Bradford NHS Recruits Nurse to Help Cousin-Marriage Families
Bradford NHS hospital trust has recruited a nurse to support families where parents are close relatives, in an area where up to half of Pakistani married couples are cousins. The Telegraph has more.
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust advertised the position for a “close relative marriage neonatal nurse/midwife”.
The job description said the successful candidate would “provide comprehensive care and support to families who have recently had a baby and are close relatives, cousins, uncles, aunts, or other closely related family members”.
While it is illegal to marry your brother or sister in the UK, weddings between cousins are allowed.
Ministers have faced mounting calls to ban cousin marriage in recent years because of potential health problems for the children of blood relatives.
Richard Holden, the Shadow Transport Secretary, introduced proposals to outlaw the practice in 2024 when he was a backbench MP.
He said the children of first cousins were at greater risk of birth defects and the practice should be banned on public health grounds.
Downing Street said at the time that it had no plans to outlaw the practice.
The MP said of the advert: “The impact of first cousin marriage is highly damaging for health, individual freedom, and most importantly for the cohesion of our country.
“Rather than wasting taxpayers’ money dealing with the consequences of first cousin marriage, the Government should back my bill and bring an end to this practice for good.”
The Bradford nurse is tasked with ensuring the “wellbeing of neonates, particularly in the context of genetic risks and health challenges that may arise from consanguinity”.
Consanguinity is defined as being descended from the same ancestor.
The trust noted that there were “very few” close relative marriage nurses in the UK.
While the proportion of marriages between white British cousins is about 1%, the BBC has reported, the practice remains relatively common among some South Asian minorities.
In three inner-city Bradford wards, almost half (46%) of mothers from the Pakistani community were married to a first or second cousin, according to Born in Bradford data published three years ago.
Another sign of the losing battle against normalising harmful foreign customs.
Worth reading in full.
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I shared this the other day and it’s from March last year, so I think this is another case of the Telegraph journalists mining Twitter for news article ideas to cover, because this is old news now. What the journalist could’ve done is look for more recent examples, such as this which I’ve previously shared. It’s a job ad from last month for a Trust in Slough. It appears there’s several pilots going on around the country where they’ve introduced this specialist nurse role; ”If a couple are consanguineous (closely related) their children have a higher chance of being affected by autosomal recessive genetic disorders. This role aims to improve access to the provision of a culturally competent genetic service for consanguineous families at increased risk of autosomal recessive genetic disorders. The post holder will work as a member of the neonatal team, to identify families where consanguineous related disorders are present and improve access to genetic services for families to enable informed reproductive decision-making. Identify families that are admitted to NICU with a probable or likely genetic aetiology linked to close relative marriage and conditions likely to be inherited in an autosomal manner and initiate conversations with family in… Read more »
Here is the link to the original job ad from March 2025. So why are the Telegraph just reporting on it now and making out like it’s isolated to Bradford hospital? Thorough and fair journalism would involve researching the entire country because there’s more than just one of these positions throughout the NHS. Shoddy reporting using people posting content on their accounts on Twitter and harvesting that rather than doing a thorough job themselves as journalists;
https://beta.jobs.nhs.uk/candidate/jobadvert/C9389-25-0152
So ‘You what!? You married your Cousin!?’ would be a bit much then?
My daughter had a work colleague who was bizarrely pleased that she and her husband only shared one grandparent.
I’m a bit torn on this issue. Sure, it’s not the kids’ fault if they are genetically damaged so banning cousin marriage makes sense from that perspective. But the increased risk of genetically damaged kids is the parents’ responsibility. Trouble is, of course, that the taxpayers pick up the costs and money is spent on this which could be spent on other things.
I’m not torn at all, it’s a disgusting habit, and should be outlawed
We know that marrying your cousin used to be acceptable hundreds of years ago in England, but did you know that FGM was also a thing back in the day? And it had nothing to do with Islam, which hasn’t managed to drag itself out of the Dark Ages, unlike Christianity, at least;
”Yet in 1860s London, one form of FGM – clitoridectomy, the surgical removal of the clitoris – briefly became an acceptable treatment for a wide range of conditions including “hysteria” and mental illness. It could also be used as treatment for behaviour seen as unfeminine and as a threat to marriage. These included a “distaste for marital intercourse”, “a great distaste for her husband”, violent behaviour, or even just answering back.
The conditions thought to merit clitoridectomy come from the publications of Isaac Baker Brown, a respectable member of the London medical establishment.
His method, he insisted, was “humane and effectual”, a speedy answer to problems including hysteria, fits, catalepsy, “idiocy”, and mania. A woman who, according to her husband, would “fly at him, and rend his skin, like a tigress”, was quite well after the operation and “became in every respect a good wife”.
https://theconversation.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-fgm-in-victorian-london-38327
Nasty.
It was often noted that Victorian married women shared the same status as slaves. Having your own front door (latch) key was considered a privilege if you were a married female, but by the turn of the century most women were allowed this ‘freedom’. It is well known that inbreeding weakens any species and so there is no sane reason to persist with it, especially in humans.
The reminder that women couldn’t even open their own bank account and access their money, even if they were earning, without permission from a man: father, brother or husband, prior to 1975 just staggers me. I can’t imagine living in such a world. The amount of coercive control and financial abuse throughout history must’ve been immense due to women being financially dependent on men, discrimination being par for the course. Also, they could be refused service in a pub before 1982! 😮 This is quite the eye-opener. Laws can be passed overnight but attitudes can take many years to catch up, if they do at all; ”1975: The Sex Discrimination Act makes it illegal to discriminate against UK women in work, training and education. As a result, employers, landlords, banks and finance companies have to treat women as equal to men for the first time. This means that British women can now open bank accounts and apply for credit and loans in their own name, without their husband’s permission. In reality, many women still find it hard to get credit due to low earnings – they typically earn less than men and are more likely to take career breaks due… Read more »
All so true. The rage of feminism is quite easy to understand, although society is better served by equality of opportunity and treatment for everyone.
Hound… One only needs to look at dog breeds to see the issue.
Absolutely! This hound is a proud mongrel.
Our enforced culturally diverse society is being overrun with inbreds. Saying that, so called ‘Royal’ families and significant numbers of the ‘elites’ (financial parasites) who think they are our betters have engaged in the loathsome practice of inbreeding and probably incestuous relationships from time immemorial.
What a wonderful world we live in.
That picture: Bradford Royal Infirmary is racist? Is it seeking to make its patients feel unsafe?
I can’t see a trigger warning anywhere. Shocking.
The effect is compounded when the offspring of married cousins are married off to other offspring of married cousins, all in the family. And how does the number of children born to such families compare to other communities (even after higher instances of miscarriage and still-births)?
Yes, good point. The problem of genetic damage will not be resolved by a single generation choosing out-marriage. The damage has built up over generations and will take generations to dilute down to background levels again.
In primitive societies badly damaged kids tend not to survive to adulthood and have offspring. In our distorted mash-up of societies, even a damaged child may be a ticket to residency rights in the UK.
I visited Bradford in 1991 and it was crystal clear then we had a big problem. The local Pakistani population had not integrated and had created a community that stood apart from the local English community. There were nightly skirmishes between the English and Pakistani communities. They hated one another. If I knew it 35 years ago, so did the council, if the council knew it, so did the local MP, if the local MP knew it, so did parliament, and if parliament knew it, so did successive Prime Ministers. Thirty five years ago they knew the cultures were incompatible but encouraged mass immigration anyway. If that is not treason I don’t know what is.
Easy, just make it abundantly clear that if you end up with a damaged child which is the result of genetics due to cousin marriage, then you will both be financially liable for the life of the child for its support. That should be law, although I suspect the cases of infanticide would increase…..
Tempting idea, but impractical in reality. The parents will likely have no money (apart from the taxpayers’) to meet the lifelong medical, educational and care costs. So its on us as usual
The NHS should discharge all patients suffering from the diseases of inbreeding whether they be Pakistani, Irish traveller or other heritage. No benefits should be paid out to the families to cope with the disabilities, e.g. a Motability car so the parents can transport them to hospital.
I have an ultra rare recessive genetic condition where both parents carry the same faulty gene. There are approximately 200 in the UK with the same condition. In my case the condition is not in my ancestry and it will expire with me. My children inherited the folded gene but not the condition and are perfectly healthy. The chances of them marrying a person with the same faulty gene are thousands to one in our culture. However, in cultures where first cousins marry the probability is obviously much higher. Clearly, generational ‘multiplication’ of potential birth defects and serious conditions takes place at a much faster rate than within a normal large gene pool. The consequences over time can be devastating for the sufferer and also very expensive for the NHS to resource and treat. It is surely self evident that first cousin marriages should be banned.
In their native countries, a badly damaged/disabled consequence of generational cousin-marriage, would be unlikely to survive for long …. whether through lack of caring facilities or deliberate infanticide.
In the UK with “our wonderful NHS” and an overly generous welfare state, a badly damaged/disabled consequence will not only be paid for by other people but it will also be the route to extremely generous welfare payments.
So they have no disincentives to continue the practice …. and every incentive to continue.
Turn off the “free money” tap and they may start to change their behaviour.
It would be useful to see statistics on birth defects and IQ from cousin marriages – or perhaps these are a dirty state secret.