Talk:Consanguine marriage

Essay to article.
If this is going to be an article it needs a broader focus than cherry-picking examples from one religion, especially since the pseudoscience for this goes beyond said religion and can found in multiple competing ideologies as well as multiple locations. 15:44, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
 * If you have other examples of cultures with high rate of consanguine marriage you can add them to the page. Thinker(unlicensed) 16:31, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
 * If you want to make the page broader and allay people's suspicions about your bigotry, you can start here for inspiration: Bongolian (talk) 18:24, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Charles II is sad that you didn't notice him... 18:31, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
 * For now I'm removing the "prevalence" subsection just to be on the safe side. I'm more inclined to focus more on the phenomenon itself rather than where it happens most often, and I suggest you do the same. --Logos (talk) 19:22, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
 * To keep the original text more accessible and easier to modifiy for drafting, I've switched the deletion to a "comment-out", indicated by the "" tags (I also added in markers signaling the start and end of the removed sections). That basically means it won't show up on the page, but can still be seen upon hitting the "edit" button. ℕoir LeSable (talk) 19:56, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
 * "For now I'm removing the "prevalence" subsection just to be on the safe side. I'm more inclined to focus more on the phenomenon itself rather than where it happens most often, and I suggest you do the same."
 * There's no reason to remove the "prevalence" section. You can focus on the phenomenon itself (the section "Reasons" is empty) and also states where it happens more often. I'm going to add more details about health related problems. Thinker(unlicensed) 20:40, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Why would the prevalence of it even matter in the first place? It's not like it magically changes its nature when it occurs in different places. At any rate, I noticed that there is already a section on this in the main Marriage article (see "Cousin marriage") while the health related problems are covered under Inbreeding. Therefore, this whole article is redundant at best. --Logos (talk) 20:47, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
 * "Why would the prevalence of it even matter in the first place?"
 * Are you really asking me why the prevalence of a phenomenon matters in the discussion of said phenomenon?
 * "At any rate, I noticed that there is already a section on this in the main Marriage article (see "Cousin marriage")"
 * That's one paragraph. Citing no sources.
 * "the health related problems are covered under Inbreeding."
 * That's more for non-human animals. Anyway, if the material will somehow fit better in another page, there's always time for a merging/moving. Thinker(unlicensed) 21:09, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
 * All the more reason for you to add to those existing pages, then. Why waste time making an article from scratch when using an existing one would be more effective? I will admit that the Incest link might have been more appropriate though.
 * And to be quite blunt, your article was written in a way that made it appear that cousin marriage was something unique to the Middle East in a way that makes them seem primitive and barbaric. You asked why the prevalence matters, and I can point to the fact that we don't feel the need to document the prevalence of any other type of marriage other than gay marriage (and in that case we do it because we focus on where it's legal rather than how much it happens).
 * You also seem to spend an awful lot of words to say something that could just as easily be summed up in a couple of short paragraphs at nost. This isn't Wikipedia where every third sentence needs a citation, and most of us know that loss of genetic diversity is something to avoid. --Logos (talk) 21:22, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
 * "You asked why the prevalence matters, and I can point to the fact that we don't feel the need to document the prevalence of any other type of marriage other than gay marriage"
 * Because... reasons. You are making no argument whatsoever. If you have something of value to say about the matter, add it to the page together with the relevant sources. I'm done with this conversation. Thinker(unlicensed) 21:34, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
 * is also sad that you didn't notice him, but it's only from a fifth-cousin-once-removed marriage, so it's for the best. Bongolian (talk) 19:38, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

How much risk?
It's easy to find sources on the net which talk about "increased risk" as a consequence of consanguineous marriage (or really, I suppose, consanguineous sexual reproduction). But I was interested to see what the base rate was and by how much consanguineous sexual reproduction would increase that base risk. (Because if the base rate of X is very low, then doubling the base rate of X will still leave you with something which is relatively low.)

Anyway, I was a little surprised to find that the base rate for birth defects is between 2 and 6% depending on the source you use.

There are, however, a wide range of causative factors, including: drug use (including nicotine and alcohol), environmental toxins (mercury, dioxins etc.), radiation exposure, various illnesses, the age of the mother, dietary deficiency, biological problems in the mother's womb and - genetic problems. However in 70% of cases the cause is unknown.

Many sites point out that there will frequently be an interplay of both genes and environment.

All of which only left me only a little wiser in respect of the question I was trying to answer. So I went off the redefine my search. This article claims that third degree cousins double their background risk from 4% to 8%.Hubert (talk) 14:11, 24 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, the section "Health consequences" should be more quantitative. I also think that an important distinction should be made between: (A) a single episode of consanguine marriage, where, I agree, some risks double but the baseline is already low so there's not much to worry about (B) a history of consanguine marriages in a community, where the risks get much more higher. Thinker(unlicensed) 15:19, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Sure - but the issue is not "marriage". It's "reproduction".(Edit) Also - I'm not sure about the article which says the risk is doubled - it seems to assume that the entire 4% existing risk is genetic and then doubles that. But I think that's simplistic and the real risk is less. But we really need a geneticist.Hubert (talk) 15:43, 24 April 2019 (UTC) Hubert (talk) 15:40, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
 * "Also - I'm not sure about the article which says the risk is doubled - it seems to assume that the entire 4% existing risk is genetic and then doubles that."
 * I have to check it but, as a general recommendation, I think it's better to read the scientific literature instead than more "journalistic" websites, sometime they make errors or are imprecise when dealing with quantitative concepts. Thinker(unlicensed) 16:11, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Incest
There are things of the page Incest that could be moved here, for example "Political and financial motivations" will fit well in the section "Reasons". I think the word "Incest" is more commonly used to mean relation between extremely close relatives (brother-sister, mother-son,...), while this page regards relations up to first-cousins. Thinker(unlicensed) 16:11, 26 April 2019 (UTC)