Fury After Woke NHS Supports First-Cousin Marriages Despite Risk of Birth Defects – and Oppression Against Women
The NHS has been accused of “taking the knee” to political correctness by backing cousin marriages — even though they raise the risk of birth defects and have been used to oppress women. The Mail has more.
The guidance – which incredibly points out that it has been allowed in Britain since Henry VIII passed a law enabling him to marry Anne Boleyn’s cousin Catherine Howard – says that cousin marriage offers benefits such as “stronger extended family support systems”.
The practice, which is common in the British Pakistani community, has been linked to a greater prevalence of disorders such as cystic fibrosis or sickle cell disease.
Figures show that up to 20% of the children treated for congenital problems in cities such as Sheffield, Glasgow and Birmingham are of Pakistani descent, compared with 4% or lower in the wider population – and treating these problems costs the NHS billions.
The guidance, released by NHS England’s Genomics Education Programme, argues that “although first-cousin marriage is linked to an increased likelihood of a child having a genetic condition or a congenital anomaly, there are many other factors that also increase this chance (such as parental age, smoking, alcohol use and assisted reproductive technologies), none of which are banned in the UK”.
It claims inter-marriage offers benefits which include “stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages (resources, property and inheritance can be consolidated rather than diluted across households),” and that as banning the practice would “stigmatise certain communities and cultural traditions”, the authorities should instead offer “genetic counselling, awareness-raising initiatives and public health campaigns”.
And it says “although children of first cousins have an increased chance of being born with a genetic condition, that increase is a small one: in the general population, a child’s chance of being born with a genetic condition is around 2–3%; this increases to 4–6% in children of first cousins. Hence, most children of first cousins are healthy”.
Responding to the guidance, Tory MP Richard Holden said that the Conservatives would legislate to ban marriage between first cousins on the grounds that it “destroys integration, women’s rights and the health of those involved”.
Mr Holden told the Mail on Sunday: “Our NHS should stop taking the knee to damaging and oppressive cultural practices.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Woke Pembrokeshire Council is making workers play ‘Diversity Bingo’, where staff tick off buzzwords like “gender fluid”, “Islamophobia” and “cyber bullying” during taxpayer-funded training, according to the Sun.
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Since when did the National Health Service create legislation?
A very good question!
It seems every department of state, every local authority, quango, agency and tax payer funded charity wants to engage in general political lobbyhing outside its given purpose. It is much more fun for the senior executives, creates more opportunities for virtue signalling and a better chance of a gong than the hard grind of delivering better services.
In short – they all do it.
Is it not good healthy policy to shoot ‘mad’ dogs? Or maybe it is too late? Will solve the housing and employment crises though.
Obviously they do, half the NHS staff is inbred which partly explains its abysmal effectiveness and efficiency.
Everything else is coming under Sharia, so why not the NHS?
Spineless bureaucrats too woke, too gutless to confront biological reality.
Create a new health service which is run by the doctors and nurses. Filter the best currently in the NHS and move them over and then run the NHS down. Of course the parasites and ideologues will do everything they can to perpetuate themselves but we must at least try and with regular checks to see if any have managed to escape into the new health system.
Can we do the same with the police please.
You’re not allowed to argue – it’s “The Science”.
Dont smoke, don’t drink, eat a balanced diet and help save the NHS.
However you are allowed to put massive life long strain, via crippling birth defects, on the NHS if your Pakistani! Sweet!
That may or may not be true, but what about when the generation cousin marriage produces are expected to marry their cousins?
This is the issue, so if your grandparents are cousins and your parents are cousins, you are genetically marrying your brother or sister. So in a normal marriage, there is a fifty percent chance of passing on a congenital defect, but in a first cousin marriage it becomes one hundred percent.
Farmers know that they need to bring in different bulls and rams periodically to refresh their livestock gene pool. Not that I am suggesting bringing in more Pakis although that is happening anyway
That’s been going on for years in certain “close knit” communities. Incest: a game for all the family
Matthew Syed makes some fascinating points about first cousin marriage in his interview with Andrew Gold. Congenital defects are far from the top of list in the problems that emerge societally. Worth a gander.
So the laws of the land are to be altered to satisfy the crude, neolithic requirements of an already damaged cohort which ultimately will cost modern English citizens billions.
Obviously in Starmerville that’s progress.
I think the proposal is to introduce laws to ban the practice of 1st cousin marriage in the UK. If implemented the new law will be restrictive (as ever) on an existing freedom. I’m ambivalent – I think it’s a crass and stupid idea to promote or participate in cousin marriage, but should the state ban it if that’s what some people want to do? Similarly, I don’t think gay marriage was a great idea (there was already civil partnership) – but I wouldn’t support trying to ban it now.
It’s called incest.
Shagging your first cousin is disgusting.
People who commit incest are disgusting.
The guidance – which incredibly points out that it has been allowed in Britain since Henry VIII passed a law enabling him to marry Anne Boleyn’s cousin Catherine Howard – says that cousin marriage offers benefits such as “stronger extended family support systems”.
Just to highlight again how moronic this sentence is – the author picks it up but does not emphasise it – Henry VIII was not a blood relative of his wife Anne Boleyn, nor of her cousin Catherine Howard. How thick/devious do you have to be to use this as “evidence” ?
Standard Far Left practice. The arsewipe Guardian always finds the one exceptional immigrant actually contributing to society to oppose remigration while of course ignoring all the criminal rape gangs etc.
The NHS Trusts seem to have little interest in delivering quality medical care, when and where it is wanted and needed.
The Trusts, who waste £2 in every £3 of taxpayers money given them, is wasted on hideous levels of over administration and battalions of pointless managers. But even more insidious than the terrible waste is the political activism, chest feeders, women with penis’s being offered cervical smear tests and all the other DEI nonsense costing money that should be spent on treatment.
Now they are encouraging cousin marriages that significantly increase the risk of genetic diseases, vastly more difficult and expensive to treat, they’ve shown their true colours. And those colours would not seem to be red, white and blue!
If Labour have any chance of survival as a political party, they should look at what’s happened to the Tories and do what they said they were going to do. Sort out the NHS and the malignant growth of NHS Trusts.
Well I sure we can guess what comes next from our ridiculous NHS! It’ll then come out in support of FGM, but of course it will offer to do this within the NHS for the “health” of the poor little girls involved rather than a kitchen table. Appalling!
Since when has it been any business of the NHS to comment on anything other than health? It has been known for many years that cousin marriage increases the risk of birth defects, something of which the NHS should be only too aware as it is now dealing with the consequences. The NHS isn’t qualified to comment on any other issues that it considers to be of “benefit” to society. They need to stay in their lane