Posted on 08/16/2005 2:52:25 PM PDT by Alouette
After lowering infant mortality rates among Arabs in western Galilee through the reduction of neonatal infections, early detection and encouraging abortions of fetuses with major and lethal congenital defects, public health experts are now focusing on the last main cause of babies' deaths in this population: inbreeding.
Dr. Avshalom Strulov of the University of Haifa's Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Studies and of the Health Ministry's Northern District health office reports in the August issue of the Israel Medical Association Journal about efforts to discourage Arab first cousins and other close relatives from marrying. Such consanguineous marriages, he writes, "are not part of the Islamic religion" and are indeed harmful since they lead to the conception of fetuses with serious inherited diseases.
The district health office has initiated a project in areas with large Arab populations that includes study days for health personnel, initiation of reports against inbreeding in the Arabic-language mass media, and encouragement of Muslim religious leaders to declare in mosques that this practice is likely to produce defective children.
Most of the activity, however, recruits elementary and high-school teachers in the Arab sector who speak to pupils about the dangers of marrying close relatives. "The effect on the reduction of the rates of consanguineous marriages should be observable within years, and the effect on infant mortality within generations," Strulov predicts.
The three-pronged effort would further reduce the gap in infant mortality rates between the Jewish and Arab populations in Israel, he said. In 2002, the annual infant mortality rate was 4.0 per 1,000 live births among Jews and 9.0 among Arabs; in the Northern District, it was 5.4 among Jews and 7.8 among Arabs.
Strulov was appointed by the ministry nearly two decades ago as coordinator of a multi-professional and multi-organizational committee that aimed at reducing the gap in infant mortality between the two sectors as much as possible.
In the early Eighties, the rate among Arabs was 22.6 per 1,000 live births and half that among Jews.
The main causes of deaths of Arab babies in summer were acute gastrointestinal infections and diarrhea, and in winter, upper respiratory tract infections and hypothermia (low body temperature due to inadequate heating).
Information campaigns about preventing and treating both of these conditions, as well as better means for refrigeration and hygiene, brought these deaths almost down to zero.
Ultrasound facilities, doctors and subsidies by Clalit Health Services significantly increased the early detection of severe congenital defects in fetuses, most of whose mothers decided on an abortion.
The remaining major problem was consanguinity, said Strulov, and while progress on this took many years, movement was in the right direction.
That's why their brains are perpetually addled. People should read "The Haj" by Leon Uris. Maybe they pumpkin on jihad Halloween..
In Genesis 11, Nahor (the brother of Abram/Abraham) marries his niece Milcah. Later Isaac, son of Abraham, marries Rebekah, his first cousin once removed (a granddaughter of Milcah: Gen. 24:15) and Isaac's son Jacob later marries his two first cousins, Leah and Rachel, daughters of Laban, the brother of Rebekah. (Laban is called the son of Bethuel at 28:5 but the son of Nahor at 29:5.)
YUKKKK Alouette
That is grosss
Archaic laws? Seems they are sorely needed, not in Arkansas (ya'll need to quit pickin on them LOL) but in Utah, ie. the Kingstons. Mormons who will not marry out of their clan. There facial features are becoming more deformed and unusual after each generation of inbreeding. Quite tragic.
I guess that's like raising a schools test scores by telling all the weak students not to come to school on teh day of the test. Well, not quite, because abortion involves killing.
Killing or not, it's at least cheating.
"From what I've heard, just about everyone with European royal blood is descended from Mohammed."
Another reason why I am happy the only royalty in this MeanWestTexan is Crown Royal.
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