News from the Sunday Times, also picked up by the Telegraph revisits a theme we mentioned here in November 2005 - inbreeding amongst Pakistani-origin Muslims. This time an environment minister, Phil Woolas, has brought attention to the problem, calling it "an elephant in the room".

Woolas, a former race relations minister, said: "If you have a child with your cousin the likelihood is there'll be a genetic problem. The issue we need to debate is first cousin marriages, whereby a lot of arranged marriages are with first cousins, and that produces lots of genetic problems in terms of disability [in offspring of such unions]."

[Bradford is said to have 75 percent of its Pakistani-origin marriages being between first cousins.]

http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=14364&t=UK+Minister+warns+of+'Muslim+inbreeding'