Geezers and Grandmas and Basic Biology
Published September 15, 2006
The researchers felt this was only the tip of the iceberg. Mothers everywhere can be relieved and women everywhere should sit up and take notice, particularly when someone talks about their biological clock.
There are other birth defects, but none are given as much cultural weight as Down's Syndrome. Oh, Down's Syndrome isn't all mom's fault either. Apert Syndrome results in distorted skulls and webbed feet. Today's comic book mindset might remind you of Aquaman, but surely in a less enlightened time, women were blamed for all sorts of sins. Just a refresher course on King Henry VIII will show you how badly sexism skewed the blame.
Other studies indicate that there is also a type of dwarfism that is linked to a father's age.
When does a man's biological clock start ticking? The verdict varies, but older fathers are having an effect on society in more ways than just the icky effect of having to see old geezers trying to keep up with their trophy wives. The word from UCB is that men usually start to have an abnormal DNA fragmentation index at the age of 56, as researchers found. "Since 1980 there has been about a 40 percent increase in 35- to 49-year-old men fathering children, and a 20 percent decrease in fathers under 30," they wrote.
For spontaneous abortion, the age for men is forty. The recent study about Harvard medical lecturer.
How interesting if it weren't logical. We, as humans, are one species. We are not so different as biological organisms. Maybe someday men and women will be perceived as what they are: Equals in intelligence and equals before the cruel decrees of Father Time and Mother Nature.
- Geezers and Grandmas and Basic Biology
- Published: September 15, 2006
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Health/Fitness
- Writer: Purple Tigress
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Great article. Read Geneticist James F. Crows's article, saying that the greatest environmental risk is fertile old men. Or talk to the victims of older father's who have agonizing defects. This is a very serious issue and the March of Dimes, should advocate for men freezing their semen if they want healthy, happy children and they are not ready to have them in their twenties and early thirties. Can you imagine being born with a mental defect that prevents you from enjoying a moment of life and being mortified every moment with no hope of an end and yet having to live? On the website called motherhood past 35 many recent studies are compiled they show the many biological problems for children of older fathers.
Austism and schizophrenia are sheer hell and industries have grown up around them. Let's do something to reduce not expand these industries and prevent some of there unfortunate births. Only education about the mutations and a new big business of storing sperm for guys over 30 will help. As you know men are starting families later and later and that is disasterous. Rasmussen of the Karolinka Institute in Sweden calculated how many more schizophrenics there would be in England because of the increasingly older age of fathers. This is horrible, horrible suffering and only drug manufacturers gain society does not.
Please, please let's start urging the March of Dimes to take this up big time. Or start a new organization for the prevention of these horrible defects. The connection between older fathers and deleterious mutation is like the connection between lung cancer and cigarettes.
Thanks,
Lena