Excerpt:
The tradition of marrying a cousin is becoming more entrenched among British-born Pakistanis living in Bradford than it was a generation ago, writes Winifred Robinson.
This has been the surprise finding of the Born in Bradford research project . It's a huge long-term study of 14,000 mothers and babies in the city, the largest ever undertaken in the UK. Half of the families in the project are Asian.
Cousin marriage has important implications for health because marrying a cousin increases the risks of passing on genetic disorders. Bradford has three times the national rate among children for disabilities including deafness and blindness.