Consanguinity
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Consanguinity (from Latin consanguinitas 'blood relationship') is the characteristic of having a kinship with a relative who is descended from a common ancestor.
Many jurisdictions have laws prohibiting people who are closely related by blood from marrying or having sexual relations with each other. The degree of consanguinity that gives rise to this prohibition varies from place to place.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> On the other hand, around 20% of the global population lives in areas where some consanguinous marriages are preferred.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> The degree of relationships are also used to determine heirs of an estate according to statutes that govern intestate succession, which also vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In some communities and time periods, cousin marriage is allowed or even encouraged; in others, it is taboo, and considered to be incest.
The degree of relative consanguinity can be illustrated with a consanguinity table in which each level of lineal consanguinity (generation or meiosis) appears as a row, and individuals with a collaterally consanguineous relationship share the same row.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Knot System is a numerical notation that describes consanguinity using the Ahnentafel numbers of shared ancestors.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Legal definitions
Modern secular law
The degree of kinship between two people may give rise to several legal issues. Some laws prohibit sexual relations between closely related people, referred to as incestuous. Laws may also bar marriage between closely related people, which are almost universally prohibited to the second degree of consanguinity.Template:Citation needed Some jurisdictions forbid marriage between first cousins, while others do not. Marriage with aunts and uncles (avunculate marriage) is legal in several countries.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Consanguinity is also relevant to inheritance, particularly with regard to intestate succession. In general, laws tend to favor inheritance by persons closely related to the deceased. Some jurisdictions ban citizens from service on a jury on the basis of consanguinity as well as affinity with persons involved in the case.<ref>Ohio, for example, bars from juries in civil cases persons within the fourth degree of consanguinity to either party or their counsel (Ohio Revised Code §2313.17 (2012)); and persons within the fifth degree of consanguinity "to the person alleged to be injured or attempted to be injured by the offense charged, or to the person on whose complaint the prosecution was instituted, or to the defendant". Ohio Revised Code §2945.25 (1981).</ref> In many countries, laws prohibiting nepotism ban employment of, or certain kinds of contracts with, the near relations of public officers or employees.Template:Citation needed
Religious and traditional law
Judaism
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Christianity
Template:Canon law Template:See also Under Roman civil law, which the early canon law of the Catholic Church followed, couples were forbidden to marry if they were within four degrees of consanguinity.<ref name="Bouchard2010">Template:Cite book</ref> Around the ninth century, the church raised the number of prohibited degrees to seven and changed the method by which they were calculated; instead of the former Roman practice of counting each generational link up to the common ancestor and then down again to the proposed spouse, the new method computed consanguinity only by counting back the number of generations to the common ancestor.<ref name="Bouchard2010"/> Intermarriage was now prohibited to anyone more closely related than seventh cousins, which meant that in particular the nobility struggled to find partners to marry, the pool of non-related prospective spouses having become substantially smaller. They had to either defy the church's position or look elsewhere for eligible marriage candidates.<ref name="Bouchard2010"/> In the Roman Catholic Church, unknowingly marrying a closely consanguineous blood relative was grounds for a declaration of nullity, but during the eleventh and twelfth centuries dispensations were granted with increasing frequency due to the thousands of persons encompassed in the prohibition at seven degrees and the hardships this posed for finding potential spouses.<ref name="LSCS356">Template:Cite book</ref>
In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council made what they believed was a necessary change to canon law reducing the number of prohibited degrees of consanguinity from seven back to four, but retaining the later method of calculating degrees.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Baldwin1994">Template:Cite book</ref> After 1215, the general rule was that fourth cousins could marry without dispensation, greatly reducing the need for dispensations.<ref name="LSCS356"/> In fourteenth century England, for example, papal dispensations for annulments due to consanguinity (and affinity) were relatively few.<ref name="Helmholz2007">Template:Cite book</ref>
The ban on marriage to minor degrees of relationship imposed by the Roman Catholic Church was met with heavy criticism in the Croatian society in the 11th century, which led to a schism in the Croatian church.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Among the Christian Habesha highlanders of Ethiopia and Eritrea (the predominantly orthodox Christian Amhara and Tigray-Tigrinya), it is a tradition to be able to recount one's paternal ancestors at least seven generations away starting from early childhood, because "those with a common patrilineal ancestor less than seven generations away are considered 'brother and sister' and may not marry." The rule is less strict on the mother's side, where the limit is about four generations back, but still determined patrilinearly. This rule does not apply to Muslims or other ethnic groups.<ref>Wolbert Smidt, "Genealogy" in Siegbert Uhlig, ed., Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: D-Ha, (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005), p. 743.</ref>
Islam
Template:See also The Quran at 4:22–24 states. "Forbidden to you in marriage are: your mothers, your daughters, your sisters, your father's sisters, your mother's sisters, your brother's daughters, your sister's daughters."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Therefore, the list of forbidden marriage partners, as read in the Qur'an, Surah 4:23, does not include first cousins.<ref>Template:Cite web Quran Surah An-Nisaa ( Verse 23 )</ref> Muhammad himself married his first cousin Zaynab bint Jahsh.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Better source needed
Financial incentives to discourage consanguineous marriages exist in some countries: mandatory premarital screening for inherited blood disorders has existed in the UAE since 2004 and in Qatar since 2009, whereby couples with positive results will not receive their marriage grant.<ref name=mid/>
Genetic definitions
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Genetically, consanguinity derives from the reduction in variation due to meiosis that occurs because of the smaller number of near ancestors. Because all humans share between 99.6% and 99.9% of their genome,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> consanguinity only affects a very small part of the sequence. If two siblings have a child, the child has only two rather than four grandparents. In these circumstances, the probability is increased that the child will inherit two copies of a harmful recessive gene (allele) (rather than only one, which is less likely to have harmful effects).
Genetic consanguinity is expressed as defined in 1922 by Wright<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> with the coefficient of relationship r, where r is defined as the fraction of homozygous due to the consanguinity under discussion. Thus, a parent and child pair has a value of r=0.5 (sharing 50% of DNA), siblings have a value of r=0.5, a parent's sibling has r=0.25 (25% of DNA), and first cousins have r=0.125 (12.5% of DNA). These are often expressed in terms of a percentage of shared DNA but can be also popularly referred to as % of genes although that terminology is technically incorrect.
As a working definition, unions contracted between persons biologically related as second cousins or closer (r ≥ 0.03125) are categorized as consanguineous. This arbitrary limit has been chosen because the genetic influence in marriages between couples related to a lesser degree would usually be expected to differ only slightly from that observed in the general population. Globally it is estimated that at least 8.5% of children have consanguineous parents.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
In clinical genetics, consanguinity is defined as a union between two individuals who are related as second cousins or closer, with the inbreeding coefficient (F) equal or higher than 0.0156, where (F) represents the proportion of genetic loci at which the child of a consanguineous couple might inherit identical gene copies from both parents.<ref name="hamamy">Template:Cite journal</ref>
It is common to identify one's first- and second-degree cousins, and sometimes third-degree cousins. It is seldom possible to identify fourth-degree cousins, since few people can trace their full family tree back more than four generations. (Nor is it considered important, since fourth cousins tend to be genetically no more similar to each other than they are to any other individual from the same region.)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Epidemiology, rates of occurrence
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Cultural factors in favor
Reasons favoring consanguinous marriage have been listed as higher compatibility between husband and wife sharing same social relationships, couples stability, enforcing family solidarity, easier financial negotiations and others.<ref name=hamamy/>Template:Rp Consanguinity is a deeply rooted phenomenon in 20% of the world population, mostly in the Middle East, West Asia and North Africa.<ref name=hamamy/> Globally, the most common form of consanguineous union is between first cousins, in which the spouses share Template:Frac of their genes inherited from a common ancestor, and so their progeny are homozygous (or more correctly autozygous) at Template:Frac of all loci (r = 0.0625).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Due to variation in geographical and ethnic background and the loci chosen to genotype there is some 2.4% variation expected.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Europe
Historically, some European nobles cited a close degree of consanguinity when they required convenient grounds for divorce, especially in contexts where religious doctrine forbade the voluntary dissolution of an unhappy or childless marriage.<ref>James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 193</ref>
Muslim countries
In the Arab world, the practice of marrying relatives is common. According to the Centre for Arabic Genomic Research, between 40% and 54% of UAE nationals' marriages are between family members, up from 39% in the previous generation. Between 21% and 28% of marriages of UAE nationals were between first cousins.<ref name="mid">Consanguineous marriage: Should it be discouraged? Template:Webarchive June 2012, MiddleEastHealthMag.com, retrieved 28 Nov 2018</ref><ref name="pmid24294299">Template:Cite journal</ref> Consanguineous marriage is much less prevalent in Christian Arabs as they do not practice arranged marriages.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=":0">Template:Citation</ref> Additionally, an indult dispensation is required to marriages contracted between first cousins or closer in Arab Christian denominations in communion with the Roman Catholic Church, and the Greek Orthodox Church; there are no similar regulations that apply to first-cousin marriages in the Coptic Orthodox Church.<ref name=":0" />
In Egypt, around 40% of the population marry a cousin. A 1992 survey in Jordan found that 32% were married to a first cousin; a further 17.3% were married to more distant relatives.<ref>Consanguineous marriage: Keeping it in the family. Economist, 27 February 2016.</ref> 67% of marriages in Saudi Arabia are between close relatives as are 54% of all marriages in Kuwait, whereas 18% of all Lebanese were between blood relatives. The incidence of consanguinity was 54.3% among Kuwaiti natives and higher among Bedouins.<ref>Keith Garbutt Inbreeding and genetic disorder among Arab population. Template:Webarchive WVU unpublished Paper</ref>
It has been estimated that 55% of marriages between Pakistani Muslim immigrants in the United Kingdom are between first cousins,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> where preferential patrilateral parallel cousin marriage, i.e. a man marrying the daughter of his father's brother, is favored.
Double first cousins are descended from two pairs of siblings, and have the same genetic similarity as half-siblings. In unions between double first cousins, the highest inbreeding coefficients are reached, with an (F) of 0.125, for example among Arabs and uncle-niece marriages in South India.
Quebec
The early days of colonization, particularly from 1660 to 1680, gave French Canadians genetic traits that are still present today, owing to the isolation and low population of the early colony. This has led to the province having a higher rate of hypercholesterolemia, tyrosinemia, spastic ataxia, intestinal atresia, myotonic dystrophy, etc., in the population than anywhere else in the world.<ref name="umontreal">Portrait de famille avec gènes by Mathieu-Robert Sauvé, Retrieved August 2021.</ref>
Genetic disorders
Template:Further The phenomenon of inbreeding increases the level of homozygotes for autosomal genetic disorders and generally leads to a decreased biological fitness of a population known as inbreeding depression, a major objective in clinical studies.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> While the risks of inbreeding are well-known, informing minority group families with a tradition of endogamy and changing their behavior is a challenging task for genetic counseling in the health care system.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> The offspring of consanguineous relationships are at greater risk of certain genetic disorders. Autosomal recessive disorders occur in individuals who are homozygous for a particular recessive gene mutation.<ref name="CBMCA920">William J Marshall, Ph. D.; S K Bangert, Clinical biochemistry : metabolic and clinical aspects (Edinburgh; New York: Churchill Livingstone/Elsevier, 2008), p. 920</ref> This means that they carry two copies (alleles) of the same gene.<ref name="CBMCA920"/> Except in certain rare circumstances (new mutations or uniparental disomy) both parents of an individual with such a disorder will be carriers of the gene.<ref name="CBMCA920"/> Such carriers are not affected and will not display any signs that they are carriers, and so may be unaware that they carry the mutated gene. As relatives share a proportion of their genes, it is much more likely that related parents will be carriers of an autosomal recessive gene, and therefore their children are at a higher risk of an autosomal recessive disorder.<ref name="GACA138">Benjamin Pierce, Genetics: A Conceptual Approach (New York: W.H. Freeman, 2012), p. 138</ref> The extent to which the risk increases depends on the degree of genetic relationship between the parents; so the risk is greater in mating relationships where the parents are close relatives, but for relationships between more distant relatives, such as second cousins, the risk is lower (although still greater than the general population).<ref>Kingston H M, "ABC of Clinical Genetics", 3rd Edition (London: BMJ Books, 2002), Page 7, Template:ISBN</ref>
Consanguinity in a population increases its susceptibility to many infectious pathogens such as tuberculosis and hepatitis, but may decrease its susceptibility to malaria and some other pathogens.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
See also
References
External links
- Alan Bittles. Consanguineous marriages, pearls and perils: Geneva International Consanguinity Workshop Report. May 2010
- Province of Pennsylvania, statute prohibiting adultery and fornication (1705), with table of consanguinity, extracted from Smith's Laws
- Kalmes, Robert and Jean-Loup Huret. "Consanguinity." – Includes detailed information on the application of the coefficient of consanguinity
- Højrup, Knud. "The Knot System, a Notation of Consanguinity".
- Burtsell, Richard L. "Consanguinity (in Canon Law)." The Catholic Encyclopedia.
- Canon Law and Consanguinity
- Rehder C.W. et al. [1]