Latest on the Male Biological Clock issue

As a reader pointed out in a post last week, Psychology Today has taken up the male biological clock issue in an article titled A Man's Shelf Life, written by Mark Teich. There's been much written about the risks of later fatherhood in the last year, but this is among the best I've seen and I'm grateful that it was brought to my attention.

Here's the paragraph that sets up the story, what we in the newspaper business refer to as the nutgraf:

Scientists have long known that advanced paternal age (like increased maternal age) played some role in fertility problems and birth defects. Yet because the reports mainly involved children who died before birth or who had extremely rare disorders, no one really rang the alarm. Now, with new studies linking the father's age to relatively frequent, serious conditions like autism, schizophrenia, and Down syndrome, the landscape is shifting.

Here's a good bit of advice I haven't seen in many of the other stories:

For men, the findings may be, above all, a clarion call to take better care of themselves. "This should make men reconsider their role and responsibility in childbearing," says Barbara Willet, of the Best Start childhood resource center in Ontario, Canada. "Aging in men is an important issue, but health is the key issue. It's as if we're suddenly aware that men who want to be fathers need to be healthy, too."

and the related conclusion:

Men can't rewind their biological clocks, but they can slow them down, Fisch agrees. Just remember, once you're in your 40s, you're past your maintenance-free years—you have to take care of yourself. "If you want children from then on," he advises, "get into the best shape of your life."

[Fisch refers to Harry Fisch, director of the Male Reproductive Center at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City and author of The Male Biological Clock.]

While we're on the topic, there's one thing I'd like to point out about my interview with ABCnews.com. I had a fairly lengthy interview with the reporter, and only a little bit of that was used. That's not a problem, as a reporter I do that to people all the time and I knew going into the interview that it was likely to happen. Plus, you could argue it really wasn't on-topic for a story that was about politics, not genetics.

Anyway, the point I made during our discussion was that the risks of being an older dad may be a recent media phenomenon but it is not a recent scientific phenomenon. The link has been known by geneticists for years. In fact, the advisory on advanced paternal age by the American College of Medical Genetics goes back at least to 1996. You can read that here. So even if it didn't make the story, I felt like it was worth mentioning here.