Whoa (tip to Instapundit):
A stressed-out and traumatized father can leave scars in his children. New research suggests this happens because sperm “learn” paternal experiences via a mysterious mode of intercellular communication in which small blebs break off one cell and fuse with another. ...
Striking evidence that harsh conditions affect a man’s children came from crop failures and war ravaging Europe more than a century ago. In those unplanned human experiments, prolonged famine appeared to set off a host of health changes in future generations, including higher cholesterol levels and increased rates of obesity and diabetes. To probe the inheritance of such changes at the cellular level, Bale and co-workers performed a series of mouse experiments.
Of course, the level of stress needed to create such changes in sperm to pass along the problems from the stress is not clear. We may be talking about many years of constant and massive horrors rather than a tour of duty with a combat job in a war zone. But a researcher not involved in the study notes the potential impact on troops.
And given that being a college student created measurable (but not, it seems, damaging) differences when stress was reported, the possibility is there.
If modern war creates the level of stress noted in the study, the military has an interest in preventing offspring who will be a prime source of recruits from having problems that prevent the potential recruit from joining the military; and avoiding the added costs of treating those problems when the damaged individual is in the military.
Perhaps a benefit of joining the military is freezing pre-deployment sperm so that the effects of war don't contaminate natural impregnation and create problems downstream for the military.
