Phiz,
The inter-marriage in JW's is pretty rife, my kids described it as "incestuous" which was funny, but eventually JW's could begin to have similar problems as new converts become a rarity.
I doubt that could happen any time soon as the availible gene pool among the JW is fairly large world wide, but if they broke up into smaller seperated groups and inbred then perhahs in a few hundred years those small inbreeding groups could fase that problem.
Appearently breeding with those outside our culture and national origins is a very good thing for deversifying our gene pool. The more combinations of ethnicity the better.
http://amishamerica.com/do-amish-practice-inbreeding/?cid=55195
Saying that Amish “practice inbreeding”, as you say, is misleading. The Amish aren’t the only communities with founder-effect problems and genetic abnormalities.Orthodox Jews who follow the religion and lifestyle meticulously still have the same genetic problems as their ancestors did. It’s because they began with a small population, only married each other, and faced persecution from host societies so that conversion from the outside was rare and openly discouraged- JUST like Amish!! Very few children of the non-Jewishly-intermarried or their subsequent children will practice the Jewish faith. I’m sure it’s similar to Amish descendants not practicing the Amish faith after they leave. For example, there is an Elizabeth Byler Younts who writes Amish fiction and has the ancestry, but is not Amish herself. There is a Kevin Yoder who is a politician in Kansas and has an Amish-descended father and a non-Amish mother, and who can forget Verne Troyer, who was raised Amish, has an Amish form of dwarfism, and acted in his famous Hollywood roles?
Saloma Miller Furlong mentions in her memoir that one of the reasons she left, though not the primary one, is that she would have basically had to marry a distant relative if she stayed, since she was pretty much related to everyone in her community. I also believe John A. Hostetler, the former Amishman who became a famed scholar of his people, married a non-Amish woman.
I’ll give my same advice to Amish as I do to Jews; they ought to seek converts. I’m not saying that either group should lower their standards, dilute their culture to suit outsiders, or actively evangelize masses of people in an obnoxious way. But I see no harm in being helpful towards those who seek Judaism or Amish Anabaptism honestly and of their own free will. I also think that the Amish should adopt children out of the foster care system to help with their genetic problems. This is already being done by some Mennonite groups, who are raising African-American children. (45 percent of kids in foster care are African American). Here’s a link:
http://articles.philly.com/2011-12-26/news/30559240_1_mennonite-families-biological-mother-janelle
Besides the Jews and Hispanic Jewish-descended populations, other groups having genetic problems due to endogamy are New England Puritans, Romani Gypsies, French-Canadians and Middle Eastern Christians. Romani Gypsies have been highly endogamous, persecuted, and have their own faith and lifestyle (like Jews, Puritans and Anabaptists). But for Romani it varies; the proportion of Gypsy blood in Rom communities is lowest in Britain, and highest I think in Eastern Europe.. my brain is fuzzy! French-Canadians and Arab Christians have the same problem with high blood cholesterol due to endogamy, which is interesting to me from a historical perspective because the Arab Christian populations have been found to contain genes from the European Crusaders, most of whom were French! What a fascinating world we live in!