Posted 6/14/2007 05:58:00 PM by Douglas

I am shocked, shocked to learn there might be some kind of adverse consequences to screwing your cousin. Or is it just being Mormon? Nah, we'll just stick with screwing your cousin for the time being:

The twin border communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, have the world's highest known prevalence of fumarase deficiency, an enzyme irregularity that causes severe mental retardation brought on by cousin marriage, doctors say.

"Arizona has about half the world's population of known fumarase deficiency patients," said Dr. Theodore Tarby, a pediatric neurologist who has treated many of the children at Arizona clinics under contracts with the state.

"It exists in a certain percentage of the broader population but once you get a tendency to inbreed you're inbreeding people who have the gene there, so you markedly increase the risk of developing the condition," he said.

The community of about 10,000 people, who shun outsiders and are taught to avoid newspapers, television and the Internet, is home to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a sect that broke from the mainstream Mormon church 72 years ago over polygamy.

To be fair, I have to give them credit for living life they way they see fit. If they want 80 wives, some of which are their cousins and want to sire an entire town of retards that exist pretty much no where else in the country, that's their right. I just think that the "shunning newspapers" may need to be revisited, because I think they could benefit from a headline or two. Or at least from the Dillard's ad on page six where the woman in the pants suit isn't wearing sack-cloth and drooling on herself.