while admitting privately there is a crisis, refuse to speak out for fear of being branded ‘racist’.