By D. O. Volente
ConsumerAffairs.com
February 19, 2008 Spanish
A new study says a baby could inherit genetic damage from a father who smokes or drinks too much.
Young men hoping to start a family have been urged to think twice before drinking or smoking heavily in light of new evidence that toxic chemicals can damage sperm for generations.
Scientists tested the effects of a hormone-disrupting fungicide chemical on embryonic rats and discovered they were passed from father to son.
The chemical, vinclozolin, altered genes in the sperm including a number associated with human prostate cancer.
Effects such as damage and overgrowth of the prostate, infertility, and kidney problems, continued across up to four generations of offspring.
The levels of fungicide were far higher than anything humans would be exposed to. But the importance of the study was to show in principle that male offspring could inherit damage caused to their fathers' genes, said the American scientists.
"We have a model to study fetal bases of adult disease," said study leader Dr. Matthew Anway, from the University of Idaho in Moscow. He presented the findings at the annual meeting of the American Society for the Advancement of Science in Boston.
Professor Cynthia Daniels, a political scientist from Rutgers University in New Jersey, who has written books on male and female reproduction, advised men to exercise caution.
Men who drank a lot of alcohol had been shown to have increased rates of sperm defects and nicotine from tobacco found its way into seminal fluid as well as blood, she said.
Daniels said: "We need to open up our eyes and look at the evidence.
"My advice to young couples would be moderation. Substances that have an impact on reproduction are often also carcinogenic. If I was a young man I would not drink very heavily and not smoke two packets of cigarettes a day while I was trying to conceive a child."
