Elon Musk is now on his 8th kid?

Life Ascending by Nick Lane

While this is usually socially acceptable by the society (older man younger woman), it comes at a cost to the society.

Or for Elon Musk's case, it comes at a cost to his kids health.

There is roughly 3 billion letters (base pairs) in the human genome. Every times a cell divides, it replicates all of its DNA. This process takes place in a matter of hours. Each letter is copied with precision but it comes with an error rate of one letter in 1,000 million

¹

.

That means that as cell divides, errors slowly builds up. This is known a point mutations, where one letter is substituted for another by mistake. The more time the cell divide, the more such mutation occurs and accumulate.

The female embryo takes about 30 round of cell division to form a new egg while the male sperms needs a hundred rounds of cell division. The older the man the higher the chance of more error in copying.

" The greatest mutational health hazard in the population is fertile old men"

- James Crow

While most of the mutations are point mutations (usually harmless), others like

1. whole chromosomes fail to replicate,

2. whole tract of DNA are deleted,

3. the reversal of letters,

4. bits of chromosomes inverting themselves

5. virus inserting new chunk,

meant that the child may be associated with disease in their life.

While lots of woman chose to prioritise their career and chose to freeze their egg, man should be giving some thoughts of freezing their sperm if they choose to delay child rearing?

As for Elon Musk, you gotta think of stop having babies soon for the sake of the babies and possibly earth.

@ Elon Musk, you really do not have the capability to populate Mars on your own.

Inspired by Life Ascending - Nick Lane

1. This is one hell of a machine, the error rate is tough to match.