Posted on 03/22/2006 12:37:23 AM PST by neverdem
HURA, Israel — In a sky blue bedroom they share but rarely leave, a young sister and brother lie in twin beds that swallow up their small motionless bodies, victims of a genetic disease so rare it does not even have a name.
Moshira, 9, and Salame, 8, who began life as apparently healthy babies, fell into vegetative states after their first birthdays.
Now their dark eyes stare enormous and uncomprehending into the stillness of their room. The silence is broken only by the boy's sputtering breaths and the flopping noise his sister's atrophied legs make when they fall, like those of a rag doll, upon the mattress.
"I cannot bear it," said the children's father, Ismail, 37, turning to leave the room as his daughter coughs up strawberry yogurt his wife feeds her through a plastic syringe.
The sick children are Bedouin. Until recently their ancestors were nomads who roamed the deserts of the Middle East and, as tradition dictated, often married cousins. Marrying within the family helped strengthen bonds among extended families struggling to survive the desert. But after centuries this custom of intermarriage has had devastating genetic effects.
Bedouins do not carry more genetic mutations than the general population. But because so many marry relatives — some 65 percent of Bedouin in Israel's Negev marry first or second cousins — they have a significantly higher chance of marrying someone who carries the same mutations, increasing the odds they will have children with genetic diseases, researchers say. Hundreds have been born with such diseases among the Negev Bedouin in the last decade.
The plight of the community is being addressed by an unusual scientific team: Dr. Ohad Birk, a Jewish Israeli geneticist, and two physicians, Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, and Dr. Khalil Elbedour...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"We want to prevent such cases in the future," said Mr. Abu Aljidian, who added that his condition persuaded him not to marry within the family. Mr. Abu Aljidian married a woman who is not a relative, and the couple have two normal, healthy children.
What is needed, obviously, is cultural change among the Bedouins, and, I suspect, among the Arab population at large. IIRC, the Saudis also have serious genetic problems due to inbreeding.
The NYT can't report a story of Israeli compassion, of course, without mentioning repeatedly that these people currently are not allowed to cross the border, as if that had any bearing on the problem.
If Hamas has its way, and Israel is wiped off the map, what happens to these people? I suspect the same thing that happened to the greenhouses in Gaza -- destruction and self-inflicted misery. Sad.
These people don't understand or comprehend compassion. In their culture, western sentimentality is interpreted as weakness.
We never learn.
Even though it sounds like they are not polygamous, this is one of the countless problems that polygamy brings to a society.
Isn't Evolution WONDERFUL!
This is EXACTLY how we've been told it works!
Perhaps this is why is used to be against the law in this country to marry first cousins. After reading this I can see two positive outcomes from such a law, healthier offspring and a gradual deterioration of the clan bonds and absorption into the overall human melting pot.
Thanks for the ping to the Science Times, neverdem. I enjoyed reading a number of the articles.
Um....no it's not. Evolution acts by favoring slight differences in normal traits and very gradually increasing those traits through following generations. Evolution holds that almost all mutation is harmful.
Therefore, since most mutation is harmful, the line would DIE OUT instead of INCREASING; if the ToE is true.
No, it wouldn't. Go learn something about population genetics before you spout any more ignorant nonsense. Selection causes beneficial mutations to increase in the population, and negative mutations (such as this one) to eventually be weeded out. This has been confirmed in thousands of different field, lab, and theoretical studies. So your derision is not only misplaced, it's embarassingly uninformed. If you're trying to help reinforce negative stereotypes of conservatives, you're doing a great job.
But it's not an instantaneous process, and harmful mutations will usually persist for a number of generations before being flushed out of the genepool, as is happening in this case.
Then it IS ok to marry my cousin!!
Your scorn is misplaced.
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