
Why Saudi Arabia Is Pushing Premarital Genetic Screening - ourmandave
https://gizmodo.com/why-saudi-arabia-is-pushing-premarital-genetic-screenin-1821708771
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abusoufiyan
This actually brings up some interesting questions.

For a long time, many deemed marriages between cousins as undesirable
precisely because of the unknown risk of genetic problems in the resultant
offspring. But now, if scientific evidence can tell you that your marriage to
your first or second cousin is highly unlikely to cause genetic defects in
offspring, might that shift our understanding of such relations?

I can't help but think this might usher in more and more acceptance towards
such situations just as contraception and STD screening and medicine did for
sexual activity between younger people and more partners.

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ars
> if scientific evidence can tell you that your marriage to your first or
> second cousin is highly unlikely to cause genetic defects in offspring

The science is not there. It probably will never be there. We can only screen
for certain conditions. Close marriage will turn up all sorts of new
conditions no one knows about (ahead of time).

Until the day we can make our DNA "perfect" close marriage will always be a
problem.

And on that day I suppose even sibling marriage (or incest) would not be a
genetic problem.

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shayaknyc
You're correct in that you can only test for things you know about (duh, you
don't know what you don't know) so as far as screening goes, it's just a
matter of how much you're screening FOR. It's also really easy to rule out
which diseases are not likely to occur just by checking one person's DNA. You
only have to screen where both samples can potentially combine to form
something bad.

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Ovah
Far from all hereditary disease are easy to rule based on genetic tests.

You need to differentiate between Mendelian and Complex genetic disorders.
While genetic tests are useful to indentiy disease caused by a single allele
(Mendelian disorders), they today are inconclusive for many other Complex
diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis, with a known genetic component. These
disease are multifactorial: the interplay between several genes (variants) and
environmental stimuli cause the disease. One of several genetic mutation must
be present for the disease to occur, but without an environmental stimulus,
the disease will never materialize. As such, even though we have acces to a
full genom sequence, genetic tests are inherently limited and thus
inconclusive in determining risk for many diseases.

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ars
Jews were able to essentially wipe out Tay–Sachs as an active disease by
implementing
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dor_Yeshorim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dor_Yeshorim)

People are still carriers, but there is little to no active disease for the
screened conditions. So this kind of screening can work.

(Wikipedia worked hard to appear "neutral" and found some criticism to
include, but in actuality there is widespread support for this, and I hope
they expand the list of conditions.)

~~~
xkcd-sucks
Is this technically a eugenics program?

~~~
jerf
Since this is implemented by informing people carrying the recessive genes
about each other before marriage or reproduction, it would be a definition of
"eugenics" so broad as to fail to match the common denotation of the term that
carries the huge connotational baggage. (Note I'm not dealing with dictionary
terms here, but how I think people think of it; with such a loaded term here
the denotation and connotation becomes harder than usual to separate.)

It would not necessarily be an impossible stretching of the term, but as the
vast, vast majority of people would not consider this a problematic solution
it doesn't seem like it would really provide any advantage, and would run the
risk of watering down the opprobrium attached to the term "eugenics" by
including a thoroughly unobjectionable practice.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _and would run the risk of watering down the opprobrium attached to the term
> "eugenics" by including a thoroughly unobjectionable practice_

At the risk of touching things one is not supposed to say in this culture -
wouldn't it be good to tone down that opprobrium, or at least _cleanly
separate out_ the things that are actually evil from things that are not? The
connotational baggage carried by the term "eugenics" tend to infect serious
discussions around genetic diseases and genetics in general, and people end up
equating e.g. permanently curing genetic diseases (by removing them from the
gene pool) with mass mutilation or murder of undesirable individuals (which is
the evil part of the as-commonly-understood eugenics).

~~~
jerf
As a kind of metareply to all my repliers, I'd suggest that it would probably
be easier to find a new word for the safe stuff than try to un-destroy
"eugenics". Just starting off with "Let's try to come to a more nuanced
understanding of 'eugenics'" is roughly equivalent to "Let's try to come to a
more nuanced understanding of 'Nazi'" (and for once the metaphor isn't even
that strained because there is a real, pre-existing relationship there); from
a very academic perspective, it is a worthy goal, but nowadays, not even
actual-factual academia is willing to be _that_ academic.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Fair enough.

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shayaknyc
I think the genetic risks of first cousin consanguinity are far lower than one
would initially think. The real problem occurs when there's multiple
generations of 1st cousin consanguity - the likelihood of concentrating
recessives, etc increases in subsequent generations. In fact, I believe
historically speaking, there's a very large precedent going back centuries for
first cousin marriages (resulting in offspring) and as far as I know, it's not
illegal anywhere in the USA. Here's an article dated back in 2002 that
discusses the genetic risks: [http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/04/us/few-risks-
seen-to-the-c...](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/04/us/few-risks-seen-to-the-
children-of-1st-cousins.html)

