But the thread also tells you about the euphemism under the guise of 'ego' in the article, and how society today is structured (ie. power of the old vs. youth in our times). At his age, he should clearly let go, by all standards, even if it so difficult. To quote a famous speech from another control freak who at least knew all about this, luckily Nature has provisions because it "clears out the old, to make room for the new. Right now the new is you. But you won't always be."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_age_effect
Still, the mother's age is a lot more important, all things considered.
> In 1933, Lionel Penrose analyzed data for 727 children in 150 families and found no paternal age effect for the risk of Down syndrome after controlling for the maternal age effect. Largely based on a 2003 paper by Fisch et al. that found a paternal age effect only "in association with a maternal age of 35 years and older", a 2009 review of the literature subsequent to Penrose's paper concludes that "a paternal-age effect exists, but is very small in comparison to maternal-age effect in Down syndrome prevalence".
In principle, I suppose this is compatible with what your article stated:
> "Older fathers may contribute just as much as older mothers to the dramatic increase in Down syndrome risk faced by babies born to older couples. A new study found that older fathers were responsible for up to 50% of the rise in Down syndrome risk when the mother was also over 40.
I'm not sure how many conflicting studies are out there and factored into the 2009 review.
How could you distinguish between those two effects in order to be confident that younger age is a significant contributing factor?
edit: Also, as someone who's had to use sperm donation to conceive...
> Wonder if that's his kid?
is pretty offensive. It's his kid, whether he's the genetic father or not.