It's not necessarily the case that the father needed to have the gene. In any case, the article says that he supported the prosecution of his wife. It would seem very unlikely that he would have this mutation. It's extremely rare, probably because it's often fatal. It was not fatal to Ms. Folbigg herself, which is a strong caveat to the case which is discussed in the article, but there are cases of disease genes not necessarily producing symptoms of the disease. It may be more of a risk to children than to adults; perhaps some people having this gene will survive it long enough for some effects, possibly maturity itself, leading to physiological amelioration of the risk of death.
Even some recessive genes have health effects. In the case of Sickle Cell Anemia, people carrying a single recessive allele do not have sickle cell disease, but they are immune to malaria.
A dominant disease gene is apparently the case in Jimmy Carter's family, where both of his parents and all of his siblings died from pancreatic cancer. (His mother Lillian, lived to a fairly old age however.). I would assume he inherited the double recessive gene and thus did not get pancreatic cancer. I know at some point I looked this gene up, but I've forgotten what it was.
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