The United Kingdom‘s publicly funded health service has deleted recent guidance in which it noted “benefits” of first-cousin marriages and warned against “stigmatizing certain communities” for the practice.

NHS England’s Genomics Education Programme released the guidance, titled “Should the UK government ban first-cousin marriage?” on Sept. 22. The guidance asserted that cousin marriage has been “practiced for centuries across many cultures” and questioned the prudence of banning it.

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The blog post caused a firestorm due to its insistence on tolerance toward consanguineous marriage, or the marriage between first cousins, a practice among many immigrant communities, particularly Islamic communities, known for greatly heightening the risk of health complications and genetic disease.

“This article should not have been published, and we have removed it,” an NHS spokesperson told the Washington Examiner on Monday. “The NHS recognizes the scientific evidence that there can be increased risk of children having certain conditions when parents are consanguineous, and the health service seeks to advise and inform patients of these risks in a respectful way.” 

The now-deleted guidance concluded that “in order to balance respect for cultural practices with evidence-based healthcare,” officials should focus on “genetic literacy,” such as “education and voluntary screening” of would-be spouses, “rather than simply banning the practice of first-cousin marriage.”

In the deleted post, the NHS acknowledged that “in the general population, a child’s chance of being born with a genetic condition is around 2%–3%; this increases to 4%–6% in children of first cousins.”

“Genetic counseling, awareness-raising initiatives and public health campaigns are all important tools to help families make informed decisions without stigmatizing certain communities and cultural traditions,” the now-deleted blog post read.

The NHS cited a BBC report from February that found “more babies are being born with certain genetic conditions in Bradford – an area with a large British Pakistani population, in which first-cousin marriage is ‘fairly common’ – than in other parts of the UK.” A Bradford study cited by the BBC found that a child of first cousins has a 54% chance of reaching a “good stage of development,” which is a government assessment for all 5-year-olds in England. Comparatively, that number was 64% for children whose parents were not related. It also cited other developmental problems, such as speech and language.

Further, citing neonatologist and researcher at Bradford Teaching Hospitals Sam Oddie, the NHS asserted that blaming these complications on cousin marriage was an “oversimplification” and that the problem rests in the wider issue of “endogamy” — “in which people marry within the limits of their close community – though not necessarily blood relations.”

As a result, the NHS sided with the opinion of the British Society for Genetic Medicine, asserting that “focusing on cousin marriage in this way stigmatizes certain communities, undermines trust in medical services and causes couples to disengage from clinical support.”

The NHS advocated premarital genomic testing, targeted health education, and genetic counseling as alternatives to a cousin marriage ban.

Toward the end of its piece last week, the NHS even noted the “potential benefits” of cousin marriages.

“Research into first-cousin marriage describes various potential benefits, including stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages (resources, property and inheritance can be consolidated rather than diluted across households),” the NHS wrote in the now-deleted post.

It continued, “In addition, though first-cousin marriage is linked to an increased likelihood of a child having a genetic condition or a congenital anomaly, there are many other factors that also increase this chance (such as parental age, smoking, alcohol use and assisted reproductive technologies), none of which are banned in the UK.”

The guidance drew attention to remarks made by Conservative MP Richard Holden, who in December of last year pushed for a cousin marriage ban on the grounds that it heightens genetic disease concerns, compromises women’s autonomy via cultural pressures, and runs contrary to British national values.

“Britain is not unique in having had immigration in recent decades from some regions where first-cousin marriage is prevalent, and therefore there has been a revival in the practice that we moved away from centuries ago,” Holden said in late 2024. “Much like so-called virginity testing and hymenoplasty, it is clear that the practice is not really conducive to modern British society.”

The Conservative member of parliament and his speech are cited directly in the NHS post.

Holden reacted to the NHS’s blog post in a statement to the Mail on Sunday, blaming the Labour Party and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for the rhetoric coming out of the NHS.

“Our NHS should stop taking the knee to damaging and oppressive cultural practices. The Conservatives want to see an end to cousin marriage as a backdoor to immigration too, but Labour are deaf to these sensible demands,” Holden said.

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He continued: “Sir Keir Starmer should stop running scared of the misogynistic community controllers and their quislings who appear in the form of cultural relativist-obsessed sociology professors, and ban a practice the overwhelming majority, from every community in Britain, want to see ended for good.”

A YouGov poll released in May shows that an overwhelming majority of Britons favor a ban on first-cousin marriages, with 77% supporting and only 9% opposing. The support for such a ban is massive across political parties.

An NHS spokesman told the Mail before the post was removed that the document “is not expressing an NHS view.”

“The article published on the website of the Genomics Education Programme is a summary of existing scientific research and the public policy debate,” the spokesman said.

Cousin marriages have been legal in the U.K. since 1540, when King Henry VIII schismed from the Catholic Church and abolished the Canon Law ban on cousin marriages in order to wed Catherine Howard.

Howard was the first cousin of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, which, under strict observance of Canon Law, would have made her ineligible for marriage. Boleyn was beheaded on Henry’s orders in 1536, and Howard was similarly executed in 1542.