Re: Inbreeding and birth defects

[Beth Benoit]

Title: Re: Inbreeding and birth defects

on 3/22/02 1:50 PM, Richard Pisacreta, Ph.D. at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> I have a question. Are the majority of albino humans produced by inbreeding?

I'll give this a whirl.  What the heck, it beats grading papers...

Since 1 in 17,000 people in the U.S. alone actually have some sort of albinism, it isn't too much of a stretch to figure that there are relatively a fair amount of people who carry the recessive gene for albinism.  Albinism follows the usual genetic laws - two parents, each with a recessive gene, have a 1 in 4 chance of having a child with albinism.

There's no more reason to suppose that children with albinism are the products of inbreeding than to suppose that those with any other genetic defects, such as colorblindness, are.

(Sorry to only use Americans in the above figures, but those are the ones that turned up most easily in my research.)

Beth Benoit
University System of New Hampshire ---
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