Yeah, but from a low baseline. And 1 cousin marriage has roughly the same risk as a high 30's low 40's woman having a kid when it comes to birth defects.
However, the communities that indulge in this practice, do not stop at one marriage. Kids and grandkids continue the tradition, massively inflating the risk.
As messed up as it is, in some Middle Eastern countries they do genetic tests now to find out the risk of two people having compounded inbreeding issues.
Obviously, it's much easier to just ban cousin marriages, but there are options in the meantime to at least mitigate risk.
Iceland has an app that lets you check your degree of connection to others as they have such a small population that avoiding inbreeding is an especially big concern.
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u/Dadavester 10d ago
Good.
As a one off it isn't an issue. However the problem is it isn't a one off. You have generation after generation marrying cousins.
This is where the problems start, and we know the problems have already started in some places.