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 |
 |  The first grandson of former LDS Church president Ezra Taft
 |  Benson, Pulitzer-prize winner cartoonist Steve Benson posted
 |  this on the Internet February 19, 2004.
 |
 |
 |  Subject:  Mormons boast that they are healthier because they
 |  don't drink or smoke, but polygamy has made them a colony of
 |  genetic mutants.
 |
 |
 |  For all their incessant bragging about living a healthy
 |  lifestyle free from tobacco, alcohol and coffee, the LDS
 |  Church continues to ignore growing evidence that its
 |  "revealed" doctrine of polygamy is responsible for a plague
 |  of genetic disorders that afflicts Mormons to this day--and
 |  will well into the future.
 |
 |  So argues Linda Walker, in her article, "Fatal Inheritance: 
 |  Mormon Eugenics."
 |
 |  http://human-nature.com/science-as-culture/walker.html
 |
 |  Whenever you hear Mormons intone about how they are
 |  healthier than everyone else because of their Lord-inspired
 |  Word of Wisdom, remind them that it is their Lord-inspired
 |  practice of polygamy that has been responsible for
 |  historically deforming, debilitating and killing them and
 |  their children.
 |
 |  Excerpts from Walker's article:
 |
 |  . . . I remembered the studies conducted on my brother and I
 |  as children at the University of Utah . . . when doctors
 |  pronounced us, a special and important family. In the
 |  1950's, research doctors thought we were one of the few
 |  families in the world with this form of nephritis, known as
 |  Alport's syndrome. . . . By 1980, this theory changed
 |  dramatically as many other Utah families accepted the
 |  diagnosis.
 |
 |  Our ancestral destiny meant we might give birth to sons who
 |  would die at maturity or daughters who would carry the trait
 |  to the next generation of sons. These defects could be life
 |  threatening like nephritis and spinal bifida, or merely
 |  debilitating like asthma. . . .
 |
 |  . . .I began to look into my family history for some
 |  answers. . . . [A family member had] died of multiple
 |  sclerosis, also leaving a family of small children behind.
 |  Same family, second child, same period of life, a different
 |  fatal disease; was there a connection?
 |
 |  My aunt and uncle outlived two of their five children and
 |  two more may have nephritis. What was going on in my Utah
 |  pioneer family? Surely, there were too many deaths. . . .
 |
 |  Previously I paid little attention to Mormon history,
 |  rejecting that belief system primarily because of political
 |  differences with the Mormon leadership over civil rights and
 |  peace issues in the 1960's. [My] great-grandfather married
 |  two sisters which meant the twenty-two known children were
 |  double cousins or as genetically similar as brother and
 |  sister.
 |
 |  I began to think polygamy might be a genetically unsound
 |  marriage practice. Not only were there possibly too few
 |  fathers making it easier for defects to clump in the large
 |  interrelated kindred but succeeding generations of children
 |  from these isolated rural Mormon towns married within a few
 |  kindred as well. Throughout the world, most polygamy is
 |  exogamous, or breeding outside the group. Breeding within,
 |  as Mormons did, endogamous polygamy, is virtually never
 |  practiced. Had these defects clumped in my own family as it
 |  seemingly appeared to me?
 |
 |  While discussing health problems at a family gathering with
 |  some of my cousins' wives, we discovered astonishingly that
 |  three out of four of us, all polygamy descendants, had borne
 |  a son with a clubfoot.  . . .  One outspoken Mormon
 |  matriarch who attended the same Sunday meeting for fifty
 |  years commented about the health of the polygamous
 |  descendants versus the monogamous descendants, ``You see it
 |  in the obituaries. So many young people.'' . . .
 |
 |  Another woman revealed how frustrated and angry she was over
 |  her brother's death, a brother who died because of
 |  undiagnosed epilepsy, possibly needlessly. . . .
 |
 |  [Mormon] `hierarchy children' are from the `elite' first
 |  families of Mormonism and these families started polygamy in
 |  America. Nearly all the Mormon founding families were
 |  relatives, so the first polygamists enjoyed relations to
 |  different degrees when the divine experiment began. The
 |  Twelve Apostles of Mormonism then acted to increase this
 |  familial relationship by marrying other relatives until in
 |  1877, at the end of Brigham Young's reign as Mormon Prophet
 |  and King, the polygamous hierarchy became 100% interrelated.
 |  . . .
 |
 |  D. Michael Quinn, former Brigham Young University Professor,
 |  states ``The Mormon practice of polygamy enabled men to
 |  marry daughters, nieces, cousins, granddaughters and former
 |  wives of other General Authorities''. . . . Did this
 |  practice affect my family and other Mormon pioneer families
 |  adversely, possibly even in other momentous ways? . . .
 |
 |  Genetics is the study of how traits pass from parents to
 |  offspring. Epidemiology is the study of the spread,
 |  prevention and control of disease in a community or group of
 |  persons.
 |
 |  Some people mistakenly think genetic disease encompasses
 |  only birth defects and this is far from the truth. Genetic
 |  disease can occur at any age including birth, onset of
 |  puberty, early adulthood, or middle age.
 |
 |  Inherited diseases are extremely varied from protein
 |  metabolism to connective tissue problems to vital organ
 |  failure, and among the most expensive to manage financially
 |  both for the public and for the individual family. These
 |  diseases endure as the most difficult, time consuming, and
 |  emotionally traumatizing for everyone involved in the care
 |  of someone who will not improve, but worsen and die.
 |
 |  The Mormons, well known for genealogical record keeping,
 |  maintain birth, marriage and death information at church
 |  libraries and now on the Internet. . . . Since polygamy
 |  remained a hidden and illegal practice, disguised family
 |  records occurred. . . . During this early period, polygamy
 |  was practiced secretly by the Mormon leadership, men who
 |  covertly preached and expanded polygamy while publicly
 |  deceiving the general Mormon population about the practice.
 |  These wives sometimes became known, sometimes not. For
 |  instance, Quinn writes, ``over twenty General Authorities
 |  were married to such lesser known wives'' . . .
 |
 |  `Lesser known children' hidden in families sympathetic to
 |  polygamists might remain ignorant of their genetic kinship.
 |  And the Genealogy Department advises genealogists to follow
 |  only their direct line; in this instance meaning only the
 |  wife who is their mother, not other wives of their father. .
 |  . . This is inadequate information for purposes of
 |  establishing the true incidence of consanguinity within a
 |  family or community.
 |
 |  Genealogists and especially epidemiologists must be
 |  scrupulous in identifying all the wives and children of any
 |  polygamist man. Branches of the polygamist man's family left
 |  out of the genealogy will change the incidence of common
 |  ancestors and potentially mask the true disease risk and
 |  incidence in the community.
 |
 |  Gradually, I realized the practice of polygamy, especially
 |  in Mormondom, might be a prescription for genetic disease.
 |  People most at risk likely lived and married within the same
 |  small communities their ancestors founded. This seemed to
 |  apply in my own kindred because those of us who left
 |  Mormonism and married outsiders are less riddled with the
 |  deleterious genetic legacy than relatives who married within
 |  the ancestral Mormon gene pool.
 |
 |  Parents who share a common ancestor are consanguineous.
 |  Consanguinity causes aggregate clusters of deleterious genes
 |  to collect in families, which then express themselves as
 |  rare recessive disorders like nephritis, cystic fibrosis,
 |  biliary artesia, albinism, short stature and many others.
 |  Consanguinity also causes rare recessive disorders to mask
 |  as dominant. . . .
 |
 |  Another problem in polygamy is a man's breeding years are
 |  expanded sometimes into his eighties by the taking of new
 |  wives. As people age the chances of children inheriting
 |  mutant genes increases. Readily accepted as a problem among
 |  mothers past the age of thirty-five, it is rarely discussed
 |  as a problem when fathers are over thirty-five, let alone
 |  eighty.
 |
 |  Sterility is another consequence of consanguinity and the
 |  evidence of many sterile polygamous wives is overwhelming.
 |  The adoption of children among family members sometimes
 |  disguised sterility. This is a humane coping strategy
 |  devised to deal with a dilemma that devastated a woman
 |  taught from birth her only value was in the number of
 |  children she bore for the Kingdom of God. Yet, this practice
 |  may hide the actual genetic kinship and can further
 |  exacerbate genetic problems. . . .
 |
 |  This gene cluster effect happens when people with common
 |  ancestors marry and bear children. Polygamy today is
 |  comprised of early Mormon polygamy descendants and these
 |  families are now interrelated by a factor impossible in
 |  monogamy. Evidence exists that this gene pool foments a
 |  genetic and human catastrophe. Mormons can now see why
 |  American citizens passed laws intended to stop polygamy, a
 |  relic of unwise prophecy, laws continuously disregarded in
 |  Utah, a state controlled by the Mormon Church, if they will
 |  only look.
 |
 |  In addition, the Mormon Church touts itself as the
 |  quintessential traditional family values church, advertising
 |  via expensive television campaigns. They are quick to point
 |  out to reporters that they no longer practice polygamy and
 |  excommunicate members who continue to do so. This denial is
 |  hollow considering the record. They offer no support, no
 |  exit route, and no programs for the people trapped inside
 |  polygamy endeavoring to escape these closed polygamous
 |  communities, or compounds. . . .
 |
 |  The discoveries and research within my own kindred so
 |  alarmed me that I studied other descendants of polygamy to
 |  see if their families also suffered from crippling
 |  illnesses. I am convinced they do. As bad as this past is,
 |  the mounting evidence is far worse.
 |
 |  In 1991, I first became aware of the Latter Day Church of
 |  Christ (a.k.a. Kingston's and The Davis County Cooperative
 |  Society), a Mormon polygamist offshoot . . . .
 |
 |  One 1980's leader, John Ortell Kingston, married thirteen
 |  wives and sired over sixty-five children, many of them
 |  deformed. His wives included five nieces. One disillusioned
 |  former member claims ``babies are born as blobs of
 |  protoplasm'', and ``brothers marry sisters in an effort to
 |  build up a royal priesthood.'' . . .
 |
 |  Finally exposed in the news, the facts of life inside this
 |  religious/cult compound are stunning Mormons, Utahns, the
 |  nation, and the world. Half and full siblings are `marrying'
 |  in religious ceremonies. Escaped members report some
 |  patriarchs believe it is their duty to give a daughter her
 |  first marriage lessons. This is the equivalent of a
 |  religious rationalization for the practice of incest. . . .
 |
 |  Buried quietly on family farms, without notice of birth or
 |  death, child death often remains undocumented in polygamy
 |  clans. Utah officials fall all over themselves in an effort
 |  to explain why they have done nothing before and what they
 |  now propose to do. . . .
 |
 |  [Some of these polygamist] groups are white supremacists,
 |  and inbreeding is an essential doctrine in keeping the
 |  bloodline pure. . . .  Convinced they are breeding a pure
 |  white master race; they blame the mother if a deformed baby
 |  is born, then preach she was unrighteous or unclean. It is
 |  these discredited ideas that foster this genetic legacy.
 |
 |  Early polygamy was rife with incestuous and eugenic ideas
 |  and practices as well. Brigham Young, the second Mormon
 |  leader, preached, ``The time is coming when the Lord is
 |  going to raise a holy nation . . . a royal priesthood upon
 |  the earth, and he has introduced a plurality of wives for
 |  that express purpose.''
 |
 |  Every person carries some lethal genes. Most populations
 |  outbreed and so these lethal genes rarely match to cause any
 |  serious diseases. When a group inbreeds, as polygamists
 |  have, more and more lethal gene matches occur. Children
 |  inherit disabling illnesses. Child life is destroyed.
 |
 |  Some family members and Utah geneticists disagree with these
 |  conclusions. I think I owe my children and all children who
 |  risk becoming the next unwitting victims of this tragic
 |  genetic legacy, the best information regarding the
 |  prevention of this lethal family inheritance that I can
 |  find.
 |
 |  Thus, over the first fifty years of Mormonism, a highly
 |  inbred hierarchy became even more inbred through their
 |  illegal marriage and childbirth practices. At the time this
 |  inbreeding took place these prophets preached and practiced
 |  modern `eugenic science', the science of controlling the
 |  traits of future populations through selective breeding for
 |  idealized traits like blond hair, blue eyes, and tall
 |  stature. One hundred years later, eugenics is a discredited
 |  science, yet some followers still believe. Historian B. H.
 |  Roberts, notes an eugenic attitude regarding polygamy:
 |
 |  "It was in the name of a divinely ordered species of
 |  eugenics that Latter Day Saints accepted the revelation
 |  which included a plurality of wives. Polygamy would have
 |  afforded the opportunity of producing from that consecrated
 |  fatherhood and motherhood the improved type of man the world
 |  needs to reveal the highest possibilities of the race, that
 |  the day of the super man might come, and with him come also
 |  the redemption and betterment of the race." . . .
 |
 |  It is important that Mormons fight the tendency to discount
 |  history and the actions of their leaders in favor of a faith
 |  promoting history while neglecting important facts. It is
 |  important the American public recognize that polygamy was
 |  outlawed for valid reasons; and not as apologists claim
 |  because of outmoded Victorian moral ideas.
 |
 |  It is difficult to assess less than perfect family
 |  background when men are revered as `prophets,' `apostles,'
 |  and `kings.' If descendants of polygamy do not look
 |  critically at the ideas of their ancestors, Utah children
 |  may be increasingly at risk. If two descendants of
 |  hierarchical polygamy marry, the chances for genetic defects
 |  increase if the families were ever interrelated. This means
 |  it may be genetically unwise for children of the early
 |  leaders to marry other children of early leaders, even now;
 |  yet, this tendency still exists in Mormonism.
 |
 |  One pediatrician at the U of U stated he asks only, ``Were
 |  your parents related?'' This is not enough genetic
 |  background information to ascertain the facts regarding
 |  health risk and may be a reason why health statistics in
 |  Utah have significant errors.
 |
 |  One newspaper article describes a baby with a disorder
 |  previously unseen, ulnar mammary syndrome. . . . Now a new
 |  disease classification enters the medical literature and a
 |  certainty that even more health care dollars will be
 |  allocated towards high tech solutions to preventable
 |  problems.
 |
 |  These new disease classifications belong at the door of the
 |  Mormon Church leadership. They are coming out of polygamous
 |  communities proliferating in Utah because Mormons are unable
 |  to face their history or follow sound marriage and
 |  childbirth practices.
 |
 |  Within Mormonism, large families are coveted and honored.
 |  Often these families do not have the resources to prosper.
 |  In polygamy this is exacerbated. Women do not have the
 |  freedom to consider how often she can give birth and
 |  maintain her health. Men make all decisions affecting her
 |  health. One nurse confided, ``We see too many trisome 13 and
 |  18 babies.'' . . . This is a rare disorder and medical
 |  descriptions of trisome infants are too dreadful to describe
 |  here. These babies usually do not leave the hospital and die
 |  as infants.
 |
 |  This nurse has a polygamous background, so does her husband.
 |  Three of their children suffer from serious inherited
 |  disorders. One child born with an incomplete liver died. If
 |  both parents are descendants of polygamy, the children may
 |  be at even greater risk.
 |
 |  These disturbing accounts offer a look inside the lives of
 |  some early Mormon descendants. They can be dismissed as
 |  merely anecdotal. It takes maturity to face the truth,
 |  especially if the truth is painful and challenges the family
 |  tradition and religious belief structure.
 |
 |  Utah news articles often feature geneticists' and the LDS
 |  Church furthering science by applying modern genetic
 |  analysis to the vast genealogical database. It is likely
 |  flawed. These same articles suggest the Utah population is
 |  healthier than similar non-Mormon populations. Mormon
 |  descendants of monogamy are probably healthier than a
 |  similar non-Mormon population because of their good health
 |  habits.
 |
 |  I doubt Mormon descendants of polygamy are healthier than
 |  non-Mormons. Many of these articles read more like public
 |  relations than news. The news may be that descendants of
 |  polygamy are at greater genetic risk than the average
 |  population, especially if any direct relative was a member
 |  of the Mormon hierarchy.
 |
 |  In early 1990, the incidence of nephritis in the general
 |  population was revised from an 1 in 10,000 incidence to 1 in
 |  5,000. . . .
 |
 |  For us parents the future health and happiness of ourselves,
 |  our children and grandchildren are at stake. We cannot
 |  afford to neglect the possibility our ancestors practiced a
 |  form of marriage that was unhealthy and debilitating to our
 |  children, to us, and to society.
 |
 |  The Salt Lake Tribune focused on one polygamist group, The
 |  Latter Day Church of Christ, a.k.a. Kingston's, this past
 |  year. The information about this group is outrageous and
 |  shocking. It would be nice to think this is the only
 |  incidence of a polygamist group practicing incest as a
 |  religious rite. Unfortunately, that is not so. There are
 |  many similar outlaw groups in Utah and surrounding states.
 |
 |  This is why the state and federal government enacted
 |  legislation against polygamy. This is why those laws need to
 |  be enforced. To date Mormons have only paid lip service to
 |  stopping polygamy.
 |
 |
 |  (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
 |  material is distributed without profit to those who have
 |  expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
 |  information for research and educational purposes.)
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