Something needs to be done
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main…inbreds210.xml
Arranged marriages between British Asians raise the risk of in-breeding and birth defects, a Government minister has said.
Phil Woolas, a junior environment minister, came under fire from Muslim groups already concerned about the public reaction to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s remarks about Sharia law.
Mr Woolas, the Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, said that marriages between first cousins are a factor in birth defects and inherited conditions.
He said: "Part of the risk, I am told by the health service, is first-cousin marriages.
"If you are supportive of the Asian community then you have a duty to raise this issue.
“Awareness does need to be raised but we are very aware of the sensitivities,” he added, pointing out that many of the people involved were the products of such marriages.
The Muslim Public Affairs Committee, a campaign group, suggested the minister was demonising British Muslims.
An MPAC spokesman accused Mr Woolas of “flirting with Islamaphobia” and said: “Gordon Brown should either back him or sack him. We should be told what the Government thinks about this.”
Downing Street and the Department for the Environment refused to comment on Mr Woolas’ remarks, but the minister received public support from Geoff Hoon, the Labour chief whip.
Mr Hoon said that it was right to discuss the issue of congenital defects and intermarriage. “He was commenting on a particular problem about cousins marrying first cousins,” he said.
"It is important that we look at that in terms of scientific expertise and the extent to which it is actually causing problems.
"But it obviously is a very sensitive matter and no one, no one, would suggest this is a problem for the wider Muslim community.
“I am confident that what he has said will have been said with sensitivity and with proper regard to his Muslim constituents and Muslims right across the United Kingdom.”
Arranged marriages are common among several British Asian groups, but intermarriage of relatives is a particular characteristic of people of Pakistani origin.
It is estimated that more than 55 per cent of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins, resulting in an increasing rate of genetic defects and high rates of infant mortality.
Figures show that British Pakistani children account for as many as one third of birth defects despite making up only three per cent of all UK births.
The likelihood of unrelated couples having the same variant genes that cause recessive disorders are estimated to be 100-1. Between first cousins, the odds increase to as much as one in eight.
In Bradford, more than three quarters of all Pakistani marriages are believed to be between first cousins. In 2005, the city’s Royal Infirmary Hospital said it had identified more than 140 different recessive disorders among local children, compared with the usual 20-30.
A study by two Indian doctors published in Neurology Asia, a medical journal, last year found a “significantly higher rate” of epilepsy among the children of parents who were blood relatives.
The issue of birth-defects and cousin-marriage was first raised in parliament two years ago by Ann Cryer, the Labour MP for Keighley in West Yorkshire.
On Sunday she said marriage between cousins was a “to do with a medieval culture where you keep wealth within the family.”
She said: "If you go into a paediatric ward in Bradford or Keighley you will find more than half of the kids there are from the Asian community.
“Since Asians only represent 20 per to 30 per cent of the population, you can see that they are over-represented.”