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Delayed fatherhood linked to Schizophrenic kids

posted by LaminatorX on Friday February 21 2014, @03:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the totally-getting-snipped-for-my-birthday-this-year dept.

robingHood writes:

"New Scientist Magazine reports on findings that suggest that delaying fatherhood may increase the risk of fathering children with disorders such as Apert syndrome, Autism and Schizophrenia. The article reports that 'although there is a big increase in risk for many disorders, it's a big increase in a very small risk. A 40-year-old is about 50 per cent more likely to father an autistic child than a 20-year-old is, for instance, but the overall risk is only about 1 per cent to start with.' In other words: time to start mating before those tadpoles turn into toads."

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Hartree on Friday February 21 2014, @04:29AM

    by Hartree (195) on Friday February 21 2014, @04:29AM (#4075)

    Those in their prime breeding years tend to have relatively few health problems, as it directly influences how well they pass on their genes. Evolution has much less driving it to weed out health problems that only afflict the old. (Yes, there are kin selection advantages from having grandparents around to help out, but if you reproduce at 20 then the grandparents are only 40.)

    Unless, of course, some small fraction of older people still reproduce. We're tending to delay childbearing in many societies. That may over the very long term help to weed out some of the early onset aging problems we have. Like the major ramping up in heart attacks and other cardiovascular disease that starts in the 40s.

    Perhaps in a few thousand years we'll even start to see a delay in the onset of menopause to a later age.

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  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @04:50AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @04:50AM (#4083)

    In a few thousand years, menopause will occur at the same age as it does now, and the foolish golddiggers who waited too long to bear children will have been removed from the gene pool by their inevitable deaths. Delaying childbearing until after menopause is a serious sociological problem, but it is not a biological problem.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @03:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @03:00PM (#4337)
      How cute. You sound like one of those sociopaths who thinks that anyone who can't or won't have children should commit suicide.