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Bioethicist Dr. Kevin Smith has recommended that the sperm of 18-year-old males be frozen and stored with the UK National Health Service (NHS) to prevent the effects of genetic damage being passed to offspring:
Men are having children later - the average age of fatherhood in England and Wales has increased from 31 in the early 1990s to 33 now. But while it remains possible to have children well into old age, there are consequences. Making his case in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Dr Smith said even small increases in the risk of disease could have a big effect when scaled up across a whole nation.
His solution is sperm banking for everyone on the NHS so that in older age men can turn to the sperm from their younger selves. He said there was no fixed age when someone could become an "older dad" but that people in their 40s might want to return [to] the sperm bank freezer. He said sperm should be banked ideally around the age of 18. It costs £150-200 per year to keep sperm privately, although an NHS equivalent should be cheaper to run.
From the abstract:
Modern genetic sequencing studies have confirmed that the sperm of older men contain a greater number of de novo germline mutations than the sperm of younger men. Although most of these mutations are neutral or of minimal phenotypic impact, a minority of them present a risk to the health of future children. If demographic trends towards later fatherhood continue, this will likely lead to a more children suffering from genetic disorders. A trend of later fatherhood will accelerate the accumulation of paternal-origin de novo mutations in the gene pool, gradually reducing human fitness in the long term. These risks suggest that paternal age is of ethical importance. Children affected by de novo mutations arising from delayed fatherhood can be said to be harmed, in the sense of 'impersonal' harm or 'non-comparative' harm. Various strategies are open at societal and individual levels towards reducing deleterious paternal age effects. Options include health education to promote earlier fatherhood, incentives for young sperm donors and state-supported universal sperm banking. The latter approach would likely be of the greatest benefit and could in principle be implemented immediately. More futuristically, human germline genetic modification offers the potential to repair heritable mutational damage.
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Interesting) by gnuman on Thursday June 25 2015, @06:12PM
If demographic trends towards later fatherhood continue, this will likely lead to a more children suffering from genetic disorders. A trend of later fatherhood will accelerate the accumulation of paternal-origin de novo mutations in the gene pool, gradually reducing human fitness in the long term.
This is obviously false hypothesis, yet it is repeated over and over and over again. And all you need is a thought experiment to prove it wrong.
Consider father A that then fathers son B. Then B fathers C. C fathers D. And so on. Since birth to reproductions, mutations will "accumulate" in all these fathers' Y-chromosome of the sperm producing cells. Since there are thousands of generations, are these people saying that copies "magically snap back in time" to earlier form? They obviously cannot do that - mutations must either be corrected when recombining with X, or they propagate. Since likelihood of getting such propagation mutation is linear with time from "pristine sample", how does it matter how does it matter if it happens at age 50 of father A or age 15 of father F ?
Therefore this hypothesis is utterly wrong. Older fathers cannot weaken the genepool of populations, any more than simple passage of time to consecutive generations.
If that guy is so concerned about purity of genepool, then perhaps banning IVF and other medical reproductive therapies (including ovulation drugs), should be what he's advising instead.
As for correlation of things like autism to age, that's not causation. There is correlation between industrialization and asthma, but it's also not the cause of it either. We all know that today. As for autism, who is more likely to run with their kid to the doctor because they have a runny nose? The teenage father or the well established 45 year old?
http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episodes/autism-enigma [www.cbc.ca]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @10:02PM
They also don't seem to think that long term freezing will do any damage to the sperm. I wonder what justification they have for that?