Blue skin family due to generations of incest?

A rare condition, methemoglobinemia, known to affect only 0.035 of the world’s population has affected an entire generation dating back to the 1820’s and this may be due to incest.

Methemoglobinemia is a condition brought on by a lack of oxygenated cells in the blood, which causes the blood to turn brown, thereby causing the affected person to adapt blue skin and purple lips.

Generations of the Fugate family apparently have this blue skin condition because they live in isolation in some part of Kentucky where they’ve practiced incest. Due to the fact that this is a recessive gene, the skin condition wouldn’t have been passed down to generations this far down the line if the Fugate family would have married out of their bloodline.

One of the Fugate family men even married his aunt. Most of the marriages among themselves are between cousins, and in rare cases, nieces and nephews got married to their aunts and uncles.

In the 1820’s, the Methemoglobinemia began with both Martin and Elizabeth who carried the recessive gene. They gave birth to 7 children; four of which had blue skin. Their daughter Luna who married John Stacy was the bluest of the children and they had 13 children.

By the middle of the 20th century, word about the blue family spread and one man in particular, Dr Madison Cawein, a hematologist at the university of Kentucky set on his journey in the 1960’s to fine them. While on his journey, he encountered a nurse, Ruth Pendergrass told him of a blue woman who once came in for a blood test when she worked at the County Health Department.

According to Ruth, she was terrified and thought the woman was having a heart attack, but the woman told her that she was one of the Fugate sisters and was also related to the blue Combs family who lived at Ball Creek.

Luckily for Dr. Cawein, Ruth was able to help track down the remaining relatives of the Fugate family, Dr. Cawein then discovered that the family’s blood was missing a key enzyme, and to cure them, he injected them with a blue dye, methylene. Amazingly, the result was almost instant. In a matter of days, the blue family skin lost its blue color.

Unfortunately, the cure was temporarily; so Dr. Cawein provided the Fugates with daily methylene tablets to keep the blue skin from returning. Sadly, life hasn’t been easy for the Fugates because their blue skin became more of a stigma as it came to be associated with generations of incest.