Magic Statistics

The twin border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, are home to the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS).  The towns have the world's highest rate of fumarase deficiency, a genetic disorder that can cause severe mental retardation.  It is triggered by cousin marriage.

"Arizona has about half the world's population of known fumarase deficiency patients," said Dr. Theodore Tarby, a pediatric neurologist who has treated many of the children at Arizona clinics under contracts with the state.

"It exists in a certain percentage of the broader population but once you get a tendency to inbreed you're inbreeding people who have the gene there, so you markedly increase the risk of developing the condition," he said.
. . .
Local historian Benjamin Bistline said 75 to 80 percent of people in the area are blood relatives of two men — John Y. Barlow and Joseph Smith Jessop — who founded the sect on the remote desert plateau in the early 1930s.

Fumarase deficiency can cause facial deformities, epilepsy, episodes of coma, and early death.  No one in the FLDS community would talk to reporters, but former members believe the disorder has afflicted 20 or more children in the past 15 years.

One wonders whether and how often the disorder has been observed in the FLDS community at Bountiful, BC.

h/t: Religion News Blog

Previous related posts:

• Attorney-General passes the buck on polygamists
• Fundamentalist Mormon convicted of underage sex
• Homes of Arizona polygamists searched

Statistics Canada has released the results of a time-series analysis of low income in Canada.  The study found that people under 65 living alone were more likely than those living in families to remain in low income for six consecutive years.

Although unattached individuals under 65 accounted for just 11% of the Canadian population in 2005, they represented over a third of people who lived in low income that year. As well, they comprised 47% of people who remained in low income for six consecutive years, according to a new study.
. . .
The study found that people who lived alone were more likely than people in "economic families" to be in low income persistently, even when age group, visible minority status, educational attainment, work status, and work limitation status were taken into account.

This, I think, is an interesting and significant finding.

The study also showed that although unattached individuals could climb out of low income, they were more likely to do so if they did not remain unattached.

I once heard a manager of a government social services department say that the single most productive policy government could implement to get welfare clients off the dole would be to set up a match-making service.  She said that knowing it is impossible, for match-making is away beyond government's social welfare mandate, unfortunately.

The full study can be downloaded here (pdf).  “Low income” refers not to poverty, but to an income judged by Statistics Canada to be “substantially” below average.  For more information, see this brief discussion by Canada’s chief statistician.

Source: Statistics Canada, 2007. "Study: Persistence of low income among working-aged unattached individuals." The Daily, 15 June. Statistics Canada catalogue no. 11-001-XIE.http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/070615/d070615c.htm (accessed 15 June 2007).

Previous related post: Widening income gap in Canada?

Six retired Anglican Church of Canada archbishops have released a statement expressing their hope that next week’s General Synod will vote to authorise same-sex blessings.  The favourite mouthpiece reporter of the liberal Anglican elite, Michael “no-pretence-of-objectivity” Valpy, has the story.

As Canada's Anglican Church prepares for its historic – and possibly schismatic – decision on blessing homosexual unions, six of its most senior clerics Thursday called for a yes vote that would show “justice, compassion and hope for all God's people.”

The declaration from the half-dozen retired archbishops from across the country reveals a sharp division in the church's hierarchy.

It didn’t “reveal” anything new: New Westminster Bishop Michael Ingham already told us.

The six trot out the charge that this debate is diverting the church from more important issues.

“We have studied, reported [on] and discussed the place of gay men and lesbians in the church for 25 years …

“We are deeply concerned that ongoing study … will only continue to draw us away from issues which are gradually destroying God's creation – child poverty, racism, global warming, economic injustice, concern for our aboriginal brothers and sisters, and the growing disparity between the rich and the poor.”

We’ve been arguing about this for so long because the liberal innovators who instigated this row won’t take “no” for an answer.  They keep pressing and pushing, cajoling and spinning, gaining incremental ground here and there, until they think they have enough support to say, “The church has been talking about this long enough; we should move on to more important stuff now”.

And notice that expression of “concern for our aboriginal brothers and sisters”.  If they were really concerned, would they be pushing an agenda so objectionable to aboriginal Anglicans?

Some of the most adamant opponents of same-sex blessings are aboriginal bishops.

Reporter Valpy gets away out of line here, in my opinion:

They are reported to have blocked wording in the House of Bishops' pastoral statement that would have assured Anglicans that they would not be denied communion or confirmation – formal membership in the church – for being in a homosexual relationship, and that the children of homosexual parents would not be denied baptism.

“They” would refer back to ”aboriginal bishops” in the previous sentence.  I’ve been following Canadian Anglican affairs quite closely recently, and I’m not aware of any such public reports.  That doesn’t prove there aren’t any, of course, but it is peculiar.  I would not be surprised to find out that that information had been leaked.

As well, there are only two currently active aboriginal bishops in the ACC, so Valpy has effectively outed two men who had assumed the deliberations of the House of Bishops would be kept confidential.  Even Bp Ingham spoke only in general terms about differences over the HoB pastoral letter; he didn’t identify particular bishops.

Finally, the retired archbishops’ statement does not appear to be posted at the Anglican Church of Canada website or anywhere else on the internet.  Whaddya bet it turns up before Tuesday’s opening of General Synod, giving the Globe and Mail the opportunity to push their agenda regurgitate the ”news”?

Previous related posts:

• Ingham commends open minds while condemning further delay
• Globe and Mail catches up with Archbishop Andrew
• Aboriginal Anglican objects to national native bishop
• Globe and Mail regurgitates Ingham’s speech
• Bishop Ingham reveals in-depth theological knowledge

UPDATE (18 Jun.): The Globe and Mail is so predictable.

A mind-boggling discovery from the weird world of botany.  McMaster University researchers have found that plants potted next to other plants of the same species behave differently depending on whether the neighbour is a stranger or a sibling.

Plants compete with unrelated plants of the same species, but with siblings they are co-operative.  In short, plants can recognise and accommodate next of kin.

The research was conducted by Dr Susan A Dudley and student Amanda File of McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.  Dr Dudley says their findings indicate that plants have a social life and are capable of altruism.

"The ability to recognize and favour kin is common in animals, but this is the first time it has been shown in plants" said Susan Dudley, associate professor of biology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. "When plants share their pots, they get competitive and start growing more roots, which allows them to grab water and mineral nutrients before their neighbours get them. It appears, though, that they only do this when sharing a pot with unrelated plants; when they share a pot with family they don't increase their root growth. Because differences between groups of strangers and groups of siblings only occurred when they shared a pot, the root interactions may provide a cue for kin recognition.”

Doesn’t that mean that plants are sentient beings?  What will vegetarians eat now?

h/t: Faith-Science News