[post_page_title]Amish and the danger of the ‘founder effect'[/post_page_title]
To say that the Amish are an island unto themselves is an understatement. It probably wouldn’t surprise anyone that Amish only marry other Amish, but it actually goes further than that. Members of an Amish subgroup, for example Swartzentrubers, are only expected to marry within that same subgroup, which makes the gene pool even shallower, so to speak.
Indeed, Amish communities suffer from the “founder effect” – people descending from just a few original immigrants, creating a risk for genetic diseases and making nearly every marriage equivalent to one between second cousins. That’s a price they pay wholeheartedly. After all, it’s “Gottes wille” – German for “God’s will.”
