Do Men Have Biological Clocks?
Many people know that a woman’s ability to conceive drops dramatically after the age of 35 and the chance of becoming pregnant drops to 5 percent by age 40. At some point between the ages of 40 to 60 a woman’s supply of eggs is exhausted, estrogen production stops, and the woman goes through menopause. The biological clock has stopped. But Fertility doctors have successfully treated couples where the man is older than 35. It seems, though, that ever so often a story pops up about an older man who fathered a child naturally. Is this the norm or the exception? It may surprise you to find that a man’s sperm does have a shelf life, and the older a man waits to father a child, the more likely his offspring will suffer from serious health problems such as severe birth defects, schizophrenia, and autism. Fertility doctors sometimes perform preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in conjunction with in vitro fertilization (IVF) to select healthy embryos if chromosomal abnormalities or genetic
