Since we don’t have an “Ask the Amish guy” thread, I’m wondering if anyone here might know some or be a former Amish so I can get an answer.
The Amish communities seem pretty tight knit and self contained. I understand that when they are in their teens they are given a chance to visit the “outside” world and test it out, just to see if they want to stay with the community. If they like the Big Macs and Internet porn they leave. If not, they head back to the butter churning and barn-raising.
That means, though, that the “breeding stock” within the community is relatively stagnant, barring a newcomer deciding to join them. Eventually they would be related to everyone else in one form or another.
Do the Amish have an exchange program to bring in fresh blood from other communities? Is there a higher rate of hereditary diseases within the Amish than in the outside world?
Some hereditary diseases are found almost only amongst the Amish. No cite, I heard it on NPR. The Amish have cooperated with the study of these diseases.
There is a higher rate of some genetic disorders-- dwarfism in particular. But the various Amish communities don’t necessarily trace their roots back to the same founding families, so these types of problems are going to vary from place to place.
I don’t know about exchange programs, but the Amish are quite aware of their unique genetic situation as they have been a favorite study group of geneticists for quite some time (for the exact reason that they are relatively inbred).
I’m under the impression that you don’t actually need all that many humans to more or less balance out your genetic health. some 30 or so should do. You’ll get some minor statistical oddities, but will lose others altogether. A few hundred and you’ll be golden.
I live about a 20 minute drive from Smicksburg, an Amish community. There is a story I’ve heard (likely an urban legend) that the Amish will pay non-Amish to impregnate their wives. I search Snopes, but did not get any hits searching “Amish”.
While the effects of inbreeding are often exaggerated, I’d like to know where you got that information from, and how you define “golden”. The OP asked if there was a higher rate of hereditary disease, which has been well documented in the Amish community (and others like it). He’s not asking if that community will be wiped out in a few generations as the result of inbreeding.
True, but if you’re looking for genetic anomalies, what is more important is how many founders of that population there were. This is especially true of recessive genes, which can lie dormant for many generations. In the case of the Amish, you will find that different communities have a different set (and number) of founders, so there is going to be variability between those communities.
I don’t exactly qualify for the “Ask the Amish Guy” capacity, but I do have a background that’s relevant - my family up through my generation were/are Amish. My parents left the Amish church before I was born so I can’t claim to be ex-Amish myself.
The Amish are a dream community for geneticists - they breed from a relatively closed pool, they have large families and they keep extensive genealogical records. As far as the inbreeding goes, it’s true that any given Amish person will be related to any other Amish person in some way, but for most it’s distant enough that it’s not an issue. If you go back to the beginnings of the Amish in America, there are relatively few founding families and so there will be a common ancestor somewhere. For instance, the majority of the Amish can trace at least one branch of the family back to a Jacob Hochstetler who settle in Pennsylvania in the early 1700s. I can trace back to him through three of my four grandparents… The Amish are not ignorant of the effect that their inbreeding has had, and have cooperated with genetic studies, etc. It’s also not unusual for young people in an Amish community to travel to other communities to find spouses, to avoid marrying someone closely related. And you have to remember that each greater Amish community is a separate pool - the Amish in Lancaster County, PA are a different pool than those in Holmes County, OH, who are themselves different than the community found in northern IN.
As I mentioned in the Pit Thread, this rather means “I don’t honestly know where I got the information but would like to know if my vague recollection is accurate.”
Cheetahs are alleged to have gone through an event which knocked off virtually the entire population, down to extremely close breeding. This left them with some issues, but they do function, and it’s not as if weaker cubs don’t get killed off constantly in most other cat species. Wikipedia doesn’t really say much on the matter.
In any case, do Amish tend to form one long extended community? Will they find spouses among neighboring communities and so on? Sure, they’re spread out, but that hasn’t been a huge bar to human reproduction. That alone would seriously improve their long-term genetic stock.
It’s not a matter of weaker cubs getting killed, but how the population as a whole can respond to new environments (changes in whether or diseases, etc.). A population like that of the cheetahs can get along swimmingly for a long time, and then get wiped out very quickly because there is very little genetic variation. I doubt the Amish are as inbred as the cheetahs are, so I’m not sure if that is a particularly good model. (Cheetahs are said to be so inbred that virtually any two random animals can exchange skin grafts without fear of rejection.)
The problem with the Amish, as mentioned in the OP, is that there are plenty of people leaving the group, but few entering. That doesn’t leave much opportunity for improving the genetic variation of the community.
Anyone know if there are any organized get-togethers between the groups in Lancaster County, PA, Holmes County, OH, northern IN and others for the purpose of the young people to meet others from outside their area?
I know the distances are pretty far, but it would seem to be worth it for the health of the communities.
I don’t know about organized exactly, but there is quite a large population of Amish people that head south for at least part of the winter and stay in Pinecraft. I believe that groups from Ohio and Pennsylvania both go, but I’m not sure about Indiana. Perhaps the young’ns can get to know one another there.
There can be some tension, however, about marrying between sects. Some of the sects will allow you (that is, not excommunicate you if you do it) to marry into another sect, or take a wife from another sect. Others emphatically forbid it (the Swartzentruber group is an example). I believe (but cannot provide a cite for you; iit’s just a general impression) that those groups that forbid inter-sect marriage are also those that have the worst genetic issues, which is probably not that shocking.
Most Amish congregations have services on Sunday mornings, every other week. During the week when there are no services, the young men may go visiting to another area to court a young woman. Because there is distance involved and the transportation is not so quick, they’ll visit for a weekend instead of an evening.
From what I recall from when I lived in Amish country in Northern Indiana, it wasn’t uncommon for a group of them to charter a bus to other Amish communities for the purpose of introducing the young folks to others outside of the area.
In Elkhart County, IN, IIRC, there were at least two “special” Amish schools for disabled children. I’m not sure how much of a percentage of the population as a whole they represent, but know that it wasn’t uncommon to see an Amish family with a disabled child or adult in it.
When Amish young people have their time of sowing their wild oats, it isn’t unheard of for the women to have one or two babies by outsiders before settling down. That probably helps to put a little chlorine in the gene pool.
About a decade ago, I had some dealings with the Amish of Holmes County, Ohio, one of (if not “the”) biggest Amish communities in the state. IIRC, there were significantly more genetic abnormalities among the Amish than in the “English” popularity of the area, esp. dwarfism, clubfeet, and various forms of mental retardation. There was at least one Amish-run group home for adults with inherited problems so severe that they couldn’t be cared for by their own families.
I did an internship one summer at Vanderbilt’s program in human genetics. There was a family ascertainment core who’s job it was to stalk down families with the things they were studying (MS, autism, macular degeneration, parkinsons) and try to convince the family to participate in the studies. Like someone said above, the amish were ideal families. The families are HUGE and everyone has the same damn name. We used this computer software to plot out family trees and plug in where the affected members were. I just remember it was a pain in the ass because when you start the whole imbreeding thing the computer won’t let you put it in and you have to override the error. It happened more than I expected. However, with huge families and the extensiveness of the family trees I was making I couldn’t say if the interfamily breeding was any more or less than in other communities.
They call this “rumpspringa”, which means something like “running around” in German. Someone more knowledgeable than I am can correct me if I’m wrong, but they aren’t actually encouraged to go “balls to the wall”, but rather there is a general acknowledgement that some of the stricter rules are going to be bent. I’m not sure if this means having sex with outsiders, though. I’d be interested in hearing if it does (I doubt it).
Mostly I’m going from experience with the Amish that I worked with and lived near. I was never part of their faith, although I am descended on one side from a similar group (Old Order German Baptist Brethren). I personally knew two women with children before marriage (one child was biracial, definately an outsider) that told me that it wasn’t uncommon (I realize that doesn’t mean that it was an every day occurance though.) And thanks for reminding me of the correct term rumpspringa…it’s been enough years that I had forgotten it.