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What Fathers Pass Down

What's inherited from your father and how.

"Scientists were investigating a tantalizing but controversial hypothesis: that a man’s experiences can alter his sperm, and that those changes in turn may alter his children.

That idea runs counter to standard thinking about heredity: that parents pass down only genes to their children. People inherit genes that predispose them to obesity, or stress, or cancer—or they don’t. Whether one’s parents actually were obese or continually anxious doesn’t rewrite those genes."

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