Genetics.
I've mentioned it in prior posts several times, and it's being talked about among myself and several relatives on Facebook this week as we try to figure out where the gene for fibromyalgia may have come from. Until this past month, when two of my husband's nieces found me on Facebook, we were blaming the fact that my mother's ancestors came over on a boat from Normandy in the 1600's, settled in Canada, and started inbreeding.....mostly because, in this new country, there were fewer people available to chose from when wanting to marry and reproduce.
And, of course, just about the time that the nieces both told me that THEY have fibromyalgia, which my husband shows no signs of, but probably stems from his line with three of five females from my husband and his sisters having it, there was a show I caught on PBS about why Prince William was allowed to marry a commoner in England....
which, in turn, started me on a new tangent with the whole research into my family tree part of my life. I started researching when, exactly, man caught onto the fact that inbreeding, incest, etc. were "very bad things", but I still haven't found an exact year or instance that caused the research to think about recessed genes and such. There is an article that mentions animal husbandry in the British Agricultural Revolution of the 18th century, but that's the closest I've come to pinning down when, exactly, this started being noted as the reason for congenital defects. Obviously, it wasn't noted soon enough to bypass some of the mutations I've been speaking of in other posts that have come into my life as I age, but since the same article also mentions that the bible and other sources can trace the negative connotations of imbreeding to over 1500 years ago. Too bad humans tend to use the bible to "cherry pick" what they want to shove down someone else's throat, but didn't note the "don't do this, it's bad" for anything other than what they wanted to quote....
*smile*
But for a shortened history of what the television show pointed out (and which I've confirmed through a couple of sources since),. humans seemingly recognized inbreeding in animals long before we caught on that inbreeding in humans was just as bad - and it exists in the history of every country. Consanguineous relationships (second cousins or closer) result in birth defects, among other things, and the House of Habsburg, which is what the television show was about, shows how one family's attempt to rule the entire world by marrying royalty to royalty, limited the gene pool for "purity", resulted in a bunch of hemophiliacs. In short, if the Russians hadn't put an end to the Tsars by murdering Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family (including Anastasia, much as the Don Bluth film of the same name would have had you believe she survived), the Tsesarevich Alexander III, who suffered from hemophilia and could well have stepped on a tack and bled to death.
Over the past week, as I've been doing more and more research into this to see if there is a way to trace some of the "family health issues" and my daughter has been finding other family members who were diagnosed with fibro a couple of decades ago (giving her someone she can trust to tell her what to expect for her own life), I'm starting to be rather glad that my mom had the common sense to say this to me when I was coming home from school, all doe-eyed about some guy I'd just met.....
"You may want to talk to your grandparents on that one. He MAY be related....."
and, as more and more familiar last names pop up in the family tree and I'm able to trace those last names to the parents or grandparents of my very brief "crushes", she was right.
If I had rebelled by insisting on dating those men, I could have had my own little inbred babies with issues much greater than fibromyalgia......
I've mentioned it in prior posts several times, and it's being talked about among myself and several relatives on Facebook this week as we try to figure out where the gene for fibromyalgia may have come from. Until this past month, when two of my husband's nieces found me on Facebook, we were blaming the fact that my mother's ancestors came over on a boat from Normandy in the 1600's, settled in Canada, and started inbreeding.....mostly because, in this new country, there were fewer people available to chose from when wanting to marry and reproduce.
And, of course, just about the time that the nieces both told me that THEY have fibromyalgia, which my husband shows no signs of, but probably stems from his line with three of five females from my husband and his sisters having it, there was a show I caught on PBS about why Prince William was allowed to marry a commoner in England....
which, in turn, started me on a new tangent with the whole research into my family tree part of my life. I started researching when, exactly, man caught onto the fact that inbreeding, incest, etc. were "very bad things", but I still haven't found an exact year or instance that caused the research to think about recessed genes and such. There is an article that mentions animal husbandry in the British Agricultural Revolution of the 18th century, but that's the closest I've come to pinning down when, exactly, this started being noted as the reason for congenital defects. Obviously, it wasn't noted soon enough to bypass some of the mutations I've been speaking of in other posts that have come into my life as I age, but since the same article also mentions that the bible and other sources can trace the negative connotations of imbreeding to over 1500 years ago. Too bad humans tend to use the bible to "cherry pick" what they want to shove down someone else's throat, but didn't note the "don't do this, it's bad" for anything other than what they wanted to quote....
*smile*
But for a shortened history of what the television show pointed out (and which I've confirmed through a couple of sources since),. humans seemingly recognized inbreeding in animals long before we caught on that inbreeding in humans was just as bad - and it exists in the history of every country. Consanguineous relationships (second cousins or closer) result in birth defects, among other things, and the House of Habsburg, which is what the television show was about, shows how one family's attempt to rule the entire world by marrying royalty to royalty, limited the gene pool for "purity", resulted in a bunch of hemophiliacs. In short, if the Russians hadn't put an end to the Tsars by murdering Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family (including Anastasia, much as the Don Bluth film of the same name would have had you believe she survived), the Tsesarevich Alexander III, who suffered from hemophilia and could well have stepped on a tack and bled to death.
Over the past week, as I've been doing more and more research into this to see if there is a way to trace some of the "family health issues" and my daughter has been finding other family members who were diagnosed with fibro a couple of decades ago (giving her someone she can trust to tell her what to expect for her own life), I'm starting to be rather glad that my mom had the common sense to say this to me when I was coming home from school, all doe-eyed about some guy I'd just met.....
"You may want to talk to your grandparents on that one. He MAY be related....."
and, as more and more familiar last names pop up in the family tree and I'm able to trace those last names to the parents or grandparents of my very brief "crushes", she was right.
If I had rebelled by insisting on dating those men, I could have had my own little inbred babies with issues much greater than fibromyalgia......
No comments:
Post a Comment
This is to COMMENT ON THE BLOG, not TO SELL YOUR STUFF!
If you insist on commenting that "you need this", be prepared to have your comment deleted PARTICULARLY IF YOU ARE ANJU SHUKLA!!