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American Morning

Is It Safe to Have Kids With Your Cousin?

Aired April 05, 2002 - 08:40   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: A big question this hour is a question that might give some of you the creeps. Is it safe to have kids with your cousin? Most of us have always thought that first cousins marrying and having children is absolutely out of the question. In most states, after all, it is simply illegal. But a new study suggests there may be less of a medical risk for offspring than originally thought regarding the social taboo.

We're joined by Elizabeth Cohen in Atlanta.

Good morning, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: Paula, just tell us a little bit about this. Are there less risks than originally thought about having children with first cousins?

COHEN: Exactly. As you said, there's a big time social taboo on this. As a matter of fact, this story kind of has what some people would call a high yick factor, sort of like I don't care what the medical statistics say, it's just yicky to marry your first cousin, but let's talk about the science around this.

A group of geneticist and genetic counselors got together and said, you know, first cousins are always told pretty much, don't marry each other, but we want to look at what medical science actually has to say about this. So they looked at all the literature on people who have married their first cousins and what the rate of birth defects, and they found in fact that the rate of birth defects is higher than when non-related people marry each other, but it's not all that much higher.

Let's take a look at the actual numbers. When nonrelated couples have children, the risk of having a baby with a birth defect is 3-4 percent. When first cousin couples marry each other, the risk of having a baby with a birth defect it's 5-7 percent. And yes, it's higher, but it's not all that much higher, and so what this group of geneticists and genetic counselors is coming out and saying, you know, look, we shouldn't be telling these people not to marry each other. In some families, the risk may not really be all that much greater.

People ought to come and get genetic counseling and we can review their history and sort of decide what their risk should be, but they said, there's really no reason for this sort of blanket taboo on this subject.

ZAHN: All right, Elizabeth, here's what I'm trying to figure out, not only is it a taboo, it happens to be illegal in a number of states. Why would researchers even go here?

COHEN: Well, it's illegal actually in 30 states. We can take a look at a map and those will show the states where it's illegal. If you see the states that are colored in orange, it's illegal. And the states in the light orange, the dark orange, it's illegal in some cases and legal in other cases. So you can see that it's only completely legal in 20 states.

The reason why researchers looked into it, Paula, is they were having first cousins come to them and say, we'd like to get married, what's the risk? And they wanted to actually have some hard science behind that, especially as there are more and more immigrant groups in the United States, it's part of their culture to marry first cousins, at least in part. In some cultures, up to 20 percent of the population marries first cousins, so they wanted to give them some hard science.

ZAHN: Are there any hard numbers on exactly how many kissing cousin couples out there?

COHEN: In the United States, there are not good numbers. Part of the reason is that first cousins often marry each other and don't tell anybody, so there aren't any good numbers out there.

However, we thought it was interesting that there is a Web site called cousincouples.com, that is there to just give support to first cousins who marry each other, and to lobby for legislation to make it legal.

ZAHN: All right, Elizabeth, good to see you.

COHEN: Have a good weekend.

ZAHN: You, too.

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