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Comment by jcmeyrignac | Hacker News Reader

My grand-father was gassed in Verdun (WW I).

All his children had pulmonary problems.

Some of his grand-children also have similar problems.

I was doubtful of your implication of a causal relationship between poison gassing of a father and problems passed down genetically. However upon some research I came upon this study, which definitely supports such a relationship:

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917398/

This study is a joke. 20 years after exposure. Self reporting exposure. Done by a country with a huge reason to find positive results so bias is a strong possibility. No mechanism for how exposure could result in genetic modification specific to pulmonary issues.

> 20 years after exposure.

Why is this a problem? They have medical records in Iran. It is a developed country.

> Done by a country with a huge reason to find positive results

What reason? This study was done long after the Iran Iraq war.

> No mechanism for how exposure could result in genetic modification specific to pulmonary issues.

Does every study have to explain a mechanism for cause?

How hold are you? Even if he had you in his forties, you would be more than eighty now.

I don't know much about epigenetics, but I would be highly surprised if this had anything to do with that.

not necessarily. a lot of the people in WWI were young and lied about their age. say he was 16, so born in 1900. he and this person's dad could have very well had kids at 50 or so, i.e. father born 1950 and the person born in 2000 making him young. though he is probably a bit older than this.

That reminds me of the strange little piece of trivia that the last surviving US Civil War widow died in 2020:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/08/last-civil-w...

The grandson of President John Tyler died at 95 years of age in 2020.

John Tyler was President starting in 1841. It is indeed possible.

This has been my go-to "that can't possibly be right" factoid for years. He had two living grandsons the last time someone made me Google it. It looks like one of them indeed passed away in 2020, but the other is still alive albeit no longer in good health[1].

I can never remember when John Tyler was President but he was born in 1790, 232 years ago, which makes it sound even more implausible. We are further in history from the Ice Bucket Challenge than this still-living guy's grandfather's birth was from the end of the American Revolutionary War.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Ruffin_Tyler

This is truly incredible. The grandson of a president from the 1840's has to bear witness to ... the Tic Tok age and China's growing mind control of the world's population.

Never mind, I had a brain fart and misread gand father for father, and the sibling comment provided a link to a study showing that indeed, mustard gas has a measurable effect on spermogenesis and can increase the rate of respiratory diseases in the victims offspring.

My apologies.

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