Can marrying your cousin keep your kids healthy?

Courtesy LoveMatters.info 

Research has revealed that children resulting from marriage between cousins may help to preserve family health in certain ways, while risking birth defects in others.

Marrying your cousin might help keep your family healthy, a new Dutch study has found.

This might come as a surprise, because it also means your children are more likely to have birth defects. But cousin marriages can have a useful effect, say scientists from the University of Groningen; they keep life-saving genetic resistance to disease within a family.

Bad copies

It's common to marry your cousin in some parts of the world, including India, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. These are also regions that historically have seen a lot of disease. It could be that the health advantages of inbreeding , therefore, outweigh the extra risk of birth defects.

A genetic resistance to the HIV virus is a recent example. HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, kills roughly two million people a year. But people who've inherited two bad copies of a gene called CKR-5, one from their mother and one from their father, seem to be immune to HIV infection.

It's pretty rare to inherit both copies of the gene. But in some Ashkenazi Jewish communities, where marrying a close relatively is common, as many as 20 percent of people have a double copy. It's the marriages between cousins that keep the life-saving genes in the family.

© www.lovematters.info is a journalistic website about love, sex, relationships and everything in between.

The only problem is that being resistant to one disease might make you more susceptible to another. For instance, people with two bad copies of the CKR-5 gene may be more at risk of getting the West Nile virus illness, if they're bitten by an infectious mosquito.

Children of first cousins are about two to three percent more likely to have birth defects than the rest of the population. To put this into perspective, this is the same risk as for children born to women who are 41 years old or more.

Photographs: Steffen Kugler/Getty Images

But when marrying your cousin goes wrong, it can go really wrong. Take the 17th century Spanish King Charles II. Because of generations of royal inbreeding, he suffered all sorts of mental and physical problems. Unfortunately one of them was infertility. When he died with no children in 1700, that was the end of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty.

To prevent these kinds of inbreeding disasters, doctors now encourage genetic screening in communities where marriage between cousins is common.

Photographs: Clickmehul/Wikimedia Creative Commons

Tags: Spanish Habsburg

READ THIS before you light up that next cigarette

Half of India's smokers unaware that their habit is one of the major reasons for a stroke.

Half of India's smokers are unaware that smoking causes stroke, a new report has claimed.

According to the report, commissioned by the World Heart Federation and written by the International Tobacco Control Project (ITC Project) in collaboration with the Tobacco Free Initiative at the World Health Organisation, there are significant gaps that need to be filled in public awareness regarding the cardiovascular risks of tobacco use and secondhand smoke.

The report was released at the World Heart Federation World Congress of Cardiology in Dubai recently.

Around 70 per cent of Chinese smokers, 50 per cent of Indian smokers and 40 per cent of Dutch smokers are unaware that smoking causes stroke.

Awareness of the risk of secondhand smoke is even lower. In Vietnam, nearly 90 per cent of smokers and non-smokers are unaware that secondhand smoke causes heart disease.

In China, 57 percent of smokers and non-smokers are unaware of the link, said the report.

Even in countries with well-developed health systems and tobacco control regulation, such as Canada, United Kingdom, United States, and Australia, between a third and a half of smokers do not know that secondhand smoke can damage cardiovascular health.

Prof Geoffrey T Fong at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and Chief Principal Investigator of the ITC Project, said: "This report shows a broad correlation between poor knowledge of the risks of tobacco use and high levels of smoking prevalence. To break this link and reduce the deadly toll of tobacco, more needs to be done to increase awareness of the specific health harms."

"Our research shows that the risks of tobacco use to lung health are very widely accepted. But we need to attain the same level of knowledge and awareness that tobacco use can cause heart disease, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease and secondhand smoke can cause heart attack," he added.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the world's leading cause of death, killing 17.3 million people every year. Eighty per cent of these deaths occur in low and middle-income countries, which are increasingly being targeted by the tobacco industry.

Image: Half of India's smokers unaware that their habit is one of the major reasons for a stroke
Photographs: Eliseo Fernandez / Reuters

Male body hair: Sexy or not?

Courtesy LoveMatters.info 

What should guys do with their body hair -- leave it or shave it?

Body hair on women is simply taboo, like it or not.

But for men it's more complicated. Some girls go for hairy macho men, others find a shaved and trimmed look sexy.

Thirty-year-old Mumbai hiking guide Dhiren Talpade shares his hairy dilemma. "When I go to the beach with male friends I tend to compare myself."

Dhiren is a bit self-conscious about his body hair. "I look at my friends and end up wondering whether I have excess body hair," he says. "I do think about how it makes me look."

Shallow

He's curious to know whether having a bit of excess hair on his body could make him less attractive to women.

"None of the women I've been with has ever brought it up as a problem. But that's also because I've always shared deeper bonds and relationships with women. I've never looked for shallow connections."

However, Dhiren is aware that if he tried to pick up girls in bars, his physical appearance would play a bigger role. "If I were to indulge in these situations, I might start worrying more about my body hair," he points out.

Dhiren is an outdoor professional who spends most of his time leading groups on hiking expeditions. He realises that having some excess hair on his body doesn't hurt. In fact, it works in his favour at times.

"I spend many hours walking and hiking in the sun. I know that I'm less prone to sunburn and that's probably because of the bit of extra hair I have. So it does have its advantages," he claims.

Despite his concerns, Dhiren is confident about the way he looks and doesn't want to change a thing. He's also wary of coming across as being metrosexual to the women he is around.

"I really don't spend too much time thinking about the way I look. I don't want to shave or wax my chest. My ambition is definitely not to be an underwear model," he says.

However, he's quick to add that he doesn't think any less of men who do away with their hair. "It's their choice. I like my body this way, and maybe their taste is different from mine. To put it simply, some people like using an umbrella when it's raining, some like using rain jackets and others just prefer getting wet!"

Dhiren does admit that there was a time around puberty when he was curious and experimented with his hair. "I started trimming my pubic hair when I was younger. After a few times, I realised that I was more comfortable with letting it grow, so I have stuck to that ever since."

To each her own is Dhiren's opinion when it comes to hair on women. "I'm open with women making their own decisions, it really doesn't bother me. I think part of it is also because I haven't yet been with a woman with a really hairy chest!"

Photographs: G.dallorto/Wikimedia Commons 

Kolkata may soon get cafeteria trams

Call it an image makeover for a moving slice of history, or a blueprint for revival, Calcutta Tramways Corporation, the operator of Asia's oldest functional tram services, is set to soon introduce 'cafeteria trams' in Kolkata.

The plan, being put together by the transport and tourism departments, could just be a shot in the arm for the cash-strapped CTC.

"We are planning to convert four trams into moving hotels as a first step.

"We have decided to set up an expert committee to chart a road map.

"It will submit its report within a month or so.

"These cafeterias would be run by private companies or state-run ones like Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation," said transport minister Madan Mitra.

According to sources, to run these cafeteria trams, CTC is working on a proposal to run ring services of trams in Central Kolkata, around the Victoria Memorial and Race Course areas.

"In order to attract tourists, our plan is to lay tracks connecting the present line parallel to Red Road. However, a court directive banning movement of heavy vehicles in a radius of three km of Victoria Memorial could turn out to be an issue," said a top transport ministry official.

Mitra said the charges for these cafeteria trams and who will run these would be decided by the expert committee.

"It will have all the facilities can find in a modern-day cafeteria," he said.

Kolkata remains the only city in the country that has a surviving tram transport system, while it has become history in others like Mumbai, Delhi, Patna, Kanpur, Chennai and Nashik.

Meanwhile, CTC wants to generate revenues through alternative means like running more buses on profitable routes, on-board ticket checking system, etc.

There also are plans to introduce AC buses and turn underutilised tram depots at the city's prime locations into parking lots.

According to reports, though CTC earns around Rs 50 crore (Rs 500 million) a year from its tram and bus services, it spends many times the amount on salaries of more than 6,500 employees.

The state government has been providing an annual subsidy of Rs 600 crore (Rs 6 billion) to the five state-run transport corporations -- Calcutta State Transport Corporation, North Bengal State Transport Corporation, South Bengal State Transport Corporation and West Bengal Surface Transport Corporations. About Rs 200 crore (Rs 2 billion) of this goes to CTC.

Also, CTC has come out with a proposal to increase tram fares by up to Rs 1.50 to revive the ailing transport system.

The proposal is under 'active consideration' of the government.

There are about 18,000 employees in the five transport corporations.

Currently, CTC has more than 250 trams and 200 buses under its fleet, but, of these, only 120 trams are operational, covering 16 routes across the city.

We lack original thinkers in academic institutions'

He left his first job at Pradhan, an NGO, because he could not directly communicate with his client -- the farmer. TodayNachiket Mor, president of ICICI Foundation, in the midst of a series of initiatives that have the farmer at its core. Associated with IFMR, he is also actively involved in management education.

He talks to B Mahesh Sarma about a number of issues -- from education, career, teaching in his mother tongue to the constant quest to push the needle further.

Is a sense of social responsibility the cause for your career shift?

The way I view it, I don't have this thing about social responsibility. At every stage of my career I have tried to evaluate 'Am I moving the needle, making a bit of an impact?' And, whenever I feel that I am in a space where many other people are doing great work, if I don't do it someone else will, I try to go to other empty spaces.

Does the need to push the needle drive all your choices?

My original plan had been to be a physicist. If I had been a Nobel prizewinning physicist, I would have been very satisfied and been moving the needle there. It's just that I felt firstly I was just not good enough, and secondly in India there were other things that I could move the needle with. I got a PhD in finance, because I did not feel sufficiently competent about doing what I was being asked to do by ICICI. Yes, it took me four years instead of four months. But I was young. I had enough time.

As a nation we keep using the term 'world-class institutions'. Should that be our guiding paradigm?

My sense is that you have to first decide 'What is the objective of teaching?'. If your view is that what you want to produce are 'skilled people' who can perform well-defined tasks, you need a certain framework of teaching which I would call the Lord Macaulay way.

But if you want people who can go out and develop original ideas, then they need to be taught by people with a questioning mind-set because only then are they able to transfer and teach you underlying principles.

Where we are lacking today is in the latter, we are not getting an adequate group of people that are original thinkers sitting inside academic institutions that are producing original work. I see the lack of this in India.

Is faculty a bottleneck in this?

I was a member of the National Knowledge Commission for management track. There are 1,700 schools for MBA studies in the country. They are not producing adequate number of graduates in terms of quality. There was an anxiety that a lot of it was because of the quality of faculty that was provided was not adequate.

If you are saying that I want a bright, extremely talented, creative individual to dedicate his life to the pursuit of the academic rigours of teaching, original thinking, then you have to pay people.

So low salaries are the culprit...?

I am a graduate from IIM Ahmedabad. I paid about Rs 15,000 as fees. Who subsidised my education? Not the government, but my teachers. They got paid so little, which is why I paid so little. We expect them to take our precious children and take care of them for longer than we do, eight sometimes nine hours a day. It's a shame.

You can't deny the fact that the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank is going to pay an MBA Rs 2 lakh a month. But, the institute that is planning to hire a PhD who will teach him, will be paid Rs 50,000 a month. It makes no sense.

What about the research output?

You might say that the US schools have the system of journals, to get publications in there is a mark of excellence. Maybe we can also develop our own benchmarks.

Is the US model, with multi-faculty, multi-campus university structure the way to go?

What the US universities have done is they have brought some of the lucrative professions in to the same schools. It is a bit of a cross subsidisation. If you look at Penn, the Wharton School is a lucrative school; the medical school is a lucrative school. Now, to some degree these schools bring in the dollars to the rest of the university. And why does Wharton not mind? Because, they benefit with a deeper exposure to a wider community. Just on there own, they might not have been as attractive. Maybe, that's the way to do it.

Producing more PhDs is another way. Every global school has this thought that our PhDs are teaching everywhere. Our sphere of reach is expanding and our way of thinking is the way that the world is thinking about i

What else is a constraint in our system?

In my view we are the only country in the world that has built an education system not in our native language. Tiny countries like Austria teach up to the PhD level in Austrian. The large bulk of our country operates in a non-English
speaking frame and that's true of our teachers too.

If you are forcing everybody to hire faculty that can teach in English language, it's a challenge. Certainly, when you go further down, what you are getting is a mockery of the English language. And as a result, you are graduating a lot of children who are not familiar with any language. It's like a mixed, confused bag that is coming out.

But knowledge resources are substantially in English...

It is not difficult. I think the kind of thing that Google is doing in some ways are going to make some of these journeys
much easier. When Google translates, what it does is that it splits a page. So, you start with an English website, you
can just click on a number of languages. The quality of translation may not be the best, but what they say is if you don't like it, change it and it will become a part of our database.

They are getting millions of people to constantly correct the language. Google auto senses the language in which you originated the message and converts it to English. Language to English, English to language, one can build a seamless gateway.

You can appear to be the way the world wants you to but stay focussed on your local language.

And you think there is an economic opportunity here?

The Japanese to this day cannot speak a word of English. It has not held them back in any significant sense from growth. I now work in Chennai. The bulk of the managers I deal with including those that work in large companies
speak, read, write in Tamil. They do not use English as the main language of business. And definitely most of the
customers only speak Tamil.

It would be the same for any other state. And across the sector we need about two, two-and-a-half million people at credit officer level. Maybe we need thousands of senior officers. About 200 MFIs are starting up in the country. If everyone of them is to grow, to have 2-3 million clients, each of them will need 100-200 senior people. And most of them would need local language skills.

This is true of most other segments of the economy. Sadly, Cartoon Network has understood this, Pogo has understood this, and the Hollywood movie industry has understood this. For some reason, we fail to acknowledge this

'Learn your profession, learn to be professional'

An interview with Mark Tully, former chief of bureau, BBC-Delhi about his career and more...

He was awarded the Padma Shree in 1992 and the Padma Bhushan in 2005. But despite the accolades, the scribe-turned-author dons no pretentious airs. When Careers360approached him for an interview, he apologised profusely for cancelling on us twice. Third time round, he nodded in agreegment. The interview...Former chief of bureau, BBC-Delhi, Mark Tully studied theology and considered joining the clergy. But fate had other plans. In 1965 he moved to India [ as BBC's India correspondent, and he went on to cover major incidents such as the Bhopal gas tragedy, Operation Blue Star and the demolition of Babri Masjid

Born in Kolkata , you left for England at the age of nine but returned and made India your home. What beckoned you to India?

I have a connection with India. I think where you are born does matter. I believe to some extent in karma and where you are born is part of karma. The first day I came back to India (I hadn't been here for 20 years), I smelt marigolds and cowdung fires together and my whole childhood went through my head like an express train and I felt then there must be something special about India. I am very fond of Britain, where I spent my formative years.

You studied theology. What prompted you to take theology at such a young age?

I was always interested in theology and in the church. I was in a seminary with lots of people my age. I wasn't unique by any means. What I was unique at, was being told that I couldn't become a priest and I shouldn't become a priest.

Anyway, I graduated in history and theology. I would love to go back to university now. Sometimes I dream of doing that. Maybe I will learn Hindi properly and perhaps even Sanskrit.

What was your first job? How did you become a journalist?

It was an accident. I always thought I wanted to do something good for people. So, when I failed as a priest, I joined an NGO which was concerned with housing old people. I left that and joined British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) but I joined in the personnel department because again I thought, personnel was about the people's welfare. But I found out that personnel was all about filling out files and sitting on interview boards and nothing much more.

So it was then that I thought, when I am in the BBC, I would quite like to stay here, but what would I like to be. Then I thought, I would like to be a journalist.

How was your first salary spent?

I was married and had children, so no exotic holidays or spending on clothes. I drank beer with people, went to pubs.

Should one take up a job for passion or a profession which pays?

A profession which you are interested in and which you have aptitude for.

In the controversial book, Hinduatva, Sex and Adventure, the protagonist is said to be you and has been projected in a poor light. How do you react to that?

It is a disgraceful book and it is utterly disgraceful of the publisher Promod Kapur to have published it, and to allow someone to write the book under a pseudonym. The writer didn't even have the courage to use his real name.

Which newspapers do you read?

I take The Indian Express, The Hindu and Business Standard and read Outlook, the news magazine.

What book are you reading now?

I just finished reading Rabindranath Tagore The Singer and His Song, by Reba Som, a friend of mine. It's a fascinating book on what music meant to Tagore and how he composed it.

Your tips to our readers who want to take up journalism as profession.

To be a good journalist requires a lot of hard work and slogging. Be humble. Try and learn your profession and learn to be a professional.

Shameful India: 'Good students are sacrificed for the quota system'

Dr Sanjaya Baru, editor, Business Standard, talks about the lack of respect for education and the need to reward excellence.

In between, he also worked as media advisor to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh . In conversation with Sumita Vaid Dixit ofCareers360, Dr Baru talks about the lack of respect for education and the need to reward excellence.Dr Sanjaya Baru, editor, Business Standard, says journalism is in his blood. When he was just 10 years old, he used to type a one-page, weekly newsletter on the goings and comings of his large extended family. And he had a circulation of nine copies! But at heart, Dr Baru is an academician who, twice, took a break from journalism to teach economics in India and abroad.

You began your career as a teacher but became a journalist. How?

Well, I was a professor for 10 years before I became a journalist. By sheer accident I was called in to interview the then finance minister, Madhu Dandavate, in 1990, for Doordarshan. I discovered journalism was exciting. I joined the Economic Times where Mr TN Ninan was the editor.

Precious lessons that you learnt during your early assignments...

Nikhil Chakravartty, a distinguished, editor of Mainstream Weekly, gave me two pieces of advice: a good journalist must be curious and willing to go in search of answers. Second, a journalist must learn to win the confidence of people before they can trust him or her with their stories. Another lesson I learnt from Kingsley Martin, editor of UK's political magazine, New Statesman, was that a journalist must read. I keep telling my colleagues that unless you are well-read you cannot be a good journalist.

What is your opinion on the state of India's higher education?

India has some fine institutions but there aren't many. We have created an artificial shortage of quality institutions by limiting the number of IITs, IIMs, technical and medical institutes. It's only now that the UPA government is opening up more IITs and IIMs.

The second issue is quality. Even in the existing 'good' universities quality suffers. Universities must be based on the principle of elitism. In simple words, reward good students. The very purpose of a university is to nurture talent. So if the system isn't willing to recognise excellence then the purpose of education is defeated.

Even socialist countries such as Russia and China award excellence; no good student is turned back. But in India even good students fail to get admission because either there aren't enough seats or the admission is sacrificed to the quota system.

So students flock abroad, to foreign universities...

Every year Indian students pay $3 billion as tuition fee to study abroad. I don't think UGC has a budget of more than a couple of hundred million dollars. This is the kind of private money that exists in the country. My daughter wanted to study abroad but I was uncomfortable. A lot of parents would like their children to stay with them at least until college and yet they are sending them away at the tender age of 16 and 17. We need world-class universities here, in India.

Would the entry of foreign universities help?

For one, it will reduce the outflow of $3 billion each year (remember our politicians have keen business interest in education). And our students wouldn't have to go abroad when they could get those degrees here, at home. Also, there's a large non-resident Indian (NRI) population in Asia and other Western countries looking for work opportunities in India. Besides, their own children may want to come to India to study.

The problem I foresee with the setting up of foreign universities is the migration of talented teachers from Indian universities to foreign universities as salaries would be very attractive. And as we all know, for a nation of one billion people there aren't enough teachers.

And there's talk of setting up more universities when there's a shortage of teachers...

One way of dealing with the faculty crisis is having part-time faculty. But the fact is we aren't rewarding the teaching community. Today a 25-year-old journalist with an undergraduate degree gets a higher salary than a college lecturer who has done a PhD.

The value system of our education is flawed; there's no reverence for education. We value education as individuals but not as a nation. Education has not been a priority area for governments for a long time until now.

Why, when education is key to economic progress?

The idea that investment in people is an investment in the economy is a recent phenomenon. Earlier, development meant more steel factories and new seeds. People argued that India's problem was population. An educated person is an asset but an uneducated person is a liability. Population becomes a problem when people aren't productive. One who is a liability today can become an asset tomorrow. It's a simple idea that we in India failed to grasp.

Can we dream of having world-class universities?

Our students and teachers ar as good as any in the world. It is the physical facilities, the infrastructure that is deplorable. Go no further than Southeast Asia to see how good their university infrastructure is, comparable to the top in America. India should learn a few lessons from China.

In a short span, China has built world-class universities. It has set up greenfield universities with large campuses, excellent facilities and invited faculty from all over the world, particularly, Chinese professors who are teaching in other parts of the world.

What could be the media's role in improving the system?

Well, here at Business Standard, we give utmost importance to educationists. But yes, the media has to play a larger role -- that of creating awareness, warning students about fly-by-night educational institutes. In both health and education, we need stricter regulations.