Genetic Disease in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA)
This is a delicate topic, but it has a singular point to make - a point about the cognitive dissonance of those citizens who cling to Hillary because feminism. These Fem-Dems go along with all our shitty foreign policies because Hillary. Case in point, the free pass that the medieval, misogynist theocracy of KSA has gotten from the US for 70 years.
The corporate media had, until the Khashoggi murder, been pretty much silent on the horrific religious police state of KSA. There was a 2002 mention of a dozen girls dying in a fire because the religious police would not allow them to exit the building without being properly covered. Also, there were mentions of the beheadings from time to time. All back page on Friday afternoon stories.
Given that history, I found my end of year issue of Nature magazine, the premier UK scientific journal to be worth writing an essay about. The issue contained an insert from the King Abdullah International Medical Research Center (KAIMRC).
[FYI, Nature is (in)-famous for its special sections and inserts. These sometimes run to tens of pages and break up the pagination of the paper magazine (no idea how it works in the electronic version). The KAIMRC insert was a seperately bound, 88 page insert.]
The KAIMRC insert looked like more of the same, until you actually looked at the table of contents. While the article titles seemed unexceptional, when you dug down into the text, what jumped out at you was how much of the research was aimed at congenital defects driven by high levels of consanguinity (i.e., the proverbial "cousins marrying cousins"). There was one article that actually used the C word:
Understanding the Risks of Consanguineous Reproduction
And another article actually provided some statistics (World average risk: 1 in 2500; KSA: 1 in 600)
Strategy Urged to Tackle Genetic Disease
However, most articles' titles avoided pointing at consanguinity, with opaque titles like
Cause found for rare amino acid disease
The child was the offspring of a first cousins marriage.
Other articles that "buried the lead" included;
Single Gene Defect Found for Unexplained Dwarfism
Understanding the Genetics of Congenital Heart Defects
Screening for an Enzyme Defect in Newborns
Gene Defects Reduce Leukemia Survival
New Mutation Linked to Leigh Syndrome
Twenty New Mutations Linked to Rare Genetic Diseases
The Rare Mutation that Caused Misdiagnosis
I think you get the picture. KSA is a hot spot for inbreeding and the genetic problems that go with it. I worked in Boston biotech for many years, and it is well known in the city how many patients with "unusual" problems arrive from KSA. Notice the euphemisms for "inbred" in the titles above: "rare", "new", "unexplained".
This is the brave "ally" of Hillary Clinton, and the neoliberal/neocon corporatists who back her.
Clinton’s State Department was heavily involved in approving weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. As weapons transfers were being approved, both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Boeing made donations to the Clinton Foundation.
- Emails Show Hillary Clinton Aides Celebrating F-15 Sales to Saudi Arabia: “Good News”
So, the next time some Fem-Dem tells you to fall in line, ask her why she supports a misogynist country whose beyond backwards marriage policies leave Saudi women grappling with unprecedented levels of birth defects - a country that the "sainted" Hillary Clinton was up to her eyeballs with in influence peddling and warmongering.
Comments
Dragging a loser
into your diary was unnecessary.
I would have been much more interested on the info about inbreeding within KSA without hearing about her.
Peace.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
I felt that pointing only at the genetic problems...
could be counterattacked as some flavor of racism or other ism. So, I added on the hypocrisy angle to be able to deflect people who push back against the undeniable reality of inbreeding.
Sorry that it put you off, but I always write defensively.
I agree n/t
It's a thing all over the Gulf,
and it's multi-factorial. Class, race, religion and culture all play a role, as these limit the pool of potential spouses, especially in the smaller Gulf countries. Inheritance laws are a factor as well, as children inherit their citizenship from their father, ie if a Gulf female marries a foreigner, her kids aren't citizens of her country.... period. They lose out on any benefits that accrue from that as well, which is significant. The situation is so dire that some GCC states (Qatar, for one) forbid men from marrying foreigners as a first marriage, as it would leave Qatari females with too few options.
Another cultural factor is the idea that kids are (unofficially and casually) promised to each other at a young age by their families, if the families are close. Most of these promises are borne out years later, and this frequently happens between cousins. Add to that the idea of maintaining property and wealth in the family, wanting to marry within a class, and a religious persuasion (the differences here are Sunni-Wahhabi, moderate Sunni, Shia, and secular, these lines aren't often crossed).
The medical community has been working on this issue for a couple of decades now, and while the word is getting out that cousin marriage is risky, old habits die hard.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Because Islam is moderate, and you can't judge...
all Muslims by the actions of a few crazy terrorist extremists! Remember, KSA are the GOOD ones! They let women drive cars. And the women CHOOSE to wear the Hijab, which is a symbol of female freedom from male gaze and judgement. Why are you against women's CHOICES to submit to theocratic despotic fundamentalism. Look, it's EMPOWERING!
And Islam is totally more feminist than the USA because they have women presidents occasionally. Therefore they are better for all women.
/snark
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU7rqB9E_0M]
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Careful, you'll give the IdPol folks ideas.
I'm waiting for some Fem-Dem to say this in all seriousness.
I hate to break it to you...
But I heard that first... Five years ago.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
In Germany, there are centrist, left, and Green opinion leaders
and cultural figures who absolutely believe this. In their usual social circles so much so, by now it practically goes without saying.
Even some elementary and pre-school girls are being forced, er, encouraged by their families to wear the hijab.
One proposed countermeasure would ban wearing of the hijab in public schools and daycare by anyone under 18.
But of course anyone who thinks any kind of countermeasure is necessary must be a Nazi. /s
I can understand the Muslims (been beaten up for Moslems!)...
but for non-Muslim westerners to buy into this crapola is depressing.
I sort of admire the French attitude that only criminals cover their faces in public.
I can't say I do
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/ditch-the-guy-fawkes-...
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
I don't know where to park this response, . . .
. . . but a number of the comments here are seriously Islamophobic. It's not a good thing for this site.
On the subject of covering, there are women in certain nations who are forced to wear one or another form of this. There are some who are forced by fundamentalist patriarchs to do so. But there actually are other women who choose -- yes, choose, freely, knowing all it entails, including discrimination against them -- to wear the hijab, etc. Dismissing that choice, or worse banning it, is no less arrogant and oppressive than the most fundamentalist of strictures that require coverings in some places.
I see we (in the editorial sense) only do this when it comes to the Muslim community, when other religions and cultures also have various head coverings we'd accept without question. Hell, some we'd laud as preserving cultural tradition. But not if they're Muslim.
I know Muslim women, mostly in the West, some in the Middle East, and they are not some Monumental Oppressed. They wear, or don't wear, head coverings for a variety of reasons. Lumping them all together as victims over headwear not only misses the point you'd presumably intend to make, but is offensive. Please save that for another site.
I have never hidden my bias on this subject.
I do not care for Islam and usually avoid the subject whenever possible because of accusations of Islamophobia.
I don't fear Islam. I don't like it.
And NO, I will not go to a mosque or read a Koran or in any other way brainwash myself into liking it.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
So, going into a mosque = brainwashing.
You just made my point.
Y'all do what you wanna do. I'm outta this thread.
Hey, you left before I had a chance to comment.
Give me some time to catch up.
And, BTW, my original OP did not mention Islam at all.
I will take the hit for that one.
I brought it up and posted what can be considered a Islamophobic joke.
If anybody is offended, the buck stops here. I take full responsibility for my dislike of Islam, my hatred of feudal plutocracies, and my refusal to properly tolerate a religion I find repugnant.
I don't blame you if you find this opinion...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpUHWlMIbQU]
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
You might want to read some books by
Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Yes, there are women who choose to wear hijabs and head coverings because they think they have a freedom of choice. They don't. And the reason for the covering is to either please or not offend a male god. One reason we have such a problem with religion in the world and in our country is because people are told that if they criticize the ideas or premises of religious beliefs they are exhibiting a "phobia". You are adding to that problem. One of the reasons that I am highly critical of DKos is because they were doing the same thing. They called people who were critical of the claims of Islam "islamophobes", they called people who criticized Israel for its treatment of Palestinians "anti-semitic" and they called people who criticized the ideas of Christianity "religious bigots". This site allows criticism of religion. What it doesn't need is more religious crap thrown at those who treat religious ideas as no more or no less than OPINIONS. And ALL opinions are fair game for scrutiny and critique. If you don't agree with that, it is you who needs to evaluate your participation here. And I am not saying that on behalf of anyone else on this site. It is my opinion alone unless others voice an agreement of my analysis.
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
I think an elaboration on this might be beneficial
What reasons, for example?
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Choice and Rights are relative concepts
in terms of adult women and the controversy over wearing a hijab in public. But children? Where is the "choice" there?
In fact, I feel fairly certain, irrespective of this particular issue, that 100 years from now students of history will study the way in which our society viewed children and puzzle over how children's rights were subservient to that of their parents.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
When Karen Hughes addressed a group of Saudi women
back in 2005 or so, she mentioned that someday they wouldn't have to wear the niqab and abaya anymore. Those women dressed her down thoroughly for it, and instead wanted to know why US foreign policy was so adverse towards Arab states in the ME, and other pertinent questions.
She was left shocked and speechless.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
I'll take that challenge
I think there are two sides to that question.
a) Women currently enculturated to think covering themselves is proper DO see it as their choice and they DO have their own agency and I will not take it from them. This is part & parcel with my general sentiment that I am fed up with people telling women what to wear... in any context. If it isn't your body then shut the hell up.
b) Future theoretical women in these same cultures might well think differently. But to make that change, the culture must change.
Now we get into a discussion about whether the US has any right at all to go do social engineering in other countries... at gunpoint or any other way. If so, what are the "right" ways to do this. The US always like freedom bombing so do we need some feminism-bombing or should we thinking of some other tactic.
I think the question of Islam & feminism isn't nearly as simple as the cartoon sketches that people like to trot out. And... while we are discussing Islam & feminism, is it worthwhile to address Catholicism and feminism? For anyone who wants to DOSOMETHING(tm), I want to know where their moral right to do so comes from.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Hell no, I don't want to DO something on the issue...
If anything I want us to STOP doing things on the issue.
Leave them ALONE. Let em live their lives in peace. Stop bombing their countries and killing their people on behalf of a group of inbred psychopaths. (Whichever group you think is behind it. I Frankly don't care which it is. Just stop KILLING people)
To paraphrase Heinlein, you can't make people free. They either want it or they don't. A lot of Americans don't want it, and are happy to look to anything that will give them structure. A lot of times that seems to be crusading on things that are none of their fucking business.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Wow... you must be a misogynist too :)
Yeah, that's where I'm at with it. If we, as a nation and a culture, wish to lead by example I'm fine with that. If other cultures then adopt that example of their own internal volition then I'm fine with that too. Social engineering at gunpoint or any other way is just more American exceptionalism (and as a subset, misogynistic in and of itself).
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
I'm much more interested in the "why's"
The impetus behind what is and is not "proper" is much more relevant a discussion for me personally. Sussing that out is where the discussion of what is absolute, or merely relative, takes shape.
For instance, to use your example of the Catholic religion, if a large portion of Catholic school girls began wearing a version of a novitiate's habit in public, a discussion of why would be equally relevant to a discussion of the hajib.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
I agree
And while we're at it, we could more generally ask "why do women wear what they do anywhere?" I mean... what's with all the skin at a club or a beach or, for that matter, the mall.
Wait... maybe I don't want to go down that path. That's the entire problem. Because presumably at the end of that thought process we are going to come up with some prescription that entails what they OUGHT to want wear and what they actually wear. No thanks.
Maybe the better question is, "To what extent does a given society allow for variations in dress code and how are the limitations enforced?" I've taken gender out of this question and instead of focusing on the individuals I'm looking at the societal constraints generally. As a subset of that, of course, you'd want to look at different demographics. But my focus is on wardrobe liberty not Hajibs.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
I don't agree that the debate
About what informs cultural and societal restrictions as they relate to women's autonomy necessarily must lead to a discussion about regulating women's wardrobes based on moral "norms"
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Perhaps.. I'll leave that to the more serious feminist thinkers
What I know is that I have a strong allergy to ANYONE telling a woman what she should or should not wear. It seems to me that there is plenty enough of that from every corner including alleged feminists. So my stance has become, "Fuck you all. It's her body so shut the hell up." If, in fact, we can study this particular bit of sociology without weaponizing it then yeah, I'm all for knowledge.
I actually had a few more paragraphs about my thoughts on the drivers but inevitably I found myself couching it in terms of "The problem is..." rather than the more analytical, "Society X has wardrobe boundaries Y which are driven by cultural influences 1, 2, and 7". But really, do we need a big analysis to know that it is the Muslim religion which drives the wearing of the Hajib?
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
I remember how mad I got when mom made me
wear a shirt while my brothers didn't have to. Okay I was 5, but still ... I loved the feeling of the sun on my bare back and the feeling of freedom running around during the summer with no shirt on and then it suddenly ended.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Talking About Religion
As a practicing Buddhist I frequently find myself in conversations with people curious about my practice and Eastern Philosophy. I am therefore quite capable of having respectful conversations related to religion and welcome arguing the merits of a philosophy that denies a woman her autonomy. Which, btw, is not limited to the fundamentalism of the Islamic religion. The same could be said of the fundamentalism of both the Christian and Jewish religions.
Pointing out that "choosing" to cover one's face and body is relative to the context of how that choice is made can also be seen as addressing the symptom rather than the disease in the larger issue of the misogyny inherent in a philosophy that denies a woman her own agency.
Likewise, the same could be said for protecting religious freedom and the efficacy of civil legislature society has had to grapple with. Outlawing the practice of polygamy could be argued that we are "telling women who they can and cannot marry". But I'm also fairly certain that like the adolescent girls who are taught to wear the hajib, most 14 year old girls don't want to marry middle aged men unless the religion they've grown up in has given them no other option.
True, it's a tricky conversation, but I don't know that I'd characterize it as purely analytical.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Even Buddhism needs to be challenged when it comes to
how women are viewed and treated.
https://qz.com/india/586192/theres-a-misogynist-aspect-of-buddhism-that-...
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
As in all Religions
Over time, distortions metastasize and render the core teachings unrecognizable. Among the thousands of sutras Shakyamuni Buddha taught, the Lotus Sutra is considered by many his highest teaching. In it he proclaims that enlightenment can be attained by everyone. In 6th century BCE, this was not only a humanist ideal, but revolutionary one as well. This meant that one did not have to be able to read, or own property, or even be a man to attain enlightenment.
There are also many schools of Buddhism today, and many different sects. The Buddhism I practice adheres to the principles from the Lotus Sutra.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
How does anyone know
for sure that it was men telling women what to wear when the practice first developed?
dfarrah
One already did.
I don't know her party, but she is in the US (I think she became a citizen), but she made a good argument for women wearing the coverings.
In the US, lookism is rampant. She pointed out that she is judged on what she is, her performance, and not her looks.
Can you imagine what the world would be like if no one knew what other people look like?
dfarrah
While I agree, the US is nowhere near as bad as...
countries like S. Korea or Brazil, where everyone (men and women) feel pressured to undergo plastic surgery to meet the demand for personal good looks.
The problem goes way beyond religion. Appearance has been a pillar of culture forever. Societies dictate the bounds of appearance.
The idea that covering oneself up is strictly a religious, as opposed to social, matter seems to have derailed this discussion.
The House of Saud
making the Habsburgs look normal.
(Austrian Tourist Board)
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Great one-liner.
I tried to work in Victoria's children and hemophelia, but the verbiage was too clunky.
You nailed it. LOL.
you da man!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
"Austrian Tourist Board"
I don't get that part - does that mean you're quoting them?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Austrian Habsburgs, at least
They generally stopped at first cousins. The Spanish Habsburgs even went in for uncle-niece marriages, and more than once, and then breeding back to the same line again and again. As I've said before, the last of them, Carlos II "the Bewitched" was so inbred his parents might as well have been opposite-sex clones.
Queen Victoria's hemophilia transmission was a random mutation that could have happened at any time to anyone, and only became the humongous problem it was because she had a lot of children and they married into a lot of other royal houses. (It's also a sex-linked recessive, which means that it shows up most often in male children because they don't have a counterbalancing normal allele - the Y chromosome is very low on alleles of any sort.) Hasn't shown up since, oh, the 1930s or so, which suggests that a little genetic counseling has gone a long way (then, too, the British monarchy has been far less averse to outbreeding than some others).
Any time you find a relatively isolated population, you will find inbreeding - who else is there to marry? Studies have been done on the prevalence of deafness on Martha's Vineyard (lots of it), dwarfism among the Amish, etc. Haven't heard that they've gone poking around Accomack/Northampton VA, but I wouldn't be surprised if the findings were...interesting. Shouldn't be quite as bad as an island, but it is at the bottom of a long narrow peninsula and there hasn't been much influx of new genes until fairly recently.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
as to Victoria's hemophilia, it wasn't genetic
counseling or the particular marriage habits of the British aristocracy that limited the downstream effect, it was just a bit of good luck, and a bit of "good" bad luck.
the first bit of particularly good luck was that she seems to have passed the mutated gene (which is believed to have originated in her own conception) to only 3 of her 9 [EDITED from original "14"] children, one of them being a son who eventually died of cerebral hemorrhage.
the good bad luck was that most of the grandsons and great grandsons who inherited the mutation died of hemorrhages before they had passed the gene on. victoria's children and grandchildren had far fewer children than she had had, and the mutation tends to burn itself out, because of its high mortality. a woman carrying the gene who has 4 children, 2 male and 2 female, is on average going to give it to one son -- who will probably die with few or no children -- and one daughter. of victoria's two daughters carrying the gene, they passed it along to the next generation, but it burned out in the Spanish monarchy, and in another bit of rather awful luck (from their perspective, at least) was slaughtered out in the Russian monarchy, leaving only a couple of other "strains" that themselves petered out in one or two generations (e.g., Vic's daughter Alice passed it on to her daughter Irene, whose 3 children were all males, two of whom had hemophilia. one died of hemorrhage in early childhood, the other died of hemorrhage in middle age, married but childless -- whether by choice or fortune, I do not know, so that may be one instance where "genetic counseling", such as it may have been, could have been in play).
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
The Habsburg problem was a dominant malformed jaw
that was sometimes so grotesque that no one would have married them if they weren't royalty. (Sometimes it was expressed only as a prominent "stubborn" chin, which resulted in fairly normal-looking people.) Since this was not necessarily a lethal defect, it kept being passed on - and in the case of the Spanish branch exaggerated by inbreeding. (Even the flattering portraits of Carlos II - and most of them were outrageously flattering - make him look decidedly weird.)
The Austrian Habsburgs apparently caught on that they needed a bit of outcrossing to keep it under control - and the men in particular started looking for beautiful women as a counterbalance. (It seems to have worked. Empress Maria Theresa, the last of the Habsburg bloodline, wasn't bad-looking, and her daughter Maria Antonia (Marie Antoinette) was very pretty except for a permanent pout. The current "Habsburgs" are descended from Maria Theresa, having simply adopted the name for prestige reasons, so it looks as though they have gotten rid of that pesky dominant.)
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
I’m confused
by the whole fem-dem thing. What is a fem-dem?
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
Sorry, I just coined it for this essay
In my way of thinking, a subset of feminists have decided that whatever Hillary and the DP leadership say is true. That would make them feminists loyal to the corrupt Democratic party. IOW, fake feminists working for a fake people's party.
Ok, thank you.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
Are the Saudis trying to solve the problem or just mitigate it?
Maybe not fair, but I get the notion is that the Saudis approve of in-breding, and what they want is not to stop it, but to mitigate the resulting problems.
Also, I think I read that some called Hillary's feminism "boursgoise feminism". That is, that women should be allowed in the power hierarchies so they too can make decisions on who to bomb, cheat and exploit. That is what Hillary did at Walmart. She worked to get more women in management so they too could engage in wage theft.
My feeling is that to keep inbreeding and fix it with science..
is the same as keeping massive explotation of fossil fuels and fixing it with geoengineering.
That is, it refuses to look objectively at the damage being done, and instead looks for some technological fix to continue innately horrible behavior.
as i note in a response above, a problem
for the Saudis is that there has been so much inbreeding at the highest strata of their society consanguination is almost unavoidable. there are apparently 15K to 20K members of the royal family. a LOT of them are descendents of Ibn Saud, many (most?) of them through multiple lines of descent (he had over a hundred grandchildren through just 1 of his 45 sons).
their only hope to avoid inbreeding at this point would be a populist redistribution of both wealth and status. i don't think that's likely to happen. what is much more likely to happen is genetic profiling by which marriages, arranged or otherwise, are approved or not. it seems to me from the titles of those papers that much/most of the research focus is not on curing anything, but rather on identifying the problematic recessives. of course, in the long run, they may start using that info to exploit the same CRISPR techniques that were used by that maniac in China.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Yes. Those golden 20k royal offspring...
are unlikely to relinquish their claims to the estimated $1.5 Trillion of royal family loot. So there will be some kind of scientific triage/remediation among these inbred aristos.
Why does the world never get tired of oligarchs and aristocrats? They are poison to nations and societies.
I have a wonderful relative who,
rationally, finds the entire concept of royalty silly and unsupportable; nonetheless, she is compulsively fascinated by the endless melodrama of the House of Windsor.
We are a kooky lot, we homo sapiens.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I am like
your relative, fascinated by the absurdity and the details of the life histories of certain European royalty, Victoria and her family especially, but also the Danish royals who connected to so many of the 19th and 20th century families that Elizabeth and her husband Philip are practically clones. I don't know why it fascinates me.
Because I get caught up in this subject, I feel compelled to say that my understanding is that Victoria had 9 children, not 14. Here is a site that lists and graphs the number of her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who are known to have had haemophilia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemophilia_in_European_royalty
i have no idea why i typed 14.
it's been a long holiday season.
still, it was pretty good luck that only 3 of 9 carried the gene (or at least, only 3 that we know of, due to their descendants manifesting the disease). the odds that 0, 1, 2 or 3 out of 9 would get the unlucky X from Victoria were (1+9+9+84)/(2^9) = 105/512. if i did my arithmetic correctly.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Your essay regarding genetic defects of inbreeding
drew my attention. It’s an interesting subject that needs no enhancement. I read a little bit about the subject in relation to different cultures and found a couple interesting references. It appears that consanguinity is most present in the most remote and sparsely populated places, which makes sense.
I’m feeling a bit unsure about how to continue what I think might be a more interesting discussion minus the US political influence. Maybe it's not possible to separate the two, but my feeling is that its roots are far deeper.
It could hardly be otherwise in a harem culture.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Indeed.
When some males of a family -- particularly one of rarefied social caste -- have on the order of 100 children (as did Ibn Saud and his number 1 son, Saud), you can be assured that there will be a lot of consanguinity in the third and subsequent generations, and at much higher "true" genetic levels than are indicated by the definitions of the family tree. Your spouse might be your 3rd cousin according to the family tree, but genetically much closer to a 2nd or even 1st cousin.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Very interesting. Thanks for the research.
That number is unbelievably high by US standards that I am still wondering what the definition of "related" is. In the US, related would stop at second cousin.
I came across this at the same time.
I haven't given it consideration yet, but maybe it's relevant.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001671.htm
Hmm.
Taking roughly 20 per 1000 live births, that is a mortality rate of 1 in 50. That is significantly higher than the birth defect (not necessarily fatal) number in the KSA article: 1 in 600.
I would need to do a lot more digging to decide what to make of the KSA numbers. Thanks for your information.
I find the subject interesting,
and look forward to your analysis.
I do think it is an interesting topic.
Facts are not phobic no matter where they land, and I don't appreciate attempts to censor them because they might be construed as offensive by some or singling a group out.
I also want to share how much I appreciate your contributions to this site. You are always so well phrased. You don't sugar coat, but you do take the time, have the talent or the skills, to speak to fact using just the right words.
Anecdotally, I think the immigrants today are different from the immigrants of yesterday. Earlier immigrants "coming to America" wanted to be Americans. They couldn't wait to lose their broken English and the other cultural identities that made them different. They wanted to assimilate. Today, immigrants want to come here and maintain their culture. No only do they want to maintain it, they want any and all laws changed to accommodate their cultures and religious belief. They want America or their new country to be just like home.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
I think you overstate the assimilation factor
People came, and still come, to America because it is less horrible than where they came from. The immigrating generation tended, and tends, to cluster in communities of similar origin - assimilation doesn't really begin until the first "born here" generation starts attending school. And it can take generations for the clusters to dis-integrate.
It's also never an all-or-nothing thing, nor only one-way, or we wouldn't have Italian, Chinese, Pakistani, etc. restaurants.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Yes, but....
immigrants encouraged their first born to assimilate, they didn't demand fealty to a culture they left behind. I don't know if the difference between earlier and current immigrants is culture, religion, or region. I do know those earlier immigrants left because of choice and not because someone was bombing their homes. Even a tough choice is better than no choice.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Yes, that
me too, but I do like ethnic parts of towns (like in Boston, New York, and San Francisco).
I really hate to read about the Americanization of other countries with McDonalds, Disneylands, and so on. Ugh.
dfarrah
I think you and TheOtherMaven both have a point.
For example, 3 of my 4 grandparents were immigrants. When I consider the ages they were (teenagers) when they arrived, I understand now why they wouldn’t speak to me in their mother tongue when I asked them to. For a long time in my youth I thought it was solely a rejection of where they came from. But later I realised it probably had most to do with their desire to assimilate, and also the loss of their original language before they became grandparents, due to non-use.
I think attendance at school for the first generation born in the country is clearly the beginning of assimilation for many. My grandparents were still school aged when they arrived, but 2 of the 3 didn’t attend school, yet they quickly assimilated I’m sure, being teenagers. Teenagers, for sure, want to feel part of the gang wherever they find themselves.
I think some cultures take longer than others to integrate (if at all) for varying reasons. I’m sure the degree of trauma experienced also makes integration (trust) difficult.
Thank you dkmich for your appreciation.
I think you have to factor in "nationalism"
The period between the end of the Civil War (1865) and the closing of the immigration door (1924) was one of intense nationalism. That was because the entire concept of nationalism was brand new, the result of the French Revolution and follow on revolutions in 1830 and 1848. The political ideas those revolutions put forth caused everyone to scramble to have a "nation" to belong to. A nation rather than a country. People invented national stories, national heroes, national myths, national literature and music. Such nationalisms tore apart polyglot empires such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Czarist Empire.
So, I would conjecture that immigrants from 1865 until WW2 were highly motivated to join an up and coming nation, the USA, and were anxious to lose the stigma of coming from a European backwater, e.g. Lithuania under the Czarist Empire. After WW2, with the rest of the world in ruins, there was even more incentive to assimilate. The US exploited the "melting pot" propaganda all the way through until the 1960s.
Lately, as someone remarked, immigrants are more apt to demand the country respond to them. Hence the forms I get from the government - in 18 bloody languages.
I'm reminded of Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet
Years ago on the series "Our Immigrant Ancestors" he quoted a saying about immigrants.
"What the son wants to forget, the grandson wants to remember".
A Chinese freind of mine from Nanjing told me his daughter would not date in college and would marry at age 30 to a Chinese man. I doubted that dating part greatly, but what I told him was "If you don't have grandchildren that are only part Chinese, surely you will have great-grandchildren that are not." In college I asked a Japanese-American classmate for a date. She told me her father only allowed her to date Japanese boys. I don't think it was an excuse. She seemed genuinely sad about it.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
a lot of birth defects amongst American Indians
may be the result of:
A. Pollution, including radiation from nuclear testing and mercury from paper processing.
B. Alcohol abuse, which is directly related to their poverty and lack of opportunities.
C. Lack of access to prenatal medical care.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
those numbers you cite are for major birth defects,
not infant mortalities. most of the defects (e.g., trisomy 21, which causes most Down's Syndrome) do NOT result in infant death. in the article, infant mortality rates run at about 13% of the major defect rate (e.g., 0.29% vs. 2.2% [EDITED to correct an order of magnitude error]).
i took some time to peruse the CDC site, and found the stats startling. they currently cite the rate of major birth defects as 3% of live births, versus [EDITED due to a formatting error that "blanked out" a chunk of text] less than 2% in the article posted by janis b (from 1983). most of these, however, are not trivially identifiable as "genetic", at least not in the sense of an inherited mutation (rather than, for example, a chromosomal aberration during meiosis, as in trisomy 21). i'm assuming the 1 in 600 number cited of KSAID refers to some specific suite of hereditary genetic disorders, so it can't be meaningfully compared to the US numbers.
as to the apparent rise in the american numbers, some of those are real (e.g., more trisomy 21, due to more women having babies after age 35), while some of them are artifacts of advanced diagnosis (per the article i was reading at cdc, lots of babies may have left hospitals back in the old days with undetected heart defects that are now observed using echocardiograms on the newborns). rates of spina bifida and anencephaly have declined significantly since the late 90s, when the Eebil Gubmint eebily spent some of those tax dollars that it eebily collected (Eebil Blue State tax-dodging deductions notwithstanding) to issue an authoritarian dictat that all cereals labeled as "fortified" must contain folate. This appears to have sliced over 1000 incidences of SB from the annual totals. ("Bad Gubmint! Bad, bad Gubmint!") In any case, it's pretty clear that environmental factors, and in particular food and/or drugs that the pregnant mother did or did not ingest, have a lot to do with a lot of major birth defects. I'm guessing that there isn't a whole lot of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in Saudi Arabia, but either way, it wouldn't be reported as a genetic disorder.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Hat tip just for "Eebil Blue State tax-dodging deductions"
This matter, as you so ably point out, is statistically complicated. That is driven by the difference in meaning of the various stats.
At this point, I have to say that I cannot make a concrete statement regarding KSA vs USA genetic disorder rates.
Maybe if this thread ever ends I will do some serious digging.
Thanks for your contribution.
arendt, of the two
subjects you raise, the inbred birth defects and the hypocrisy of Democratic feminists supporting the Saudi government, I find them both interesting but especially the Dem feminist part. The whole Saudi dictatorship thing is a nightmare, not only because it exposes the fascist policies of our government, but because it constantly exposes the truth of how insane and craven our leadership is, especially when it pretends to feminist.
What about the superbug they released on the Gazans
Genocide lite disguised as a health crisis. Sheesh
question everything
John Brunner
wrote a scifi novel "Total Eclipse" that touched on this, covered it pretty well. Marriage as sort of genetic currency. As for religion, oh yeah, I have great respect for people who defer to a thousand year relationship with ghosts and demons that no one can see, and use that as justification for just about any behavior. What's not to like?
I agree, and so would Sam (The End of Faith) Harris
too bad Sam became a big time shill for Israel. He should have taken his own advice about claims to be "chosen people" and "god's favorites".