The Father Factor
How Dad's Age Increases Baby's Risk of Mental Illness
It is widely recognized that a 40-year-old woman has an increased risk of bearing a child with Down syndrome. What is not known is that a 40-year-old man has the same risk of fathering a child with schizophrenia—and even higher odds of his offspring having autism. The risk of bipolar disorder appears to rise as well.
In the past couple of decades, the number of older fathers has increased. Birth rates for men older than 40 have jumped as much as 40 ...
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I don't think it matters what I, personally, think of this topic. I am a journalist/biologist and not by any means an expert in this field. However, I have one minor complaint--and it's an editorial one. Bar coding is a specific term in genetics, and it refers to the genetic code of specific genes, so using the term here to indicate epigenetics could be confusing to someone who has heard of the actual genetic term.