Medical question: Awareness of genetic damage

[Jonathan Silk]

One for the medical specialists:

is there any evidence in Indian medical literature--ore elsewhere--
of an awareness of inbreeding depression, that is, what we now
understand as the process that inbreeding can lead to expression of
recessive alleles?

What I am specifically wondering about is this: is there any
indication that when ancient Indian people saw children born from
close relatives, and the children suffered from visible genetic
damage, they attributed that damage to their parentage, rather than
for instance attributing it simply to karma? (Of course, I know they
didn't attribute it to genes per se...)

(I am, by the way, aware of the huge debate over whether pre-modern
people could have figured out the principle of inbreeding depression
from observation--I'm not asking about that in general, but rather
the ancient Indian case in particular.)

(As a contast, Medieval [European] literature seems to show no
awareness of inbreeding depression, perhaps because in that case any
visible genetic damage was understood as divine retribution on the
child for the sin of the parents.)

thanks in advance, jonathan
--
Jonathan Silk
Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures
Center for Buddhist Studies
UCLA
290 Royce Hall
Box 951540
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1540
phone: (310)206-8235
fax:  (310)825-8808
silk at humnet.ucla.edu