"A Veritable Human Crufts"

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In The Daily Telegraph, Ed West notes that inbreeding within the U.K.'s Pakistani immigrant community has made at least one insular neighborhood "a veritable human Crufts."

Nice.

The ironic bit here, of coure, is that the British National Party will no doubt use this as a catspaw for anti-immigrant sentiment, even as the Kennel Club's most fervent supporters pledge allegiance to inbreeding within the world of dogs.

Right. Discuss among yourselves. In the meanwhile, here's a little clip from Ed West's column:

It’s a strange irony that mass immigration, which is supposed to bring us diversity, has led to a massive increase in inbreeding.

Multi-cultural Britain was meant to be a Benetton advert of ethno-diversity, a new population as beautiful and colourful as that of Brazil, but hopefully without the massive levels of violent crime, inequality and squalor.

Instead, where once inbreeding and its related genetic problems was exceptionally rare in England, it is now commonplace; where this country was once a nation of mongrels (albeit pasty-faced ones), now we have plenty of thoroughbreds.

Bradford is a veritable human Crufts, with over three-quarters of the city’s ethnic Pakistanis marrying their first cousins, and this figure is not hugely above the national average of 50 per cent. Compare this to the percentage of British-Pakistanis who marry whites, 0.7 per cent, or British Hindus, just 0.1 per cent.

Unsurprisingly this has led to serious health problems, as television presenter, Tazeen Ahmad, explores in tonight’s Dispatches, “When Cousins Marry”.

As she writes: “We know the children of first cousins are ten times more likely to be born with recessive genetic disorders which can include infant mortality, deafness and blindness.

“We know British Pakistanis constitute 1.5 per cent of the population, yet a third of all children born in this country with rare recessive genetic diseases come from this community.”

• Related Links:
  ** Fearing Foreign Blood at the Kennel Club?
  ** Darwin's Little Lesson on Inbreeding
  ** Kennel Club Chairman Concedes It Can Take Action
  ** Inbred Thinking
  ** Eugenics Man and the Kennel Club
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The Humane Society did WHAT?

Has Hell frozen over?

You might think so.

You see, the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) is quoting this blog in the cover story of All Animals magazine, which is HSUS's full-color bimonthly membership magazine which goes out to their 10 million members.

In a long, well-written, and fair piece, author Carrie Allan lays out The Purebred Paradox whose strap line is "Is the quest for the 'perfect dog' driving a genetic health crisis?"

Once upon a time, people believed that purebred dogs were naturally healthier than mixed breeds. How have we arrived at a point where it may be safer to presume the opposite? ....

.... The more limited the number of mates, the greater the chance a dog will be bred with a relative who shares similar genes. Genetic diseases are caused by recessive genes, so a good gene from one parent will trump a bad gene from the other. But if both parents have a bad gene—such as one that predisposes them to hip dysplasia or blindness—the likelihood of a sick puppy increases.

“What happens when you have a small and inbreeding population is that the probability of two negative recessive genes finding each other increases as the gene pool chokes down to a smaller and smaller pool,” says Patrick Burns, a Dogs Today columnist who frequently writes about genetic health issues on his blog, Terrierman’s Daily Dose.

A closed registry that allows no “new blood” into the mix exacerbates the problem, he argues: “In many AKC dogs, the founding gene pool was less than 50 dogs. For some breeds, it was less than 20 dogs.”

This year’s Westminster champion, a Scottish terrier named Sadie, hails from one of these tiny gene pools and is “very heavily inbred,” says Burns. The limited ancestry for AKC-registered Scotties, he adds, helps explain why 45 percent die of cancer.

“We do not need to have a closed registry to keep a breed,” Burns says, pointing out that breeds existed long before there was an organization to track them. “We did not create the dogs we love in a closed registry system—we have only ruined them there.”

Read the whole thing. The HTML version (multiple jump pages) is here, and the PDF version (8 pages) is here.

This is one of the longest and best articles done so far on the American "dog mess" that is a confluence between disease, deformity and defect caused by inbreeding and contrived and twisted breed standards, and the sick internacine economic relationships that exist between puppy mills and the AKC.

This article also details what has been going on in the United Kingdom since the advent of Pedigree Dogs Exposed. As Carrie Allan writes:

[I]in the United Kingdom, at least, there seems to be momentum for change. Whether that momentum will gather steam in the U.S. remains to be seen

Spread this article around!

Remember that if you want the Humane Society of the U.S. to move in the right direction, you need to click and treat.

I assure you this is the right direction. They have not taken any gratuitous swipes at pedigree dogs or dog breeders. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Take this line for example. Anyone think this is not fair and well-said?

At The HSUS, we’re big fans of adoption. By going to a local shelter or rescue group, you stand a good chance of both saving a life and finding a purebred — after all, they make up an estimated 25 percent of dogs in shelters.

When you can’t find the dog you’re looking for, however, responsible breeders are another option; they are devoted to their animals’ well-being and committed to placing them in loving homes. And if every shelter dog were adopted and every puppy mill were shuttered, there would still be a need for good breeders to supply dogs to American households.

Full applause to HSUS for this article, and to author Carrie Allan in particular. This is a big subject, and she has done an extraordinarily good job of wrapping herself around it and presenting it in a cogent and fair manner.

• Related Article:** Who Speaks for Dogs?
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The Real Numbers are Numbing Enough ....

I don't think anyone has ever accused me of being a defender of inbreeding.

I'm against it, and I am not shy about saying so. In fact, I have been pretty vocal on the subject for a pretty long time.

Having said that, it's important to note that sometimes folks wade into debates a little too quickly. While their heart may be in the right place, their enthusiasm may exceed their attention span.

Such is the case in an article from In These Times, which was forwarded to me this morning. The author (a summer journalism intern) writes on the perils of canine inbreeding, noting that:

In some breeds, dogs have a 75 percent inbreeding coefficient (the indication of how related they are), according to Susan Thorpe-Vargas, a breeder of Samoyeds who holds a Ph.D. in genetics. (A brother and sister have a coefficient of 25 percent.) John Armstrong, a veterinarian with the Canine Diversity Project, reports that certain lines of standard poodles have an inbreeding coefficient of 70 percent.

According to data from the University of Pennsylvania school of veterinary medicine, three-fourths of puppies with a 67 percent or higher coefficient will die within 10 days.

I have to say I paused here. You see I saw a couple of obvious red flags.

The first is that there is NO breed of dogs that has a coefficient of inbreeding of 75%.

None.

The average coefficient of inbreeding (COI) of pedigree dogs is not 70 percent or 60 percent or 50 percent or 40 percent. The average COI is not 30 percent of even 20 percent. It is less than 15 percent. [see Golden Retriever example with sample of over 275,000 dogs].

The second red flag is the notion that a COI of X percent will result in a specific neo-natal mortality of Y percent.

Not true. Things are not that simple.

If a couple of dogs with no negative recessive genes at all (a very rare thing) are bred together, a very high COI can be achieved without a jaw dropping level of neo-natal mortality.

YES, as a general rule, the higher the COI the more likely there are to be both generalized and breed-specific health problems, but there is no specific mathematical health outcome like neo-natal mortality.

Things are not that simple.

The third point is that John Armstrong is dead and has been for a number of years.

This is a small point, I know, but it jumped out at me as "reports" is an active verb and John Armstrong is not doing much of it these days.

Armstrong, of course, did write about the health outcomes that befell a particularly inbred strain of standard poodles, but that example was chosen because it was an extreme example of inbreeding, not because it was an average.

So where did this young reporter get her information?

It appears she gleaned it from a not-too-well written online "genetics tutorial" put out by the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.

I went to the link supplied, and found no footnotes and no author. By backlinking, I discerned it was an online tutorial to provoke thought (and perhaps discussion) among young veterinary students.

A quick Google, and I found that the beagle colony example given (it was not all dogs as suggested in the In These Times article) applied to only a single heavily inbred beagle colony at the Argonne National Laboratory.

As for the reference to Scott and Fuller, I assume it is to their book, entitled "Genetics and the Social Behavior of Dogs." You can read that book yourself, but it does not quite say what the In These Times author or the University of Pennsylvia veterinary school web site suggests. In fact, the evidence is a bit contrary.

For example Scott and Fuller note that Basenjis are among the most-inbred dogs in the Kennel Club (at the time they had a COI of .25) , but they also note that they also had the lowest neonatal mortality rate of the five breeds listed -- half that of beagles, and even less than half that of shelties, cocker spaniels and fox terriers.

Whoops!

Did Scott and Fuller say hybrid dogs (cross- and mixed-breeds) had lower rates of neonatal mortality than pure bred dogs? Of course!

No one is arguing that hybrids are not generally healthier than pure breeds, or that higher coefficients of inbreeding are not related to defect and disease.

But numbers and data exist for a reason, and the case for Kennel Club change can be made without misusing data or ignoring it.

Of course, error of fact exists from one end of the Internet to the other.

So why have I not rolled over and just let this one go?

Well for one thing, the article is sufficiently shocking in message and sufficiently "science sounding" that it has already popped up several places.

And yet it is wrong.

And it is not just a little wrong. It is very wrong.

And it is not just wrong in fact, it is wrong in message.

You see, if you read this article and believe it, you might think there is no hope for pedigree dogs.

After all, if pedigree dogs have a 75 percent inbreeding coefficient, as this article suggests, then everything about the Kennel Club has to change, and yet we all know that is not going to happen.

But suppose you know that the average coefficient of inbreeding in pedigree dogs is around 10 percent, and that only a "sick minority" of breeders are producing dogs with a COI of more than 20 percent?

What then?

Well then, there is hope!

Then there is no excuse for the Kennel Club not taking action.

After all, if they ban the registration of new puppies that have a coefficient of inbreeding (COI) of more than 10 percent, it will not flip the boat, but only change its course.

They can embrace a common sense policy, and do right by the dogs without engaging in economic suicide.

Perfect!

So let's ask them to do that.

In fact, let's demand it!
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Darwin's Little Lesson on Inbreeding

From New Scientist:

Widespread inbreeding between the Darwin and Wedgwood families was probably to blame for Charles Darwin's ill health, and the childhood tragedies and infertility that blighted his family.

That's the conclusion of an analysis examining links between ill health over four generations of the Darwin-Wedgwood dynasty and the degree of inbreeding between the families.

The analysis supports Darwin's fears that inbreeding was damaging his health and that of his children, following his ground-breaking studies demonstrating that cross-bred plants are far fitter and more vigorous than self-fertilised plants. "This caused him to reflect on his own condition," says Tim Berra of Ohio State University in Mansfield.

After Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, they had 10 children, three of whom died as children. Three of the others married but remained childless, suggesting infertility problems. And Darwin himself, who suffered unremitting ill health following his epic trip on The Beagle, was the product of an "inter-Wedgwood" union, his maternal grandparents being third cousins to each another.

Nothing too new here. I told the tale, relating it to dogs of course, in an earlier post on this blog entitled Inbred Thinking. That said, it's nice to see the story getting out to a wider audience.


This is the pedigree of the Darwin/Wedgwood dynasty.

From Scientific American:

The analysis, led by Tim Berra, professor emeritus in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at the Ohio State University in Mansfield, found that Darwin's kids did have "a moderate level of inbreeding" and in the family's children, there was "a significant positive association between child mortality and inbreeding."

When two individuals mate, genetic material from both parents is passed on to the progeny. So even if one parent carries a harmful recessive trait, the other parent is likely to have a healthier version, which will manifest itself in the offspring. If both parents, however, carry a recessive allele—which is more likely to happen if they share much of their genetic material, as close relatives do—then they raise the chances that their child will have only the bad genes.

A first cousin marriage does not, of course, mean instant problems. In fact, across the world, first-cousin marriages represent about 10% of all marriages.

That said, first cousin marriages do increase the chance for genetic defect.

How much?

A first-cousin marriage raises the risk of birth defect and mortality about as much as giving birth at age 41 instead of age 30.

Of course, if a society has a history of marrying first-cousins, Coefficients of Inbreeding can rise rapidly and with it genetic defect

In Pakistan, where this kind of thing still occurs, one study estimated infant mortality at 12.7 percent for married double first cousins versus 5.1 percent for the progeny of unrelated parents.
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Basenji's: A Classic Tale of Kennel Club Defect

Modern African Basenjis after a hunt.

In correspondence this weekend, a reader wrote to note that not all was darkness in the American Kennel Club.

For example, when Basenji's began to present with jaw-dropping rates of hemolytic anemia in the 1970s, a test for the disease was developed and affected animals were then culled.

Unfortunately, the now smaller gene pool came down with a new disorder, an eye problem called persistent pupillary membrane, which was quickly followed by a kidney disease called Fanconi syndrome, and IPSID (a fatal malabsorption syndrome).

To combat these three diseases, it was decided to open up the U.S. Basenji registry to increase genetic diversity within the breed.

That does sound like a positive thing, doesn't it?

Sadly, however, the tale does not survive scrutiny.

In fact, it underscores the real problem with Kennel Club thinking.

To start with, let's state the obvious: the Kennel Club did not create the Basenji.

This breed has been around since before recorded history, and is a landrace dog used for hunting in the tropical jungles and scrub brush regions of central subSaharan Africa.

Point two is as important as point one: this breed is not about to go extinct in its native lands.

Basenjis are still used as hunting dogs throughout central Africa, and it takes little or no effort to find excellent specimens in nearly every local village.

So exactly where is the dog in trouble, and why?

The short answer is that the Basenji is only in trouble in the western industrialized world, and it is only in trouble because of the kennel club's closed registry system.

The full story is told here in a paper from the July 2007 Bulletin of the Basenji Club of America, but suffice to say that in the U.K. the breed was founded with just 7 dogs, while in the U.S., the breed was founded with just 9 dogs.

A few more dogs were added in to the mix over the years but, as the paper notes:

"[T]he Basenji modern population was derived from 18 original progenitors, with varying degrees of gene representation."

Even this overstates the genetic variability found within the modern Basenji, however.

As the Basenji Club of America notes, much of the founding stock in both the U.K. and the U.S. did not contribute much in terms of get. In addition, due to the popular sire effect, the true male "founder" side of the breed is really no more than four or five dogs. In fact, just three dogs -- Bongo of Blean, Wau of the Congo, and Kindu -- are estimated to represent over 95% of the Y chromosomes in modern AKC dogs!

In response to the collapsing and inbred genetic mess that is the Kennel Club Basenji, the AKC has now decided to open up the registry to dogs imported from Africa provided they can pass a 10-step hurdle.

Of course, no one is asking the most obvious question: Why do we need Kennel Club Basenjis at all?

The answer, of course, is that Kennel Club Basenjis are needed so people can win ribbons showing these dogs, and perhaps make a little cash breeding them as well.

Is there any other reason to ever own a Kennel Club dog?

Of course, some folks are always looking for a "project" or a cause, and the Basenji serves them well in that regard.

If they tell the story right, they can convince themselves and others that they are trying to "save" a rare breed, and never mind that the dog is not rare and does not need "saving"!

And so the push is on, once again, to import a few more dogs from the Congo, Benin and Cameroon.

And what will this achieve in the end? Not much.

Yes, the rate of genetic collapse of the Basenji within the AKC may slow down a bit, but the numbers imported are going to be so low that they will only change the velocity, not the direction, of the curve.

And, of course, the registry is not going to stay open forever, is it?

Once it closes, dominant sire selection will again raise its ugly head, and the gene pool will once again choke down, and inbreeding will continue apace.

In the interim, a few dog dealers will have made a profit selling "outcross" dogs imported from Africa, but not much else will have been achieved.

The good news for the Basenji is that the survival of this breed does not depend on Kennel Club "saviors."

Darwin and the hand of God are still working, as they always have, to save and preserve the Basenji. As Susan Shott has noted:

The owners of African Basenjis do not provide veterinary care for their dogs, and they do not interfere with their dogs' breeding. This insures that African Basenjis are subjected to the rigors of natural selection. Dogs with genetic problems that reduce their fitness early will be much less likely to breed than healthy dogs. For this reason, African Basenjis are less likely than American Basenjis to have serious genetic health problems

Right. But there's more to it than that isn't there? You see, the working African Basenji was not created in a closed registry system, and today's healthy dogs are not maintained in a closed registry system.

Let's not forget that.

And let's not forget that today's unhealthy, non-working American and European Basenjis are a byproduct of a closed registry system that has resulted in nothing but genetic defect cropping up within this breed.

But thanks to God and Africa, we can say: No loss. The Basenji is still alive, well and thriving in its native land.

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End Note:

Novus sends an email (thanks!) with some data (and links!) which I will summarize:

• Fanconi Syndrome. While the Basenji folks themselves said they though it was just 1 or 2 percent dogs in 1979, a 1990 survey with 624 respondents, heavily skewed to reputable breeders, found 10 percent of of all Basenjis involved in the survey had Fanconi syndrome, and of these dogs, 76 percent were still breeding their dogs.
• Hemolytic Anemia. When testing was started, twenty per cent of all dogs had the recessive gene. A cull of about 18 percent of the dogs seems to have ensued, a phenomenal reduction in a gene pool that was already very narrrow, as noted.
• Hyperthyroidism. As of 2005, there were forty-four (44) basenjis registered with the OFA Thyroid registry, and of these, 15.9% have been diagnosed as having hereditary autoimmune lymphocytic thyroiditis putting the breed very high up for thyroid problems
• Persistant Pupillary Membrane: "PPM is a very common problem in the basenji breed."
• IPSID (ImmunoProliferative Small Intestinal Disease) is also called "basenji enteropathy." Novus reminds me of my dicta: "Avoid any breed with a disease named after it."
• Bottom Line: There's a reason they have (twice!) opened up the registry to African stock
  
  
• Related Links:
  ** Basenjis, Diamonds and Magic Meat
  ** An Ancient Breed of Dog?
  ** When Did Your Breed Show Up at Westminster?
  ** Inbred Thinking
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Caroline Kisko Continues to Damage the Brand

Kennel Club spokesperson Caroline Kisko really has to go. She is a proven liar; a small fact I have demonstrated in previous posts. It's hard to do press when you lie about core issues, and it's so easy to prove that you lie. A small problem!

Perhaps as serious as Ms. Kisko's casual relationship with the truth is the fact that she appears to be incompetent at her press job.

Only she could take a silly PeTA bus poster (put up at only two locations) and turn it into newspaper fodder on two continents (see here and here and here).

Now veterinarian and columnist Peter Wedderburn is shaking his head in amazement, noting that PeTA actually has a point, and going so far as to highlight it; Pedigree dogs really are not as healthy as cross-bred dogs!

Thanks Caroline Kisko! No one has done more to show the degree of entrenched inbred thinking going on at the Kennel Club than you have. How could anyone mishandle the press to this extent and still hold a press job? Amazing!

Of course the thing that makes this doubly comic is that it reminds us that the Kennel Club is not only built around eugenics theories, but that Caroline Kisko herself has a BNP member snuggling up next to her in the bedroom.

Perhaps the Kennel Club needs to "do a Costanza" and go in the opposite direction from whatever direction Caroline Kisko is headed, and see if they might achieve some messaging success that way?

Just a thought...

Of course, the real problem may be above Kisko. The buck has to stop with Ronnie Iriving, doesn't it? I have always thought the real litmus test for Kennel Club change is the departure of Caroline Kisko but, perhaps the change needs to start right at the top....


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Are Pet Dogs More Myopic Than Working Dogs?

The "Nearsightedeyes" web site reports on a study of about two hundred dogs by veterinarian Christopher J. Murphy and his colleagues who found that certain breeds of pet dogs were prone to myopia.

..... two-thirds of Rottweiler and half of German shepherds and miniature schnauzers in this study were significantly myopic, by more than 1.5 diopters. The myopic Rottweilers were close to 3 diopters nearsighted on average. Generally, people who have more than about 0.75 diopters of nearsightedness will complain of noticeable impairment and find they need to wear glasses or contact lenses to function in everyday life.

The animals in this study population were all pets. Interestingly, when Murphy and his coworkers looked at a second population of German shepherds – animals kenneled at Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael, California – they found that the guide dogs had average normal vision, with fewer than a third showing even as much as 0.5 diopters of nearsightedness.

The guide dog program did not specifically test dogs’ vision in selecting animals, but they did flunk out any dogs that failed to perform well in training, which suggests that myopia results in a real impairment in getting the job done. The average farsightedness of sporting dog breeds suggests that there has likewise been selection at work in these breeds – that good distance vision has a demonstrable effect on making a good working dog.

The researchers noted a tendency for severe nearsightedness to run in families, which suggests a strongly inherited component. In breeds that are not expected to perform anything more demanding than lying on the carpet, walking on a leash, and finding their supper bowl, there has no doubt been little selection for good vision, which has allowed myopia to sneak into the gene pool.

I would throw up a caution flag here: a pool of 200 dogs is pretty small, and not much can really be known about vision across breeds with a sample size so small.

How many Rottweilers, German Shepherds and Miniature Schnauzers were really in the sample, and how much genetic variation within these breeds did that sample really represent?

Not many and not much is my bet!

That said, an expanded and improved study might be a good project for some budding canine opthamologist to cut his or her teeth on.

A hat tip to Gina Spadafori at Pet Connection for sending the link my way!
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"Pedigree Dogs Exposed" to Air on Canadian TV

Pedigree Dogs Exposed, the documentary that rocked the dog world in Britain and Australia, is coming to CBC in Canada on Sunday, June 28, 2009 at 8 pm ET.

Spread the word!

Since the broadcast of this documentary in the U.K. last August, the British and Australian Kennel Clubs have announced a wholesale review of every pedigree dog breed.

Now comes word from the CBC that Canadian Kennel Club is also undertaking it's own review.

Progress! And more to come, I will wager.

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Inbreeding Fish to Death

Hatchery trout being restocked in Pennsylvania.

It turns out that it's not just dogs, cows and chickens that suffer deficiencies when inbred. So too do fish. As Scientific American reports:

Plummeting numbers of several salmon and trout species have conservationists looking more and more to hatcheries — where fish are reared in comfortable captivity and then released into natural bodies of water. But this strategy may hurt wild populations, according to a paper published this week in Biology Letters.

Researchers at Oregon State University (O.S.U.) found that not only do hatchery-raised steelhead—a Pacific trout sharing the same genus, Oncorhynchus, as salmon—produce relatively fewer and weaker offspring once back in a natural environment, but so do their wild-born spawn....

....Araki and his colleagues looked at the Hood River steelhead supplementation program in Oregon and found that trout fry raised by two hatchery-reared parents had just 37 percent of the reproductive success of those with two wild-born parents, even though both sets of offspring were born in wild waters. If the fry had a mix of one wild and one hatchery-raised parent, then it had 87 percent of a pure-bred wild fry’s reproductive fitness.

Scientists are studying the issue, and are not certain the cause for the decline in fecundity, but inbreeding depression in hatchery stock is strongly suspected.
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