The Dark Reality of Birth Defects in an Incestuous Polygamist Cult ft. @TheAmandaRaeGrant

Comments · 1.2K

• TJ

  @tjet34 · 1 month ago

  I never understood how anyone could believe they have "pure bloodlines" while babies are born deformed and dying. The level of cognitive dissonance involved has to be unbearable.

  541

• EL

  @Elisabeth-Marino · 1 month ago (edited)

  ALL of the genetic abnormalities mentioned are likely due to incest. They’re caused by recessive genes that are only becoming dominant due to incest.

  406

• CG

  @cgrendy · 1 month ago (edited)

  I’m 65 and from a large eastern Kentucky Appalachian clan. My mom had 10 siblings and my dad had 6 siblings. My parents grew up relatively close to each other deep in the mountains. I have over 50 first cousins and hundreds of second cousins. I know that’s nothing compared to The Order, but the thought of accidentally partnering with a cousin in a smaller community was something I was warned about by my maternal grandmother. Inc*st was taboo and a guaranteed way to go to hell. Frankly, it’s one of the reasons my parents and many of their siblings moved to nearby states to avoid the risk or temptation of hooking up with a cousin. I cannot begin to imagine the circumstances y’all are talking about. Although I’ve deconstructed from my evangelical roots, I’m grateful our traditions taught us not to procreate with family! Thanks for sharing your experience. 💕

  248

• MC

  @mcfully · 1 month ago

  I would love to see the two of you interview a geneticist together.

  224

• EE

  @EeveeAD · 1 month ago (edited)

  I&apos;m an animal behaviourist and part of my education route was obviously learning about evolution and genetics. &nbsp;Incest or even just really small isolated population groups is a MASSIVE problem for animals and conservation. I think people assume if there&apos;s at least one breeding pair then the species is totally fine, when that&apos;s really really not the case. There becomes a critical minimum population level where there&apos;s just not enough individuals left to keep a species going, not because they aren&apos;t breeding but because in x number of generations the whole species will be so inbred that it just is no longer viable. A low genetic diversity in a population group can cause massive weaknesses and vulnerabilities, not just in genetic illness but also instances where a single bacteria or virus can wipe out the entire population because their immune system is so truncated and unable to deal with a new threat. Inbreeding can absolutely effect behaviour too, causing some really harmful behaviours that include self harm or violence in animal populations. In every other species inbreeding is a result of lack of other available partners, literally having no other choice of a mate. There&apos;s a lot of evidence to suggest that individuals prefer to mate with others that share behavioural traits with their parents (which does make sense as their parent successfully raised them so a mate with similar behaviours should be able raise offspring as well), but absolutely not genetics or family groups, and animals that live in family groups often have a hierarchy so males get pushed out to find new mates and only some of the females are allowed to reproduce. But humans in today&apos;s world, it is absolutely an unnecessary choice that causes so much harm to everyone involved, especially the mothers and children.<br><br>In terms of environmental factors also being impacted by incest, look at epigenetics. Basically we have a lot of information in our genes, a lot is sort of backup information that doesn&apos;t ever get used or expressed. Environmental stressors or changes can cause a change in what genetics get triggered though, and that can get passed onto to children for generations. A test was done on mice where they shocked some mice and some they didn&apos;t, they breed them in separate populations, and even the grandchildren of the shocked mice had higher levels of the stress hormone in them. Its what we believe is a contributing factor behind obesity, that the world war generations had a lack of food available to them, so they turned on the genes to make them more hungry and less likely to be full, so their children would eat more and spend more time seeking food so they would be less likely to starve, and we&apos;re still feeling the effects of that now. Epigenetics in a small population of incest group with, what clearly sounds like, incredibly stressed environmental stressors can not only trigger these epigenetics but also compound them so theorically they become part of the permanently expressed genome instead of an optional epigenetic factor (completely my own theory without study to back up, just interesting to mention)

  415

• KA

  @katedempsey1989 · 1 month ago (edited)

  Genetic counselor here. There are lots of different prenatal testing options. Currently, the most common is cell free fetal DNA testing. This detects abnormalities in the number of chromosomes. More recent technology can dive deeper and look for chunks of chromosomes extra or missing, or even specific genetic conditions caused by single genes. <br><br>What we worry about with consanguineous parentage are rare autosomal recessive conditions (some of which are likely so rare we don’t have names for them). This wouldn’t be detected with moms blood. It would require an invasive procedure to obtain either a piece of the placenta (CVS) or some of the amniotic fluid (amniocentesis). With those samples, we can do much more extensive testing than we could with circulating fetal dna found in mom’s blood.

  878

• JO

  @joannelson6334 · 1 month ago

  When I got pregnant from my brother, my mother was drilling me, &quot;who is the father of the baby?&quot; repeat, repeat, repeat. I was 12 years old, I think. I said, &quot;I don&apos;t know???&quot;. Because I disassociated having sex with my brother, I didn&apos;t even know what being pregnant meant. My mother found a doctor who gave me an illegal abortion. There is so much more to this event, but I was traumatized by the abortion.

  148

• BI

  @bih-ih · 1 month ago

  after hearing you both talk about the habsburgs, you should look into maria antonia of austria. she is technically the most inbred of the habsburg family. her inbreeding coefficient was 0.3053, which is higher than full sibling incest and is higher than charles ii of spain&apos;s inbreeding coefficient of 0.254.<br><br>according to many accounts, even if the portraits are inaccurate due to being royal portraits and thus may make her even more lovely than she was in person, she was considered quite beautiful. unlike other habsburgs, she didn&apos;t have The Chin.<br><br>her incestuous DNA didn&apos;t express itself externally, like charles - who was unable to close his mouth due to his jaw being so deformed. her abnormalities may have affected her internal organs and definitely the children she bore. none of her children survived past the age of 7. her story and medical data could hold more information on how the order&apos;s cult is still surviving and procreating.

  158

• MI

  @milly-gonzalez · 1 month ago

  Thank you for the shoutout! I am indeed pregnant, so i will watch this video maybe next year once my little one is out of the womb :D

  142

• WH

  @whitney2042 · 1 month ago

  You are correct that we are programmed to not want to marry family members we were raised with. This is called the Westermarck effect. However, there are theories that when family members are separated very young this does not develop and can result in siblings being attracted to each other as adults. With the size of some Kingston families, this may explain why there isn’t necessarily an aversion to marrying a sibling or half-sibling.

  120

• SA

  @samdoyle5155 · 1 month ago

  I’m so sorry you had a miscarriage. That’s awful.

  124

• UP

  @Upbeatcpr · 1 month ago

  Love these episodes it’s like having girlfriends to talk about all the weird cult shit right in my ear while I take care of my house and daily life as a stay at home mom. Always love to see a Shelise and Amanda episode

  229