FLDS members don't even know about fumarase disease effecting the children born in the group..

[1776Forever]

As a mother myself I think it is hard to watch these families being broken up for awhile, but some of the members don't know about the terrible disease that the lifestyle is causing:

Forbidden Fruit
Inbreeding among polygamists along the Arizona-Utah border is producing a caste of severely retarded and deformed children
By John Dougherty
Published on December 29, 2005

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2005-12-29/news/forbidden-fruit/

(snip)

In this isolated religious society north of the Grand Canyon, few secrets have been more closely guarded than the presence of fumarase deficiency. Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints elders, who control the community, have labored to keep the public from finding out why the disorder is manifesting. Many members of the fundamentalist community don't even know it's occurring.

The state of Arizona is contributing to the secrecy. The state Department of Health Services and the Department of Economic Security have been quietly providing services to assist the children and families of fumarase victims for more than 15 years. Both DHS and DES officials refused repeated requests from New Times to document the type and cost of services the state is providing to treat fumarase deficiency. The agencies claim that federal health laws prohibit them from releasing records or allowing their authorities to comment on the situation.

Doctors and family members interviewed by New Times say up to 20 children from families in the polygamist community are currently afflicted with the condition that requires full-time attention from caregivers. Victims suffer a range of symptoms, including severe epileptic seizures, inability to walk or even sit upright, severe speech impediments, failure to grow at a normal rate, and tragic physical deformities.

"They are in terrible shape," says Dr. Kirk A. Aleck, director of the Pediatric Neurogenetics Center at St. Joseph's Hospital. Aleck is a geneticist who participated along with Tarby and others in the groundbreaking study of several polygamous families with fumarase deficiency in the late 1990s.

There is no cure for the disease, which impedes the body's ability to process food at the cellular level.

"We can only treat the complications of the disorder," Aleck says. Once a baby is born with the condition, Aleck says, "You really can't treat the underlying disorder."

(snip)

Aleck says the fact that so many people in the polygamist enclave are blood relatives of the founding Barlow and Jessop families "shows the magnitude of the problem."

The disease is not widely known about even in Colorado City, a place where even normally public events such as marriages are conducted in secret. But residents who are aware of fumarase deficiency fear that the number of children afflicted with the disease will indeed increase.

"This problem is going to get worse and worse and worse," predicts 40-year-old Isaac Wyler, another lifelong Colorado City resident who was excommunicated from the FLDS in January 2004. Wyler's ex-wife's sister has had two babies afflicted with fumarase deficiency. "Right now, we are just looking at the tip of the iceberg."

For more than 70 years, all marriages in the isolated towns have been arranged by the leader of the FLDS, a breakaway sect of the Salt Lake City-based Mormon Church.

Marriages among first and second cousins have been common for decades in the community, where religious doctrine requires men to have at least three wives to gain eternal salvation. Only the FLDS prophet can arrange and perform polygamous marriages, and those marriages are taking place in a community in which almost everybody is related.

.......

My hope is that this can be settled with as less stress as can be had in this unfortunate situation where these families themselves are victims.

O8)

[hobbit709]

1. Nature has a way of dealing with genetic failures.

Sooner or later the leaders of FLDS will have to openly acknowledge this problem or they will breed themselves out of existence.

[malaise]

5. My exact thoughts n/t

[kestrel91316]

2. DNA is a fabrication of the devil intended to confuse the faithful -

that's what I think they would say to any discussion of "genetic" disease. Everybody KNOWS that diseases happen because God is angry about gay people.

[mainegreen]

3. The wiki article on fumarase deficiency references these people.

The secrets out.

:P

[Wilber_Stool]

4. .........

Evolution ========1
Intelligent Design = 0

[benddem]

6. and who is

paying for the care of these children? Based on the polygamists in Utah who are all on the dole, I'm sure the states of AZ and TX are bearing the load.

[1776Forever]

7. After looking on the net I had no idea the sect has a military contract of $1.2 million & loans!

Federal Funds used by FLDS Cult…

http://www.factnet.org/?p=313

TEXAS Polygamist sect received taxpayer cash. Businesses tied to the polygamist sect at the center of a child abuse probe received federal government loans.

BY JACK DOUGLAS JR., McClatchy News Service

FT. WORTH, Tex. — American taxpayers have unwittingly helped finance a polygamist sect that is now the focus of a massive child abuse investigation in West Texas, with a business tied to the group receiving a nearly $1 million loan from the federal government and $1.2 million in military contracts.

The ability of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or FLDS, to operate and grow is largely dependent on huge contributions from its members and revenue from the businesses they control, according to a former accountant for the church, and government officials in Utah and Arizona, where the sect is primarily based.

One of those businesses, NewEra Manufacturing in Las Vegas, has been awarded more than $1.2 million in federal government contracts, with most of the money coming in recent years from the Defense Department for wheel and brake components for military aircraft.

A large portion of the awards were preferential no-bid or ‘’sole source'’ contracts because of the company’s classification as a small business, according to online databases that track federal government appropriations.

(snip)

John Nielsen, who worked for the company when it was Western Precision in Hildale, said in a 2005 affidavit that he and other FLDS members were made to work for little or no wages, even as the company was bringing in lucrative government contracts and other work.

At the same time, $50,000 to $100,000 in company profits were going each month to FLDS ‘’and/or'’ Jeffs, Nielsen said in the affidavit, filed as part of a civil lawsuit.

He said he and other sect members thought their working for free or for extremely low wages would bring them redemption.

In Texas, authorities raided the FLDS’ sprawling YFZ Ranch near Eldorado on April 3, beginning an exhaustive search of its 1,691 acres. Authorities were acting on a tip from a 16-year-old girl inside the compound who said she had been beaten and raped by a 50-year-old man whom she was forced to marry.

Since then, a state district court judge has ordered the removal of 416 children, many of them young girls who have children or are pregnant after forced encounters with their ‘’spiritual'’ husbands in the sect’s towering white limestone temple, officials say.

While the men of the sect have held close rein on their ‘’plural wives'’ and children, seldom allowing them to associate with the outside world, the male leaders have fanned out into successful public business ventures.

They work as government defense contractors, dairy farmers, engineers, construction contractors, log-cabin homebuilders and suppliers of lanyards, the cords used on eyeglasses or name tags.

In addition, JNJ Engineering, a company owned and operated by FLDS leaders, has made millions of dollars in Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in September.

The company won $11.3 million in contract work from the Las Vegas Valley Water District; all but one of the project workers came from the twin towns of Hildale and Colorado City, Ariz., where most of the sect’s 10,000 members live. http://www.miamiherald.com/