Genetics: Having Epilepsy, Being Tall, and Rolling Your Tongue
You know when you’re just having a nice day and then a person brings up incest:
“Sorry but I think you are wrong. Is epilepsy not a result of genetics caused in many cases by close family interbreeding. Such as first cousin marrying first cousin.”
My first emotion was shock and then I laughed at the poor man’s ignorance. But then I felt pain on behalf of those who must interact with people like him every single day.
I’d posted an article from The Lancet Journal on the Epilepsy Sparks social media pages regarding the higher rate of epilepsy in developing countries. The Lancet Journal is one of the most highly respected medical journals in the world publishing articles quoting empirical evidence.
Many of us imagine that the ignorance like that of John* only occurs in certain countries where fewer people yet have access to education. Well no: this man was from the United Kingdom.
Common causes of epilepsy are:
- Head injury
- Low oxygen during birth
- Meningitis or encephalitis
- Stroke
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Brain tumours
In developing countries, there is far less access to medical care (including assistance in childbirth, disease prevention, and treatments) and often a greater incidence of violence and head injury — hence epilepsy is more common.
The Epilepsy Society says:
…which if the case, is exciting because it means that epilepsy Neuroscientists & Researchers will be able to focus their work more effectively.
It is worth noting that of course, some illnesses can be attributed (at least to a degree) to incest or people having children with close family members:
Epilepsy is common
The thing is that epilepsy is common in the rest of the population (approx. 1%) who are not the result of incest, so epilepsy isn’t the result of getting down with your cousin. 1 in 8 women will develop breast cancer at some point in their lives but this doesn’t make 1 in 8 women the result of an overly-close relationship with a close relative either.
People can be born with genetic predispositions to thousands of traits/illnesses, some of which are attributable to recessive or mutated genes, and some of which are attributable to environmental factors, including (and these are just a few of thousands):
- High IQ
- Brown hair
- Breast cancer
- Huntington’s disease
- Eczema
- Tongue-rolling
- Albinism
- Height
- Skin colour
- Schizophrenia
Even if a person has a gene which makes them more likely to have a certain trait or disease/condition, they often won’t experience it because:
- They need more than one copy of the gene;
- The gene won’t have been turned on (yes: it’s that complicated: epigenetics (the name of which isn’t anything to do with epilepsy specifically))
Did you also notice that not all of the traits mentioned are negative/undesirable?! I wouldn’t mind being a bit taller or being able to roll my tongue a different way.
Even if everyone with epilepsy had it as the result of genetics it wouldn’t mean that 75million people were the result of “sex between close relatives”. Just as 40% of those with hay fever (the percentage of those whose hay fever has a genetic component) also are not the result of sex between close relatives.
For information regarding epilepsy research, contact Epilepsy Research UK — details here.
If you have a comment or question, I’m always game to chat on Twitter at torierobinson10
*Pseudonym
**Blog first featured on Epilepsy Sparks
