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Growing evidence points to link between autism and wildfire smoke (grist.org)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/science@lemmy.world
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[–] 6 points 8 months ago* (16 children)

Autism is caused by a lot of things that impact genes.

But the biggest is the fathers age.

Maybe young men should start storing their sperm at age 20 for when they decide if/when to have kids.

As much as the mano sphere likes to say women are expired at 30. The truth is, in regards to fertility, we have perfect eggs our entire life.

But male sperm declines fast. And not only that. Sperm count has decreased by like 50% or something in 50 years. Probably pollution.

But I'm not here to say men expire at 25. Because men have more value than their sex cells , just like women.

I am here to say that this knowledge could be used to reduce the risk of genetic errors and miscarriages.

As much of a proponent I am for neurodivergent people, a large chunk of people with autism are not high functioning and have moderate to severe cognitive problems.

Let's try our best to bring healthy children into this world.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

    The truth is, in regards to fertility, we have perfect eggs our entire life.

    Do you somehow have knowledge that disproves aneuploid eggs?

    Like, I don't like the manosphere either, but that's no reason to ignore science. That goes for them as well, considering that men are absolutely more likely to have mutations to their sperm factories considering... well, the nature of it.

    Edit: the answer is no, they do not have that knowledge. Meaning they're full of themselves.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I should have said we have perfect DNA eggs during our pregnancy lifespan. I'm not sure how to phrase it. The age range of when average women have pregnancies. 20-35.

    Also the aneuploid egg thing is a very specific type of degrading. It more often results in miscarriages. Though sometimes children are born with a missing chromosome from this type of errors.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Oh, so it doesn't really disprove the manosphere woman expiration date.. it's more like both sexes are done around 30.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago*

    Well neither sex is "expired" at 30. Because people have much higher value than their breeding potential.

    But in terms of passing on the best of yourself to your offspring, . Yeah there is a loss of quality over time.

    That quality loss might be higher in males (,because of sperm properties) but ultimately yes, it would be better to save eggs and sperm from an age before 30.

    I wouldn't choose a partner based on how old they are though. There are much more important factors like if they would be a good parent.

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago* (1 child)

    Where do you get correlation between father's age and autism from?

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    This is well established. And has been for like 2 decades. https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/link-parental-age-autism-explained/

    That's why it's crazy the GOP is like "Tylenol causes autism" and says that generally we don't know what causes autism.

    Yes we do.

    We have for a long time.

    There is an insane amount of research on this. And still ongoing.

    Now that's not to say it's 100% fraternal. It's not.

    Babies are born from a pairing of DNA.

    The relationship with mothers and autism is a lot more complex and the effect strength varies on a combination of many factors. It's a bit simpler for fathers.

    Now before it sounds like I'm blaming sperm for all the human health problems I want to point out that nature designed sperm to be susceptible to fast DNA changes.

    Mutations are the way evolution occurs. Without one of the sex cells having the ability to change dna relatively "quickly", the evolution changes of the organism may be too slow to adapt to new environments and may go extinct

    Everything is how it should be.

    But that doesn't mean we can't use modern medicine and science to help bring in healthier children.

    In the olden times when we were evolving into homo sapiens, life span was much shorter. Men weren't typically fathering children in their 50s and 60s.

    The errors stack up.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    The truth is, in regards to fertility, we have perfect eggs our entire life.

    That is demonstrably false. While it's true that oocytes have remarkable properties to maintain their proteins over long periods. And more-recent research suggests egg quality isn't nearly the infertility culprit it was once thought to be (as compared to, ovarian health, for instance). The fact remains that as women age, chromosomal abnormalities DO occur at higher rates.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    That's not supported. Those errors are not significant until the woman is nearing 40 and after.

    At which point, most women are not having pregnancies.

    Also there is a specific error associated with eggs. It has to do with chromosome numbers. Is specific to disorders like downs syndrome and miscarriage. Called "aneuploidy".

    https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2022&q=chromosome+errors+in+embryos+age+of+parents+&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C14#d=gs_qabs&t=1771178714217&u=%23p%3DMnn8vjTVXIcJ Influence of parental age on chromosomal abnormalities in PGT-A embryos: exponentially increasing in the mother and completely null in the father

    Whereas sperm dna declines faster with age and is more prone to damage/changes from environmental factors like diet, exposure to chemicals, and the like.

    https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4425/14/2/486 Impact of Advanced Paternal Age on Fertility and Risks of Genetic Disorders in Offspring

    I suppose if someone was planning or at least considering the possibility of having biological children after age 35 (mother and/or father) then it would be realistic to save back sperm and egg from an earlier age to reduce multiple types of risk.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I wonder what percent of the autism observed can be explained by the combined factors of father's age and wildfires.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    That's not how interaction statistics work.

    I don't claim to be an expert on genetics.

    But there are experts out there researching these things.

    How different genes interact and change risk. How different genes interact with specific environment or exposures and create risk.

    There are scientific methods that are used to determine these things.

    But it's not so easy to put out a single number that represents risk because of these complex interactions.

    The statistics are harder to understand, but when they are simplified they are less accurate/true.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    I'm wondering about that because at one point I did my share of similar statistics and I know this is something worth asking. There are statistic tools that are able to give this kind of answer and the results can be trustworthy if you have good data.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Let’s try our best to bring healthy children into this world.

    into a terminal ill ecosphere!

    btw, the correlation between autistic fathers' age and autistic offspring is a social one. quiet obviously.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    btw, the correlation between autistic fathers’ age and autistic offspring is a social one. quiet obviously.

    Could you please explain, because it's not obvious to me and if true that sounds like something I'd like to understand.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    due to the difficulties with social interactions autistics do by average build the relationships that accomodate parenthood at a later age than other people.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    So you're saying that when looking for a correlation between age of the father and prevalence of autism of the child, you need to account for the confounding factor of heritability since among a population of fathers who are older, there will be a higher prevalence of autism than in a population of fathers of an even distribution of ages (the general population) due to the social factor.

    Sounds like a reasonable and logical take. Are you aware of any studies that show this or is it your own hypothesis?

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    well for a quantitive study you'd need to track data about age and diagnosis of diagnosed and undiagnosed autistic as well as other fathers in quiet a large amount, assuming that about 3% of the population is autistic. i'd be very sceptical about the accuracy of such data. you could probably well show the causality in qualitative studies. but then the results are rather anecdotical and certainly somehow biased to draw conclusions about Homo sapiens s. at large.

    given that i live at a place where two generations back people were mass-murdered based on their descendence, also related to psychiatric diagnosis, and that i'm trying to oppose Instrumentelle Vernunft, i'm quiet happy that i assess there's hardly a proof for that thesis.

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