#Autism — blame "dear OLD dad"?

There's more evidence coming in, topping some preliminary early findings, that paternal age is a definite contributor to autism.

It's not surprising. In the future, I hope we revisit more genetic syndromes that have been blamed on maternal birth age and ask to what degree dear OLD dad is at fault.

Because this surely applies:

The research team found that the average child born to a 20-year-old father had 25 random mutations that could be traced to paternal genetic material. The number increased steadily by two mutations a year, reaching 65 mutations for offspring of 40-year-old men.

In other conditions as well.