Again, exhume the bodies and search for abuse. If there is probable cause, this shouldn’t be to hard to get a warrant for.
When you have a closed sect (I don’t believe they get a whole lot of converts - perhaps I’m wrong, but they tend to shun the outside world) you wind up with a very small gene pool. One of the side effects of a small gene pool is deformities and infant deaths. Frankly, I’m kind of surprised we haven’t heard of hemophilia in the males.
“One of the side effects of a small gene pool is deformities and infant deaths. Frankly, I’m kind of surprised we haven’t heard of hemophilia in the males.Severe birth defect common in polygamous community”
More than half the world’s cases of a severe birth defect called fumarase deficiency have been found in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, controlled by the polygamous Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints Church.
The towns have a total population of under 10,000, yet Dr. Theodore Tarby has seen twenty children with fumarase deficiency in these towns since 1990. By comparison, only thirteen cases have been reported elsewhere in the entire world.
The actual total in the FLDS may be much higher than twenty since babies may have died before they were diagnosed with the condition by a medical doctor.
None of the FLDS children with fumarase deficiency has an IQ above 25. Many cannot sit up. Some can barely even move their head and eyes. Frequent and powerful seizures are common. Portions of brain matter are replaced by water. An MRI of the brain of one fumarase-deficient child showed that more than half the brain was missing.
Geneticists agree that the high rate of this birth defect is due to the in-breeding in FLDS with most of the population descended from two patriarchs and with a self-proclaimed prophet arranging all the marriages within the group. It is a simple matter of a 25% likelihood of giving birth to a child with fumarase deficiency when two carriers of the recessive gene for it marry.
Tarby believes the number of FLDS children with fumarase deficiency could rise into the hundreds within a couple of generations.
Birth defects irrelevant in divine mandate
Tarby has explained the science at a meeting of about 150 FLDS members and to many parents individually, but they do not appear to care. “They consider these children to be their responsibility from God and their duty is to produce as many children as possible,” he said. “Sister-wives” often help each other care for handicapped children.
Tarby told one father that his child was handicapped because the father and mother were related. The father replied, “Up there, we’re all related.”
Tarby wasn’t sure whether the man meant “up there in Colorado City” or “up there in heaven.”
Prophet can’t use science to arrange marriages
Another physician doubted the current prophet, Warren Jeffs, could find any outsiders who would want to marry into his church even if he looked for them. Furthermore, a former FLDS member said, Jeffs claims to be carrying out God’s orders when he picks marriage partners. If FLDS members found out he was using science to arrange marriages, they might doubt his status as God’s representative on earth.
Arizona gives more than $12 million a year to help indigent residents of Colorado City pay for health-insurance premiums. The Arizona Departments of Health Services and of Economic Security have been providing services for fumarase-deficient victims and their caregivers for fifteen years, but say federal law prohibits them from disclosing the costs.
Taken from The Phoenix New Times, Dec. 29, 2005; Deseret News, Feb. 9, 2006; and Salt Lake City Tribune, Feb. 11, 2006.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2007840/posts
Maybe that's what's in the graveyard. Untreated hemophiliac males are not likely to survive long.
Too bad Babyland isn’t in Texas. Utah and Arizona seem to have been sitting on their hands too long.