Backlash Forces UK’s NHS to Withdraw Report Praising First Cousin Marriage “Benefits”
The British people were not persuaded by the cultural diversity arguments offered by the globalist bureaucrats.
The politicos and bureaucrats of the United Kingdom (UK) manage to make the hot mess they have created even hotter and messier.
Last week, the National Health Service (NHS) England Genomics Education Programme published guidance that appeared to endorse the benefits of first-cousin marriages. The proposed guidelines minimized the potential genetic consequences and risks of inherited health problems, while also emphasizing the cultural diversity argument.
Research into first-cousin marriage describes various potential benefits, including stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages (resources, property and inheritance can be consolidated rather than diluted across households). In addition, though first-cousin marriage is linked to an increased likelihood of a child having a genetic condition or a congenital anomaly, there are many other factors that also increase this chance (such as parental age, smoking, alcohol use and assisted reproductive technologies), none of which are banned in the UK.
Two developments prompted this publication.
The first of those developments is the influx of immigrants, legal and otherwise, from South Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa, where first-cousin marriages are a common practice.
Cousin marriage was banned in the Roman Empire in the fourth century.
Catholics banned first cousin marriage in the sixth century and second cousin marriage in the 14th century.
In parts of rural Pakistan 80% of people are the products of cousin marriages.
And we’re supposed… pic.twitter.com/1xI0151oNm
— Wolf 🐺 (@WorldByWolf) September 28, 2025
The second is a recent move by a conservative Member of Parliament, Richard Holden, to codify the ban on first cousin marriages into national law, as there is currently no such prohibition. He argued the public health issue justifies the new rule, and that the practice is also a threat to women’s freedom, as women may be pressured into marrying their cousins.
Richard Holden, the Tory MP, told the Mail On Sunday: “Our NHS should stop taking the knee to damaging and oppressive cultural practices.
“The Conservatives want to see an end to cousin marriage as a backdoor to immigration too, but Labour are deaf to these sensible demands.
“Sir Keir Starmer should stop running scared of the misogynistic community controllers and their quislings who appear in the form of cultural relativist-obsessed sociology professors, and ban a practice the overwhelming majority, from every community in Britain, want to see ended for good.”
The backlash to the NHS guidance was significant enough that it was deleted from the NHS website.
The United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) has come under fire for potentially prioritizing cultural sensitivity over significant health concerns after it published a report last week questioning a major issue of public debate — should first-cousin marriages be banned?
Debate over the issue heightened earlier this year after U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he would not ban the practice outright, despite known risks to future generations, as children born from first cousins are at increased risk for diseases like sickle cell disease and cystic fibrosis.
…The article, which was posted to the NHS’s Genomics Education Program’s website and titled, “Should the UK government ban first-cousin marriage,” had been removed by Monday morning, and Fox News Digital could not gain direct access to the report, nor did the NHS immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s questions.
However, independent-minded people have gotten very savvy about screenshots and archives.
Archived version here.https://t.co/xvJi1GuS1v pic.twitter.com/BfGmH3kMfV
— Nicholas G (@nick66g) September 29, 2025
I just hope this doesn’t land Nicholas G in a British jail.
Now, to be historically accurate, the British didn’t frown on first-cousin marriages, and there are many famous examples.
For most in the UK, the prospect of marrying a cousin is largely alien. But it wasn’t always so unusual. The father of evolution Charles Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood. Their son, the Victorian scientist Sir George Darwin, went on to estimate that cousin marriages accounted for almost one in 20 aristocratic unions in 19th Century Britain. One of them was Queen Victoria, who married her first cousin, Prince Albert. The novel Wuthering Heights is full of fictional examples.
A review of Queen Victoria’s line. pic.twitter.com/cq9qrFhlZi
— Leslie Eastman ☥ (@Mutnodjmet) September 30, 2025
But I will simply point out that Queen Victoria’s line suffered from the dreadful blood disease hemophilia, which led to a number of tragic consequences as the royals kept intermarrying.
But one must ask how much more erosion of its culture the British will endure, and would Queen Victoria even recognize the land over which she once ruled?
Everyone reading this headline knows why it was published. The NHS is running cover for mass Islamic migration into the UK.
First-cousin marriage is considered an alien and even monstrous abomination by the vast majority of English people, and has been since the Middle Ages.… https://t.co/P7xu0tBTKJ
— Christian Heiens 🏛 (@ChristianHeiens) September 28, 2025
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Comments
Albert Einstein’s second marriage was to his double first cousin. (Though to be fair, she was more of a minder.)
This spawned his special theory of relativity.
“Well, if she ain’t good enough for her family, she ain’t good enough for ours!”
“Research into first-cousin marriage describes various potential benefits, including stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages (resources, property and inheritance can be consolidated rather than diluted across households)”
Really?
1) It halves the pool of prospective free family babysitters.
2) If your family is poor, guess what? So will be your new family.
Even when the government makes up gaslighting reasons, they’re still wrong.
Next in UK: the benefits of Sharia Law. How the mighty have fallen. The US should take note.
From heaven, Jonathan Swift laughs loudly at his lifetime oppressors.
This just isn’t true. There was never any such taboo in English culture. As this article states, it was not only royals who did it; it was quite common among the entire upper class, and probably also the lower classes as well.
If you’re talking about cultural erosion, the idea that this is some sort of horrible practice is itself alien to traditional English culture, and is probably imported from America. But even in the USA, where the taboo does exist, it’s legal in most states.
In Jewish culture it’s considered completely normal. It’s not nearly as common as it used to be, because people are marrying later and therefore know more people and have a wider dating pool. But I personally know at least half a dozen such couples, and I know of a lot more, and their children are no less healthy than the average for all families.
The fact is that while the increased genetic risk is real, it’s also very small, and so long as you don’t keep doing it generation after generation it’s not significant. If you marry a first cousin, your children should probably make an effort to marry far from the family, and if they don’t then the grandchildren should certainly do so. But doing it once is just not a big deal at all. Refusing such a match just because of the close genetic relationship, if all other factors are positive, is more superstition than anything else.
So, a little bit of incest is OK? Keeps the shekels in the family, I suppose.
It’s not incest. Incest is only parent/child, grandparent/grandchild, or siblings.
OK, “consanguinous marriage”, if you insist.
Pendants have to pendant.
Pedants. Pendants hang from the neck.
Never mind.
In that case, yes, it is OK, provided it’s not one of the relationships forbidden in Leviticus, for reasons known to no one but the Creator (I dare you to explain logically why it’s OK for an uncle and niece to marry, but not for an aunt and nephew to do the same), and that you don’t do it too often in the same family.
I always figured it was for the same reason that it was a DUTY for Onan to take on his brother’s widow, but women were under no such reciprocal obligation.
Good old-fashioned patriarchy.
Genetics eventually overrides cultures. The NHS has to take care of the odd offspring which begs why they push this medically…oh..Islam. it’s big business arranging cousin marriages in the UK. We don’t need British as a 51st state….we already have West Virginia.
West Virginia has been cleaning up their act
Now the hills of Arkansas…
“You had cousins in West Virginia?
In Arkansas, we had to make do with goats!”
(RIP Hee Haw)
“But even in the USA, where the taboo does exist, it’s legal in most states.”
Whereas in others, it’s taboo beyond all rationality.
One day, decades ago, I found myself in a town office in Massachusetts where they issued licenses (probably their most popular offering). There was a state-issued poster on the wall for the edification of those who were there to take out marriage licenses. It enumerated a list of relatives that a person would NOT be allowed to marry. All the usual suspects were on it, but the line that drew my fascination was: “Mother In-Law or Father in-Law.”
Because it’s physically impossible to marry these people.
Only people who are married have them. So that would be committing bigamy, an actual crime. (I wonder if such license clerks routinely ask applicants if they happen to be already married? It’s been so long I simply don’t remember.)
If you’re single, divorced, or widowed, you don’t HAVE them, so you can’t marry them.
Of course being Massachusetts, I’m sure the sign has since been amended to clarify that women ARE allowed to marry their mothers in-law.
It means ex-parent-in-law. You can’t marry your deceased spouse’s parent.
The Bible also forbids such marriages, but permits marrying your deceased wife’s sister (but not your still-living divorced wife’s sister). In fact such marriages used to be very common, on the theory that your children are best off with their aunt as their stepmother, so she’ll take care of them as the biological relatives they are.
Nowadays it’s thankfully not nearly as common as it used to be for young mothers to die and need replacing, but of course it still happens. And when it does, it’s also not as common as it used to be for the deceased wife to have a single sister willing to take her place. But it does happen, and I know of at least two such marriages.
If they meant that, they very easily could have fricking SAID it.
And not the idiotic ort they did say.
A widowed person generally does still think of their spouse’s parents as their parents-in-law, at least until they remarry, and often even after that.
I think a lot of things, but my thoughts don’t keep me out of the clink if the law says different.
Rudy Giuliani’s first wife was his second cousin. No, his second wife was not his first cousin 🙂
Colonial Rhode Island had a law banning uncle-niece marriages, but it only applied to Christians. It specifically exempted Jews from this ban, since Jewish law considers such a match praiseworthy. Of course nowadays states can’t have such laws; they’re banned by the 14th amendment. But this was before the USA, let alone the 14A.
All you Alabamans on here take note. Marrying your cousin is bad.
Your sister is still fine.
Fun fact I met a young woman at a business event in Birmingham and we hit it off. Went on a date that weekend. As we do the 1st date info exchange, get to know the other person thing we got to the point where we asked ‘who are your people’. Turns out we both had some family in Talladega area. Then we discovered we shared a great, great grandfather, she in the Paternal line and me in the Maternal line. We were equally horrified, amused and disappointed b/c we were really well matched in outlook, personality, interests and attractiveness. I paid the bill and we called it a night and that was the end of it.
You were very far removed seems odd you would end it
It was a 1st.date and when we figured it out we both got the ick/become uncomfortable. We’d have heard no end to the bitching from our Grandparents who were still alive not to mention Parents and Uncles/Aunts. Relations between third cousins is not cool IMO if you know about it.. That’s just outside the bounds strict consanguinity. FWIW the Catholic Church (and its cultural influence over Protestant sects) has long held that marriage/relations are not permissible within 4 degrees of consanguinity aka any family up to and including 1st cousins. Used to be 7 degrees buy got relaxed b/c many didn’t know the family tree and couldn’t easily comply. We did know and could avoid the potential genetic risk, small but still present. That and the drama at family reunions.
There’s a lingering stigma associated with it and as we saw in joking comments in the thread some States like Alabama bear the brunt of the jokes. This despite many other States with equally loose consanguinity laws or in NY and RI which allow avunculate marriage; between uncle/niece or aunt/nephew which is genetically closer than 1st cousins.
What stigma is associated with 3rd cousins? That’s far enough removed that you might not even share DNA.
Sanddog,
The stigma are the tropes about Southerners marrying their cousins as if it was exclusive to the deep South. (Those rubes are banging their cousins turning out genetic oddities; Deliverance as an example). NY and RI allow Aunt and Uncles to marry their Nephews and Nieces.
3rd cousins share something like 1.65% of their genetic code. Not a huge risk, at least in comparison to 1st cousins, or an Aunt and a Nephew but not zero.
Y’all do whatever you feel comfortable doing with other adults, even your family members, so long as it is consensual and legal in your State.
As someone who never intended to have children (and, in fact, never did), one of my requirements for a long-term partner was that she should also feel the same (she did). So being related may have seemed odd to some, but it wouldn’t have been a factor for me. (My current partner, having met her later in life, has grown children who live far away. That’s fine by me too.)
Only something like 24 States bar marriage between 1st cousins. A very few allow uncles to marry Niece and Aunts to marry nephew. Of those who bar 1st cousin marriage there’s a half dozen or so States where if one person is infertile or they are both 50/55 plus in age the bar to marriage is lifted.
Do you actually think there’s something wrong with marrying a third cousin?
Yep. Sure do. They share something like 1.65% of their genetic code. I don’t think the risk is worth it but I won’t kink shame. Feel free to have sexual relations with as many of your cousins as you want to, presuming your cousins are as open minded about it and it is consensual.
The only thing worse than getting friend-zoned is getting relative-zoned.
The pay off was my Cuz hooked me up with her smoking hot friend who had been in a Playboy shoot, not a centerfold but one of those Girl’s of editions.
Will this trend extend father?
The famously inbred royal families of Europe notwithstanding, don’t lose sight of what drove this policy and the overarching concern here:
Islam.
Do not be fooled into thinking that there is anything other than a slow (or not so slow) push to submit to that awful creed.
Dangerous days are ahead for Europe.
I fear for them.
How can so many be so blind? Greed? Cowardice?
2.7% of UK population is Pakistani and they have 30% of children born with genetic birth defects. In UK, estimated 6-10% of children born to Pakistani first cousin marriages will have recessive genetic birth defects.
All on government handouts and costly health benefits for life
From which one can conclude that for whatever reason, Pakistanis are genetically defective. My Indian friends would agree,
Ilhan Omar started this.
No, she didn’t.
I always wonder how you manage to sit and type so much with that stick up your ass.
And that translates into lots of malformed kids.
Except that no, it doesn’t, actually. That result is just not being seen.
That’s the point of this report that was issued and then withdrawn for political reasons. The risk, while real, is smaller than other risk factors that we routinely accept, so there’s no rational basis for legislating against it.
And in related news, due to the large Afghani immigrant population, it’s also now acceptable to dress little boys up like girls and bugger them for a few years.
Diversity is our strength™
Come now, Milhouse would disagree harshly with you
since many in a group dont know who their own father is its possible that so many are creating children with their own relatives
I’ve known of a few cousin marriages, and no offspring with genetic disease. That risk increases if the offspring also reproduce with others who are genetically related, repeatedly. That was the problem with the British royal line, and the Habsburgs (Austrian/Spanish). As an aside, while researching geneology I found a pair of ancestors in the 1400s with a common set of great-grandparents. Second cousins, and they were in the English noble class.
All of the cases of genetic disease and abnormalities, some quite severe, that I know of were from unrelated parents.
Why we don’t inbreed is homozygosity as these discussions allude but don’t define. In animal husbandry if it is done then you also commit to culling the herd to prevent passing of the now more prevalent undesirable traits.
So for humans, unless you’re willing to commit to forced sterilizations then not a good idea to permit this behavior.
Allowing a culture that promotes it into a culture that doesn’t is the rub. You can ban it, try to educate against it or sterilize the offspring and parents but the easy and most effective way is to simply not allow that culture into your own. In my view, restricting immigration is also the less morally ambiguous route.