When humans or animals with similar genetic setups (like siblings) have children, there is an increased risk that otherwise hidden genetic defects will appear in the child that make it less fit to survive. This is called inbreeding and the effects of it can vary.
In Turkey there is a family called Ulas who suffer from inbreeding in such a way that they can't walk upright, they walk on all four instead (see related links below). This is a scary example, but a unique one.
The following can be very offensive for some people and is filled with controversy, researchers who has looked into this has often been called racists or worse. Still, inbreeding is a known problem and it doesn't disappear just by ignoring it:
In many cultures, especially Islamic ones (although this is not related to religion, only to the local cultures of those regions) it is common with cousin marriages. There it serves as a way to keep tribes and clans of people together and separated from each other, something that often leads to very strong loyalities to their families but weaker loyalities to their nations and long feuds with other clans. This form of cousin inbreeding has some illeffects on children compared to people who marry non-relatives. In Iraq (where about 50% of marriages are to cousins) babies suffer a 30% higher chance of dying during their first year1 and disabilities can be up to 2-3 times as common. These numbers are also true for immigrants concieving children outside their own countries, meaning that local situations are not a cause for these numbers.
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