Small-headed Rat Children begging in the streets

'Rat people' forced to beg on Pakistan's streets

		Outside a Muslim shrine in this dusty Pakistani city, a "rat woman" with a tiny head sits on a filthy mattress and takes money from worshippers who cling to an ancient fertility rite. Nadia, 25, is one of hundreds of young microcephalics -- people born with small skulls and protruding noses and ears because of a genetic mutation -- who can be found on the streets of Gujrat, in central Punjab province. Officials say many of them have been sold off by their families to begging mafias, who exploit a tradition that the "rat children" are sacred offerings to Shah Daula, the shrine's 17th century Sufi saint. The popular belief among many Pakistanis -- that cruel beggar gangs clamp the children's heads in infancy -- is strongly denied by government and advocacy groups, who say there is no evidence to support this. Recent medical studies say the most likely cause is that the normally rare recessive genes behind many microcephaly cases crop up with greater frequency because of the common custom of marrying cousins in Pakistan. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080801163217.6r1x3fyu&show_article=1