Last summer, the NHS’s “Genomics Education Programme” published, then swiftly deleted, an article in which it downplayed the harms of first cousins marrying one another, while making spurious claims about supposed benefits of the practice. At the time the NHS issued a statement saying the article “should not have been published”. Now suspiciously similar arguments have appeared in training materials for midwives, urging staff not to “stigmatise” people who have a baby with their cousin because this is “perfectly normal” in their cultures.
The guidance, produced as part of an effort to halve the number of stillbirths apparently claims that concerns about the risks of congenital diseases are “exaggerated” and “unwarranted” because, the report estimates, 85 to 90% of first cousin couples do not have children with such defects, and that there are “economic benefits” to the practice.
None of this is grounded in science, or reality. It is simply about choosing not to say no to the Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations in Britain who consistently practice first-cousin marriage. The NHS is entirely aware of this practice; the “Born in Bradford” study has tracked babies born in that city since 2007. In 2013, it found that of 5,127 babies of Pakistani origin, 37% had parents who were first cousins. In 2024, Born in Bradford found that cousin-marriage is becoming more common.
Similarly, the health risks are well understood. Only 2% of children whose parents aren’t cousins are born with congenital birth defects, so the fact that 10-15% of cousin-couples produce such children represents a very substantial increase in risk. There are many other health implications which are well understood. According to a 2024 study of children born in Bradford, children born to first cousins are almost three time more likely to die by the age of ten, 20% more likely to attend A&E during childhood and 90% more likely to have learning difficulties. They’re also more likely to be stillborn, as a 2013 NHS study noted, cousin-marriage is “a major risk factor for congenital abnormalities”, which the report acknowledges are known to cause stillbirths. Perhaps it’s not surprising that while the national average for baby deaths within 28 days of birth was 0.29% in 2022, in that same year Bradford recorded 0.73%.
The supposed benefits of cousin marriage claimed by the Genomics Education Programme article were from a 2022 genealogical study (i.e. one which did not concern itself with genetics or developmental issues). That piece of research was only concerned with two human populations — Mali’s Dogon, and nobility from France’s Ancien Régime. The study didn’t even demonstrate the benefits the NHS claimed, merely showing that the populations they considered had more children, as a result of mothers’ being younger, and that those children were less healthy and more likely to die in childhood.
So the NHS, the state, and those producing training materials for midwives must all be entirely aware of the many harms of cousin marriage, and how, even on the measures the NHS chooses for itself, the practice is harmful. And yet not only are they unwilling to condemn or challenge it, but they also try to argue for its benefits.
The obvious reason for this is the state’s ever-increasing tendency to placate, justify or even advance Muslim cultural and religious preferences. We’ve seen this with the Batley school teacher (still in hiding), with the Wakefield Quran-scuffing (and subsequent humiliation ritual for his mother overseen by the police), the CPS’s efforts to create an Islamic blasphemy law and in the behaviour of West Midlands Police. It’s very easy to see the new training for midwives as part of this trend.
There is modern Britain, where polite lies are preferred to difficult truths. For the Yookay is not just a post-Christian society, it has also become a post-reason one. The death of belief in Christianity has not produced a society of realist materialists, but rather one which seems to think that to desire a particular outcome is enough, and that reality will bend to that desire.
A society grounded in reason would not be endorsing cousin marriage, a practice which it knows to be harmful and which will pile ever further costs on the state. Similarly, a society grounded in reason would have built nuclear power plants and reservoirs in the past thirty years. Such a society would be rearming if it is really committed to the idea that war could be coming. Its politicians would concern themselves with the real threats this country faces, instead of performative legislation on sugar taxes or changing the drink driving limit, despite the total lack of any evidence that those changes will save lives.
But we do not yet live in such a society. The Yookay has forgotten reality, and I suspect, is not capable of rediscovering reason. This path dooms us all. So, the Yookay must die, in order that we might rebuild Britain and direct the country of Newton, Darwin and Crick back towards the truth.
