Joe Rogan Experience #2563 - Dan Richards · Aired Oct 8, 2026
Claim summary · not a verbatim quotation
In South America and Peru, there is a higher instance of cleft palates and polydactyly.
The finding
What the evidence shows
There is a kernel here: a 2015 systematic review found American Indian populations had the highest cleft rate of any group, at 2.62 per 1,000 births. But the same review put South America as a whole at 0.99 per 1,000, lower than Asia, North America and Europe at about 1.55 to 1.57. So 'higher than almost anywhere else in the world' does not hold for the region. I did not find reliable data showing polydactyly is unusually common in Peru, and one study snippet suggests South American rates track African ancestry, so that part is unsupported. Regional birth registry data showing Peru or Andean populations with clearly higher cleft and polydactyly rates than most of the world would flip this.
Read the supporting source · www.jmatonline.com ↗Quick answer & review status
Quick answer
Is it true that in South America and Peru, there is a higher instance of cleft palates and polydactyly?
Partly. The claim stretches what the evidence shows. 62 per 1,000 births. 57. Dan Richards said it (matched by voice) on Joe Rogan Experience #2563 - Dan Richards, aired Oct 8, 2026, at 54:28. The supporting source is jmatonline.com, linked below.
The context belongs here.
No separately verified on-air correction is recorded for this check. That is not a claim that nobody corrected it.
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