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 What would Heinlein say?

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ScoutsHonor

ScoutsHonor


Posts : 1360
Join date : 2009-10-20

What would  Heinlein say? Empty
PostSubject: What would Heinlein say?   What would  Heinlein say? EmptyWed 05 May 2010, 1:23 pm

One has to wonder why these "elites" continued to follow so destructive a policy. It seems the answer is, it was their "tradition" - leading me to think they were JUST as brainwashed as any of their victims. Ironic.
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From The Sunday Times
May 2, 2010

Unnatural selection: Darwin’s family damaged by inbreeding

Quote :
by Jonathan Leake

THE children of Charles Darwin, whose theories on evolution revolutionised science, may have been genetically blighted themselves — because of generations of inbreeding in his own family.

Researchers have linked a series of marriages between cousins from Darwin's family, and that of Emma Wedgwood, who became his wife, to the high levels of infertility and premature death that beset both their wider families as well as their children.

Charles and Emma, who were also first cousins, had 10 children, of whom three died early while three were infertile.
Studies of Darwin's ancestors show a history of intermarriage between the Darwins and Wedgwoods that could have produced multiple genetic defects.

Such marriages were so common in Darwin's family, according to research from James Moore, professor of science history at the Open University, that both of his maternal grandparents and his mother were Wedgwoods. He said: "In Victorian times it was quite common for cousins to marry but the level of intermarriage in these families was unusual even then."

Moore found that:

- Darwin's maternal grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood, the founder of the pottery dynasty, had married his own third cousin, Sarah, and had eight children.

- The couple's eldest daughter, Susannah Wedgwood, married Robert Darwin, her cousin. Charles was their child.
- Meanwhile, Josiah and Sarah's second eldest son, also Josiah, had nine children, of whom four, including Emma, married first cousins.

Moore, who is about to publish a research paper on Darwin, said: "The results of this unintended experiment in close-cousin breeding are striking — 26 children were born from these first-cousin marriages, yet 19 of the offspring did not reproduce. Five died prematurely, five were unmarried and considered deficient, and nine married without issue.

"Among the 62 aunts, uncles, and cousins in the four generations founded by Josiah and Sarah, 38 remained childless. Just as Britain's population was booming, the fertility of Darwins and Wedgwoods was falling."

Moore's findings are supported by Michael Golubovsky, professor of molecular biology at the University of California, Berkeley, who has published research into the infertility of three of Darwin's children.

He suggests the Darwin and Wedgwood families both carried a mutant gene linked to infertility. Since humans carry two copies of most genes such mutants are usually masked by the normal version.

Golubovsky believes Charles and Emma both carried a single copy of the mutant gene — so three of their offspring, William, Henrietta and Leonard, inherited a double dose, one from each parent. This left them infertile.
He said, in a paper published in the journal Human Reproduction: “There is serious reason to suggest that the dramatic three children infertility in Darwin’s progeny is due to cousin marriage.”

Such findings come amid growing interest in the consequences of consanguineous marriages, as unions between relatives are known.

Globally the practice is common with up to 50% of Muslim marriages involving partners who are related. About 8.5% of all children are born to consanguineous parents.

However, there is growing research to suggest that cousin marriages sharply raise the risk of genetic defects.
Last March Baroness Ruth Deech, former head of the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, called for a "vigorous" public campaign to deter cousin marriage. She pointed out that 55% of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins and in Bradford the figure is 75 per cent.

British Pakistanis represent 3 per cent of all births in Britain but one third of children with recessive genetic disorders.
Moore believes that Darwin’s observations of his own and his children’s illnesses were a key factor in his fascination with inheritance.

He said: “Darwin’s own ill-health lasted all his life. He linked that with the death of his daughter Annie from a similar seeming condition. He was convinced that she had inherited it from him.
“Then one after another the older children fell ill during the 1850s with what he regarded as similar symptoms. It must have seemed like another proof of his theories.”


Note: The Comments section is interesting.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/genetics/article7114113.ece














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