It must be the biological clock of every childless male. Tick tock.

Men, prepare yourselves for the indiginities that society has long subjected women to. And women, prepare yourselves for a level playing field.

Or maybe men with autistic traits lack social skills, and so take longer to find a mate and reproduce. When they finally do, they're older than average, and they pass along the traits.

You might as well add to that the increased risk of dwarfism and schizophrenia in offspring of older fathers. The notion that somehow or other men were exempt from reproductive aging has frequently been knocked down by science only to revive vampire-like in the popular culture. I suppose it has to do with vanity, and all those oder men marrying younger women and wanting a second family, to prove their masculinity twice over.

Vanity, thy name is man.

Lynn's barely contained glee at passing the buck to men instead of women means she'll quote any damn source that supports her point of view.

Um, maybe one study does not a pandemic make, Lynn. Let's gather more info across the spectrum before we 'blame' anyone for a host of conditions called 'autism' we do not yet understand.

You go from 'stury' to speculation. From scientific data to some columnist with no background making up shit. That's nothing to be proud of. Don't do feminism a disservice by dragging that into the fight, too.

"Or maybe men with autistic traits lack social skills, and so take longer to find a mate and reproduce. When they finally do, they're older than average, and they pass along the traits."

This is an interesting point. But, a lot of men reproduce both when they're younger and older. And a lot of them discard the first wife and make a new family with a new, younger wife when the man is in his 40's-50's. So not all men who reproduce at an older age are doing so for the first time. I would like to see whether they address whether the study participants' fathers also had children when they were younger, or whether this was the first child, once the study comes out. But regardless of that, it does say in the abstract that "advancing maternal age showed no association with ASD after adjusting for paternal age," which still places the genetic anomaly squarely on the shoulders (or other part of the anatomy) of the man.

I'm a lab tech at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and I would love to get my hands on the Israeli data. I'm not saying that I can find any fault in their conclusions- I just wish they would dig a little deeper.

As Broadsheet pointed out, age has long been regarded as a deciding factor in the relationship between birth defects and the mother- and there is a solid basis for this conclusion in both human reproductive and evolutionary biology: women do not produce eggs throughout their life-cycle, they produce a store of them. Young women are healthier and would be more likely to have better nutrition- something not always assured during our early development as a species- and so it makes more sense to produce all the eggs she would need in a lifetime during her healthiest and most vital years. A younger mother would also have a better chance for survival, both for her and the child. Men were not responsible for the children, and were driven to have as many children as possible to strengthen their clan and ensure the survival of their line. As such we developed to produce sperm throughout our life-cycle.

This does not mean that age has no effect on the normalcy of their genetic seed, but it is safe to say that the effect has historically been much less significant in men than in women. And that is what makes the Israeli data so interesting. If the cause isn't biologically chronological- that is, if there are no natural processes to explain the genetic degradation- then what is the cause?

Professor Newschaffer hinted at it; 'sperm mutations are more common with age'. Why? Free radicals, radiation, pollution, exposure to synthetic pathogens. Men are more likely to pass along defective DNA because there are more and more pollutants in the environment that cause mutation. I would like to see the Israeli's tie their data into an environmental exposure survey. People are known to develop cancer from environmental hazards, ala Erin Brokovich(sp?). If a fully grown human's DNA can be affected severely enough to cause cancer, and if children are even more susceptible, it only makes sense that it's even easier for mutations to occur in the sperm cells before the child is even conceived.

Just a thought.

Confession: I have rarely felt so meanly glad as when I heard about this new study. As an over-35 first-time pregnant woman, every single study out there leaves me sick with terror, despair, guilt, and shame -- WHY didn't I try to have kids sooner? No matter that I wasn't ready and I hadn't met the right person. Just being "over-35" (36), no matter how healthy and fit I am, no matter how young I look or feel, makes me "at risk." It seemed incredibly unfair that men can wait as long as they want, and have kids when they're 50 with a 20-year old. You see these grizzled geezers swaggering around with these tiny tots...it's about time the fear of God is put into them. Welcome to my world! This study is great because maybe it will FINALLY show men that they aren't immortal. They, too, can be the victims of time.

Dads in their 40's are more likely to a) be exhausted and b) have the resources to find a professional who will diagnose said scion with Autism or more correctly, Aspergers the new upper middle class malady for why your kids are 'special'. Other than that, it's complete crap.

Hi -- You're right to raise the question of environmental factors. I didn't repeat it here because it was mentioned in the earlier post I'd linked to, but -- for one thing -- the CDC has reported that more and more *younger* women (once again, no word on the men) are experiencing reproductive health issues and that environmental factors are possibly to blame. A bit more here: http://www.resolve.org/site/PageServer?pagename=fmed_mcpr2006216. Thanks, all, for your comments.