The Whitaker Family: Horrors of Inbreeding

The thought of incest is enough to gross one out. Here, I am not talking about Game of Thrones. I am talking about reality, rather, an ugly reality. Do you know the Whitaker Family? It is considered as the most infamous inbred family from Odd, West Virginia.

He again visited the Whitaker family in 2020 to record a video that gained more dislikes than likes, but it became viral with more than 25 million views. The documentary depicts the horrors of inbreeding.

The members Lorraine, Ray and Timmy suffer from an undiagnosed mental condition. They live in extremely poor conditions and barely have anything to survive. Especially Ray, he just grunts. So what’s the cause?

Mark Laita had to make four visits and give them financial gifts including money, food and clothes to make them talk. He wrote:

“The individuals in this video are brothers and sisters, except for Timmy who is a cousin. There is no way I would be able to confirm that the Whitaker parents were related, but given that this does happen in this part of the country and the Whitakers are the most extreme case I’ve seen so far, I would bet that inbreeding was at least partly responsible for the mental and physical abnormalities seen in Lorraine, Freddie, Ray, and Timmy.”

Many reports reveal that inbred offspring suffer from reduced cognitive disabilities, lung function disorders, heart diseases and are prone to other diseases. Inbred children are at a higher risk of recessive genetic disorders.

So what is the case with the Whitaker family? One can assume that inbreeding is common in parts of West Virginia and the way they are protected by their neighbors, it could be a possible cause. They show significant consequences of inbreeding.

Effects of Inbreeding

Inbreeding is the mating of organisms closely related by ancestry. The practice goes against the biological aim of mating i.e. shuffling of DNA. According to a 2011 study, Consanguineous Marriages, “the rate of near natal and childhood death increases if the child comes from a first cousin union, nearly doubling in certain countries.”

Various scientists and doctors have established that inbreeding leaves the offspring at a greater risk of congenital defects and genetic diseases. Check out this video to understand more about inbreeding:

The Whitaker family is completely inbred. All members of the family are closely biologically and genetically related to each other. That’s the cause of their cognitive disabilities.