meehawl

all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned

Breeding Moronis

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A rare, severe birth defect is on the rise in an inbred polygamous community on the Utah-Arizona border … Intermarriage among close relatives is producing children who have two copies of a recessive gene for a debilitating condition called fumarase deficiency. The enzyme irregularity causes severe mental retardation, epileptic seizures and other effects … the recessive gene was introduced by one of the community’s polygamist founders. Community historian Ben Bistline said most of the community’s 8,000 residents are in two major families descended from a handful of founders who settled there in the 1930s. “Ninety percent of the community is related to one side or the other,” said Bistline, a former member of the sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

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