Epigenetics-The long continued(sustained environmental pollution) may damage the genes of spermatids and Ova.

 

  Dr (Prof S K Pal of Kolkata) is against late marriage of women . Why?? Most women now expect – and need – to work. So we  as Obstetrician don’t have much choice but to take a gamble, and hope that her  ovaries will hold out.

  The adverse effects of environmental pollutants causing minor changes in the genes in some older individuals on sperm cells or oogonia are termed by the geneticists as “epigenetics”  .Epigenetic: a relatively new field exploring how genes are affected by factors other than the underlying DNA sequence.Years of absorbing airborne pollution, pesticides and all manner of endocrine disrupters may create “epimutations” in sperm cells, with consequences for the resulting children.

“the proportion of children of older fathers or mothers who have psychiatric or neurological disorders is higher than in children of parents of average age.”

This is an important point to make. Couples have always had children in their thirties and forties. Before the invention of the Contraceptive pill in 1962  there wasn’t much they could do to prevent it. Government records show that, for the first half of the 20th century, the number of babies born to women over 40 was actually much the same as it now. In fact, there was a tremendous surge in later-life pregnancies after the Second World War, when couples who had been separated by the fighting were finally reunited under the sheets. In fact, there were more babies born to women over 40 in 1947 than there were in 2011. (A whopping 34,696, compared with 29,350.)

The resulting generation of children – the Baby Boomers – were not disastrously compromised by learning disabilities, autism and the like (although it is impossible to compare the figures for then and now because such things were seldom diagnosed). In any case, the sky did not fall in.

British society survived this epidemic of late-born babies, and prospered.

The idea that it is unusual, even unnatural, for a woman over 35 to procreate is a thoroughly modern prejudice – a consequence, in fact, of our space-age ability to manipulate nature. From the mid-Sixties onwards – after the contraceptive pill became available on the NHS – the number of babies born to women over 40 plummeted. By 1977, it had fallen to a meagre 5,988. Older mothers virtually disappeared from sight.

From a purely medical point of view, that might have been a good thing. But the world changed again. Like it or not (and I do) feminism happened. Most women now expect – and need – to work. So we don’t have much choice but to take a gamble, and hope that our ovaries will hold out.