The X-Men (famous mutant characters) are for comic books. How it usually goes in nature, mutations are bad. Once in a rare blue moon, they are good. Often in some odd, unexpected, or plus versus minus type of way.
And actually, hybridization between near species or more robust mixing between more genetically unrelated pairs tends to be better for more useful adaptations.
>And actually, hybridization between near species or more robust mixing between more genetically unrelated pairs tends to be better for more useful adaptations.
Unfortunately we already killed off, or out bred all other members of genus homo.
Though to be fair our ancestors do seem to have got on with them so maybe we just absorbed them more than drove them to extinction?
A lot of research has been done on this, and the vast majority of mutations are neutral, and have no affect on an organism. That is not good, nor bad. Somewhere between 75 to 90 percent of our own DNA, is nonfunctional, and never used.
But in any case, increasing the mutation rate, does increase the chance of bad mutations of happening, since it increases any kind of mutations from happening.
Exposing yourself to excessive radiation is much more likely to cause cancer than superpowers. (In addition to a bunch of neutral mutations that do neither.)
This is going off topic, bit it made me think whether this will change/lessen in a generation or two of remote work. I'm surprised about the height of people I work with when we meet once a year.
more likely because women who are taller tend to be more selective about their partner (they want them to be taller than them).. which means they end up having babies at a later age.
Most mutations are indeed neutral. Of those that aren't though, I believe more have negative effects than positive ones. (But the positive ones are more likely to persist, at least historically, due to natural selection.)
We've wondered if this might have been a factor for our son. Wife and I were 35 when we had him, and he's severely autistic and has Leukemia.
Research says that incidences of both rise as the age of parents does, but it's not something heavily studied at this time. His oncologist said at least partially because they already deal with parents blaming themselves enough.
Indeed. Moreover, there is no reason to think the differences between a young and ‘elderly’ fruitfly have any similarity to humans, as our lifespans are absurdly different…
That's a result of the euphemism treadmill, not of physical reality changing. Some call it advanced maternal age now and it's exactly the same thing, if you go see a fertility specialist you can be sure he will change his recommendations greatly depending on whether you are younger or older than 35.
It's a confusing term as well, as geriatric, even when it comes to technical terms ("geriatric medicine") tends to refer to actual seniors and the elderly.
Descriptions are usually relative. Obviously, a 65+ year old cannot get pregnant, so logically, geriatric pregnancy must mean a pregnancy at the older end of the ages that it is possible to be pregnant.
I was shocked that this was the case and wished I knew about this sooner. Also had kids in mid-30s and it is complicated to say the least. I thought 40 was late (as had some friends succeed at that age).
Statistics are a thing, individual biology and factors are another thing. Had our son when I was 41 and hubby 47 - got pregnant easily, pregnancy and birth was no problem, kiddo doing great.
We did not plan it this late, but just wanted to say that higher age is not a guarantee of bad things.
My wife and I were older than you both when we had two healthy kids. Don't beat yourself up. Correlation != causation. You won a bad lottery, a lottery that young parents 'win' too. Small comfort I know, but that's the truth.
The probability increases because DNA errors accumulate. You're playing a smaller and smaller lottery as you age.
Just because you had a healthy kid does not mean everyone will or that there is no risk.
Humans evolved to have sex and get pregnant before middle age. That's just our biology. DNA itself is a machine, and ours doesn't have built in protections to accommodate later pregnancies with high fidelity. If we had evolutionary pressure, it would. But there is no such pressure.
The numbers go way up in the relative sense but are still quite small in the absolute sense. Evolutionarily speaking I think the differences are irrelevant.
Even though I agree with you, I would like to point out that more experienced and stable parents could be enough of an advantage to balance the benefits of having younger parents. Especially for fathers that have already a settled career and more time to invest in their offspring.
If it were as simple as DNA errors accumulating with age we should observe 1) big population-level jumps in complications when parents started having babies in their 20s rather than teens (in India, my grandparent's generation, 14,15 for the mother and 17,18 for the father) and 2) big population-level effects in complications across birth order. Do we?
Isn't it strange that human cultures at some point thought "teenagers" are when people should start families all over the world from the rolling hills of Bahia to Tamil Nadu to Guandong to the riverlands of Ahafo?
Thats more than simple correlation. Having kids when you are in middle age might have been known as physically difficult, especially for the mother. We've made huge leaps in medicine to trivialize child birth but for most of human existence, it was a game of dice, to some degree it still is, where mother and/or child could perish.
Maybe younger women cope better with the physical stresses of pregnancy? Nature seems to think so.
It isnt so simple as they start having sex. The idea that teenagers sleep around like rabbits is relatively new. Usually sex followed some form of commitment - this case being marriage - in order to protect young women from free willies. Sex wasn't always free.
We absolutely understand this, and my son will be ringing the bell in about 10 days provided one last blood test comes out clear.
It's been a long road to understanding we weren't at fault for either condition though. We lost a lot of friends and family who just found us too needy during that, and that hurt our self confidence as well.
We felt some of the same, not everyone vanished but several did, and I personally didn’t blame them, as we were hard to deal with. I also caught some back channel talk confirming that we were a bit too serious.
We made some friends at the hospital but after all those shared experiences and solidarity none us really kept in touch either. Which is sad in a way but honestly we were all there for one another when we needed it in the way we needed it.
We had to reboot our lives in every way imaginable and that worked for us. It doesn’t for everyone though, some people need the familiar things in life to stay grounded, my wife and I mainly needed each other.
Do your best for yourself and each other. That approach was the main thing that kept me sane afterwards and I don’t regret it for a minute.
I'm not sure we are on the same page here. I was suggesting that where the parents have lived might matter and I think you are saying "The child in question never went to any of those places."
Having children at 35 Didn't seem to be a problem decades ago.. like with many of the other newly popular maladies I think that it has to do more with stuff in our environment poisoning our sperm/ovaries than simply "aging". We might never find the culprit of course because it will hurt X big corporation bottom line.
Hopefully someday we can provide a sperm sample, and get back "Here's your entirely corrected gene-set with no mutations" or maybe even "and here's undoing 100 mutations you got" for insemination
Screening is possible, but what you've described - fixing all DNA errors - is not at all an easy problem.
DNA can have an abundance of errors, epigenetic signals, etc. It has spatial packing and organization problems to overcome. Attempting the repairs themselves will each be bespoke mini problems that could introduce further disease states if the fix fails.
My thinking is that by the time we have this technology as described, the world will have moved beyond humans.
We're in a race. Will we advance 10x in molecular capabilities before we advance to AGI and beyond? I think not.
Speaking as someone who was adopted, I also can't relate to the necessity of having a child borne of your own genes. There are lots of ways to increase value in this world, and solving this problem completely is an incredibly niche application of the limited time and talent we have. The necessary tech advances themselves are way more valuable than the problem described here.
Currently they can and do screen for known mutations in IVF, but they don't correct them; they just filter out eggs that have them. Sperm can be tested, but I don't think it can be filtered.
Plausibly because men with some autistic attributes find it harder to form long-term relationships until they've got more experience than those without.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadAnd actually, hybridization between near species or more robust mixing between more genetically unrelated pairs tends to be better for more useful adaptations.
Unfortunately we already killed off, or out bred all other members of genus homo. Though to be fair our ancestors do seem to have got on with them so maybe we just absorbed them more than drove them to extinction?
But in any case, increasing the mutation rate, does increase the chance of bad mutations of happening, since it increases any kind of mutations from happening.
Exposing yourself to excessive radiation is much more likely to cause cancer than superpowers. (In addition to a bunch of neutral mutations that do neither.)
Research says that incidences of both rise as the age of parents does, but it's not something heavily studied at this time. His oncologist said at least partially because they already deal with parents blaming themselves enough.
Here's a story of a grandmother birthing her own grandchild.
https://people.com/human-interest/grandmother-gave-birth-son...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/geriatric
https://www.health.harvard.edu/d-through-i#G-terms
https://openmd.com/define?q=geriatrics
It’s a bizarre cultural problem.
We did not plan it this late, but just wanted to say that higher age is not a guarantee of bad things.
For men 35 is nothing, men can sire children to their last breath.
Ask your friends who have started families past 35, so many stories about fertility, doctors, etc.
It is also why you see so many twins among middle aged professional couples, the children were the result of fertility treatments.
With the way society is changing, I think eventually human evolution will catch up and allow women to stay fertile later in life.
Just because you had a healthy kid does not mean everyone will or that there is no risk.
Humans evolved to have sex and get pregnant before middle age. That's just our biology. DNA itself is a machine, and ours doesn't have built in protections to accommodate later pregnancies with high fidelity. If we had evolutionary pressure, it would. But there is no such pressure.
Cultures that encourage starting families at 25 will genetically dominate cultures that encourage starting families at 35.
Thats more than simple correlation. Having kids when you are in middle age might have been known as physically difficult, especially for the mother. We've made huge leaps in medicine to trivialize child birth but for most of human existence, it was a game of dice, to some degree it still is, where mother and/or child could perish.
Maybe younger women cope better with the physical stresses of pregnancy? Nature seems to think so.
Not really. That's when they start having sex. So you end up having kids whether you like it or not.
It's been a long road to understanding we weren't at fault for either condition though. We lost a lot of friends and family who just found us too needy during that, and that hurt our self confidence as well.
We made some friends at the hospital but after all those shared experiences and solidarity none us really kept in touch either. Which is sad in a way but honestly we were all there for one another when we needed it in the way we needed it.
We had to reboot our lives in every way imaginable and that worked for us. It doesn’t for everyone though, some people need the familiar things in life to stay grounded, my wife and I mainly needed each other.
Do your best for yourself and each other. That approach was the main thing that kept me sane afterwards and I don’t regret it for a minute.
https://www.cancerhealth.com/article/live-near-cancer-hot-sp...
That said I've been exposed to all kinds of crap in my career. Even money that any given military ship would be considered a moving cancer zone.
DNA can have an abundance of errors, epigenetic signals, etc. It has spatial packing and organization problems to overcome. Attempting the repairs themselves will each be bespoke mini problems that could introduce further disease states if the fix fails.
My thinking is that by the time we have this technology as described, the world will have moved beyond humans.
We're in a race. Will we advance 10x in molecular capabilities before we advance to AGI and beyond? I think not.
Speaking as someone who was adopted, I also can't relate to the necessity of having a child borne of your own genes. There are lots of ways to increase value in this world, and solving this problem completely is an incredibly niche application of the limited time and talent we have. The necessary tech advances themselves are way more valuable than the problem described here.
It's a really good movie, but what's depicted in the film is not necessarily a world I'd like to live in.