Is it possible for a man's semen to lose "potency" as he ages and due to alcoholism?

Question

Specifically, I mean can the traits/ genetics thet he'd pass along to his offspring be altered as he gets older and if he was a heavy alcoholic? Someone I know has several older siblings with dark features. He and his younger brother have light features. He says his dad was "less potent"
(whatever that means- his words) as he got older and thats why he and his brother are light skinned. Does this make since to you? I'm most curious about eye and skin color.

Answer 1

No, that's false. Think about it this way...your friend being a male dispels his own statements all by itself. The mother carries XX chromosomes to determine gender. The father carries XY chromosomes to determine gender. The only way your friend and his brother are male is specifically because his father passed along the Y and not the X.

With regard to physical traits: One in four children will pick up a recessive gene. The other three will pick up the dominant gene from the other parent. The traits are still carried, but they don't fully develop. Several things can alter the color of the skin, giving someone light features, not the least of which being their diet and the amount of exposure they have to the sun. Other factors include a toning down of the pigment's intensity because the two sets of genes passed by the parents temper each other. That's why a dark-skinned African American father can have several different skin tones among the children he parents with a light-skinned woman.

Eye color is never stagnant and passed in whole to a child. My mother's eyes were very dark brown. My father's eyes were very pale green. I have hazel eyes that are gold and green. My oldest brother had dark eyes. My younger brother has green eyes. My sister has grey eyes...that came from a grandparent.

A man's semen can lose potency as far as its ability to swim well and live in the hostile reproductive tract of the woman long enough to fertilize an egg. But the traits programmed into the genes carried in the sperm don't mutate like that.

Answer 2

Dark eyes are dominant. Normally a marriage between a dark eyed person and a blue or hazel eyed person will produce 3 children with dark eyes and 1 with blue eyes.
Now a dark eyed person can carry some very strong recessive blue eyed genes and
even if they marry another dark eyed person they can have blue eyed children.

Since dark eyes are dominant if a person has blue or hazel eyes, any recessive brown eyed genes they carry will be very weak. Now two blue eyed persons marry and one has a brown eyed parent, they will not have a brown eyed child. It is a fallacy that says two blue eyed people cannot have a brown eyed child. If both blue eyed persons have a brown eyed parents, the combining of the weak recessive brown eyed genes from both parents can produce brown eyed children.
This is true of a lot of hereditary defects. For instance a person that is epilectic and marries someone that has no epilepsy in the family has less chance of producing an epilectic child than two people who are not epilectic but both have an epilectic parent.
Weak recessive genes when they are combined from both parents produce the recessive trait.

My maternal grandfather was of Polish- Jewish descent. It was found out quite by accident due to a lab mix up that I carry the Tay Sachs gene. The pediatrician of my sister's children, who was Jewish, decided to test her children. Her daughter has it but her son doesn't. Now none of my grandfather's offsprings or descendants have been Tay Sachs, but if any of us who have inherited the gene were to marry another person carrying the Tay Sachs gene, we would have a great chance of having a Tay Sachs child. They did invitro surgery on a woman carrying a Tay Sachs baby. They came from New Iberia Louisiana. A large portion of the Catholic population of New Iberia has the Tay Sachs gene and it can all be traced back to one Eastern European ancestor.

Answer 3

Alcoholism can cause the sperm count to be reduced thus, in return causing problems in concieving a child. But I have never heard such a thing about alcohol altering the genetics and traits of skin color or eyes.

Answer 4

Studies show that a dad's age at the time of conception affects his child's potential for inheriting certain diseases:
---In Down's Syndrome, if both parents are over 40 at the time of conception, the father's age plays a role.
---Autism is more likely to occur if the dad is over 40.
---Schizophrenia in children is linked to older dads.
---Miscarriages are more common in pregnancies when the father is over age 40.
---A higher risk of inheriting Apert Syndrome (webbed fingers and toes) occurs in pregnancies with older fathers, starting at age 33.

http://www.medicinenet.com/scnpt/main/art.asp?articlekey=79490

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/10/021018080014.htm

Of course, impotency increases if the dad has hardening of the arteries, diabetes, kidney disease, chronic alcoholism, multiple sclerosis, an enlarged prostate, or vascular disease--all diseases associated with aging.

Gentlemen, your biological clocks are running!