In a message dated 4/24/2007 8:48:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: Unless there are known genetic defects in the lineage of those second cousins then marrying a second cousin is actually genetically safer than marrying a total stranger. Even marrying first cousins can be genetically safer when there is an absence of genetic defects. Most of the prohibitions on cousin marriage are some very strange and unscientific US laws. See these links. http://www.consang.net/ http://www.cousincouples.com/ and http://www.cuddleinternational.org/ Dennis Reiley well this assumes several things 1] that doctors recognized it as generic 2] society understands curing one disease can allow those people long eough to live into another worse disease 3] that doctors and other med people dont just assume that the behavior is natural 4] again med and other people look and see what peoples genealogy is and causes of death. what do i mean well a gene in 1993 was discovered called apoe. the list of chores apoe does is growing all the time and each discovery is very interesting. this is 14 yrs ago. the first is that apoe is the gene that controls the movement of lipids. lipids is cholesterol. thus the medicine to stop this is lipitor. In 1980 cholesterol was the public enemy #1 and since then we have been cutting the rate of hardemning of the arteries to a point it is no longer the major killer. in 1908 we discovered Alzhimers by chance. it was a rare disease we managed to catch thus the disease wears the doctors name. but for the next 70 + years it remained rare. today it is concidered epidemic. what changed 1980 we took cholesterol out if our life. but Cholesterol is what our cells make their membranes from and it is the building block of the brain. so as the levels of lipids dropped people didnt die of the heart attack at 55yrs. Instead they maybe had a stroke or a heart attack and survived. any strange behavoir was thus credited to the stroke. The secondary funtion of apoe is to create a protien in the brain called amyloid beta. amyloid beta is the cause of alzhimers. so when people died of heart attacks the amyloid beta never got to do its job until we ditched cholesterol. Suddenly an epidemic. The funny thing 17 years post discovery is most neuros dont want to except this why. what is the need of docs to treat neuro diseases caused by genes. at the same time cardio docs worship at the altar of lipitor. do they really want to tell you eat rabbit food and stop the heart attack at 55 but youll get dementia. what would you say? now lets say ardagh and nevin are full of people who have lived their for centuries. in the 1700s people didnt travel much since their lives were based on farming. so they didnt marry people from cork .they married people in the town. this eventually means everyone in the town shares the same genes charateristics. there is one isle off italy where the whole town is cholesterol free no matter what they eat. in poland several citioes have strange diseases same situations. my wife is 58 from a parents who come from a small town in south italy. every relative i can get cept her mom is arterial sclorosis massive coronery,stroke. her grand dad was placed in a mental facility . not a place for stroke victims,. they took him home and he was never quit right. so then her uncle dies of alzhimners at 75 but he had strokes and heart attacks and lived so any behavior problmems were due to them. my wife is the 1st to be competley heart health on 6 pills. and probaly has 3 types of dementia.its not until you see cause of deaths that all this takes form. genealogy is the key to this. personaly i think this strange dementia is from a village where they did exactly what we are talking about. she is in year 25 of the dementia behavior meaning it started at 30ish ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.