Strange Deformations
Posted by MyLaowai on Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Inbreeding is breeding between close relatives, whether plant or animal. If practised repeatedly, it often leads to a reduction in genetic diversity, and the increased gene expression of recessive traits, resulting in inbreeding depression. This may result in inbred individuals exhibiting reduced health and fitness and lower levels of fertility.Results of inbreeding:
Inbreeding may result in a far higher expression of deleterious recessive genes within a population than would normally be expected. As a result, first-generation inbred individuals are more likely to show physical and health defects, including:
- reduced fertility both in litter size and sperm viability
- increased genetic disorders
- fluctuating facial asymmetry
- lower birth rate
- higher infant mortality
- slower growth rate
- smaller adult size
- loss of immune system function.
(source: Wikipedia)
China has had, for the last 3,000 years, a population that seldom bred outside the confines of the village. Added to this, has been an ongoing program to cull from the herd any individuals that were, well, individual. Anyone who acted with independence – Chop! Anyone who showed courage in the face of Confucian ‘Authority’ – Chop! Anyone who had their own ideas about how society should be – Chop! The results of this culling program combined with the reduced size of the gene pool (now believed to be a small gene puddle), not to mention artificial genetic manipulation via environmental poisoning, are clear to anyone who travels outside the major cities: all kinds of weird and wonderful birth defects, low life expectancy, reduced variety in individuals.
I’ve seen the One Legged Man (who nonetheless sported three feet at the end of his one leg), whole tribes of Six Toed Dwarves, thousands of large facial moles sprouting luxurious lengths of hair, and vast quantities of birthmarks that make Mikhail Gorbachev’s inkspot look like a mere freckle.
All that pales, however, in comparison to the sight that greeted me yesterday: The Oddly Breasted Munchkin.
So, there’s this girl. She’s fairly short, not bad looking, otherwise indistinguishable from the sweating masses, except in one respect – her breasts are too low. Now, I don’t mean that they sagged, I mean that they were too low. Call me an old-fashioned kind of guy, but I reckon that having your breasts start at the bottom of your ribcage cannot be a good thing. Everything else was right – good cleavage, nice shape – but the altitude had me muttering “Pull up! Pull up!”. It was, honestly, something that I never expected to see and I hope I never see again.
The Chinese have a word for all these weird mutations. They call it ‘lucky’.
I think there’s something in that for all of us.
Wo Shi Laowai - Wo Pa Shui 
Stranded Mariner said
We call that ‘fucking scary’ where I come from. It’s sad actually. I used to work in a big university hospital for a couple of years. They had this whole department of ‘nature’s accidents’ on formaldehyde. I have seen some of these deformations in real life here, on my travels in the country side. Sad, really sad. There are these inland villages, where there is not enough natural iodine in the diet, which can lead to various birth defects and serious mental disorders. The iodine enriched salt, supplied by the government, was of course sold to fill some corrupt cadres pockets. The birth defects you find there are in one word terrible.
FOARP said
Mate, the girl was probably flat and had let her stuffed bra slip down. But I’ve often thought that inbreeding must cause problems in China, one sees many deformities than one would in the west, poor health on the part of the mother and limited access to medical care must also play their parts though.
Chinatomy 101 « Wo Shi Laowai – Wo Pa Shui said
[…] I’ve written before about some of the weird and wonderful birth defects to be found in China, and today we were able to add two more specimens to the list. Look for them in the book. There was the girl, normal in most respects and rather pretty as well, who had Big Spock-Ear Syndrome. I felt a bit sorry for the lass, actually. Perhaps she tells boys she is a pixie or an elf or something. The second rare specimen was more disturbing, for it was nothing less than a middle aged woman with testicles growing from her armpits! […]
Xiao Zhan said
Cool Blog！