‘Del Boy billionaire’ behind the Range saves the Wilko name (but only 36 jobs)

By Emily Hawkins

Updated: 09:35 EDT, 15 September 2023

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There is a nine-year goldilocks zone when it comes to giving birth with minimal risks, scientists say.

A study of more than 31,000 births showed that women aged 23 to 32 had the lowest risk of birth defects compared to women younger or older than the ages within that range. 

Giving birth as a teenager or early twenty-something raised the chance of the child being born with central nervous system malformations, while mature pregnancies were associated most closely with congenital disorders of the head, neck, ears, and eyes.  

The researchers said their findings indicated a need for modernized pregnancy safety screening tools as the childbearing age in the developed world inches older and older by the decade.  

The report also presents possible explanations for the different risks by age group, positing that young mothers are often unprepared for pregnancy and must contend with more unhealthy lifestyle factors such as drug and alcohol use. 

Older women have been exposed to environmental stressors such as air pollution for longer, which the scientists believe may contribute to their risk of different birth defects.

The study comes as the average age of new moms in the America hitting its highest point on record.

The American women are now giving birth for the first time at age 30 on average, up from 27.2 years in 2000 and 24.6 years in 1970. 

The rising age of first-time-mothers has been attributed to myriad factors including social and cultural shifts translating to delayed marriage and more time spent on leisure and travel, increased prospects for women in the labor force, and financial constraints.  

Scientists at Semmelweis University in Hungary analyzed data from 31,128 pregnancies with confirmed non-chromosomal birth defects recorded in the Hungarian Case-Control Surveillance of Congenital Abnormalities between 1980 and 2009.

They compared that data with more than 2.8 million births registered with the Hungarian Central Statistical Office during that same 30-year period.

Overall, the risk of non-chromosomal birth defects increased by about a fifth for births in women under the age of 22. That risk increased by about 15 percent in women above the age of 32.

The most common and life-threatening complications affected the fetus’ circulatory system and, in the case of mothers under 20, the central nervous system.

Younger mothers were 25 percent more likely to see defects in their babies’ central nervous systems compared to older mothers. 

Women who gave birth younger than 20 saw an even greater risk of malformations in the central nervous system.

Older mothers, on the other hand, showed a 100 percent higher risk of having a baby with malformations of the eyes, ears, face, and neck, such as low-set ears.

Women on the older end of the spectrum were also more likely to see heart defects as well as more malformations of the urinary system. 

And older mothers have a considerably higher likelihood – 45 percent in fact – of giving birth to a baby with a cleft lip and palate, while a younger mother’s risk increases by nine percent.

While the risk of birth defects in the digestive system was higher for younger mothers than older ones – 23 percent and 15 percent respectively – older mothers had a slightly higher chance of fetal genital malformations.

Dr Boglárka Pethő, assistant professor at Semmelweis University and the first author of the study said: ‘We can only assume why non-chromosomal birth anomalies are more likely to develop in certain age groups.

‘For young mothers, it could be mainly lifestyle factors (e.g., smoking, drug or alcohol consumption) and that they are often not prepared for pregnancy.

‘Among advanced-aged mothers, the accumulation of environmental effects such as exposure to chemicals and air pollution, the deterioration of DNA repair mechanisms, and the ageing of the eggs and endometrium can also play a role.’

The report was published in the journal BJOG: an International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology. 

A baby boom in the mid-20th century saw the average woman give birth to between three and four children. Today, just 1.6 children – the lowest level recorded since data was first tracked in 1800.

Women who get pregnant and give birth beyond age 35 typically have more dangerous pregnancies. Older mothers may be at increased risk of miscarriage, high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, and a difficult labor.

The findings pertained to non-genetic birth defects which are not influenced by the mother’s genes.

Previous research has confirmed the association between older maternal age and certain genetic disorders, namely Down’s syndrome, for which the risk increases from about 1 in 1,250 for a woman who conceives at age 25, to about 1 in 100 for a woman who conceives at age 40.

Prof. Nándor Ács, director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Semmelweis University said: ‘Non-genetic birth disorders can often develop from the mothers’ long-term exposure to environmental effects.

‘Since the childbearing age in the developed world has been pushed back to an extreme extent, it is more important than ever to react appropriately to this trend.’

Tesla owners have filed a lawsuit against the Elon Musk-owned company, claiming a their vehicles’ car batteries with ill-conceived automatic software updates.

In some instances, the suit alleges, plaintiffs were compelled to buy brand new batteries, at a cost of up to $15,000, to replace those bricked the ‘bad software.’

The Tesla owners claim these software updates came ‘without warning’ and cut their cars’ driving range by at least 20 percent. 

And a few of the owners spent between $500 and $750 to undo the offending update, according to the suit.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs stated that the class action applies to the company’s Model S and Model X vehicles and that other Tesla owners, based on the public response to this class action, appear to be affected as well.

‘We have had a lot of interest,’ Steve Berman, an attorney representing the Tesla owners, told the Dailymail.com.

‘We brought a not to unsimilar case v. Tesla and were successful,’ Berman says.

‘When car owners purchase their vehicles,’ the lawsuit reads, ‘they reasonably expect that unforeseen events — like weather, accidents, or flat tires — may impact the performance of their vehicles and lead to costly repairs.’ 

‘But no reasonable consumer would expect that the car manufacturer itself, through an automated system, would deliberately and significantly interfere with the car’s performance,’ the suit claims, ‘through software updates that reduce the operating capacity of the vehicles.’

That said, however, previous suits against Tesla have accused the automaker of similarly ham-fisted software patches, as the new complaint makes plain.

One such case, filed on August 7, 2019, claimed that Tesla defrauded its customers by ‘placing an artificial, software induced limitation on the total number of usable kilo-watt hours (‘kWh’)’ thereby undermining customers’ ability to ‘charge the battery cells up to the natural and normal amount of approximately 4.2 volts.’  

Attorneys for Tesla moved to settle that 2019 case almost immediately, ultimately offering to compensate each qualifying party to the suit $625 apiece.

During that case, Tesla’s outside counsel Sean P. Gates admitted via court declaration that ‘Data from Tesla shows that 1,743 2012-2016 Model S vehicles in the United States were subject to a 10 percent voltage limitation caused by a May 2019 software update.’

The issue, Gates said, was reportedly corrected in future software updates over the course of the next ten months. 

Controversy has trailed the software updates implemented on Tesla vehicles in recent months, both at home and abroad.

Last week, a recall of 1.1 million Tesla vehicles in China — nearly one full quarter of all Teslas on the road to date — was vowed to be corrected with a remote software update fixing trouble with each car’s ‘regenerative braking system.’

Critics with consumer safety groups have said that this energy-saving, automated braking system has led to accidents by conflicting with the driver’s own input via the traditional foot pedals.

But Musk has downplayed the gravity of software update issues in recent months. In February, the billionaire criticized the United States National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) for describing any Tesla issue that could be fixed via a software update as a ‘recall,’ regardless of the circumstances.

‘The word ‘recall’ for an over-the-air software update is anachronistic and just flat wrong!’ Musk announced via Twitter. 

The NHTSA website specifies that the agency issues a recall whenever its regulators or the car’s manufacturer determines that ‘a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards.’ 

The agency sys that it only requires manufacturers to fully repurchase vehicles from owners in ‘rare cases.’ 

Steve Berman, one of the attorneys representing the Tesla owners in the new class action, described the recall debate as ‘an interesting question,’ but ultimately a semantic issue with no ‘legal significance.’

‘A consumer doesn’t care how its characterized but rather cares what the impact on the car might be,’ Berman told the Dailymail.com via email. 

‘Here the impact is to adversely effect the most important selling point for an electric vehicle, THE BATTERY!’