Critical ethical points have been raised by Britain becoming the first country in the world to allow mitochondrial transfer, or – to give it its proper name – "babies with three parents". The technique was pioneered to combat a range of mitochondrial disorders with a pretty high incidence – they afflict one in 6,500.
Before we get to any of the ethical points, linger for a second on the achievement of Newcastle University, where the technique was invented. Higher education is talked down so relentlessly, presented by politicians – particularly now – as just a money-sucking leftwing conspiracy run for the convenience of immigrants, that it's easy to forget what they're actually there for, and how mind-bendingly good they are at it.
But moving on to the ethical underpinning: whenever a technique involves an embryo, the first dissenting voices are always from the anti-abortion lobby. That's understandable – to confer personhood upon an embryo is the only logical place to go, having conferred personhood upon a foetus, and from there the embryo must be protected and a whole slew of fertility and medical treatments become unethical. In the US, pro-abortion campaigners actually rely quite heavily on this angle to sink anti-abortion legislation – people who might naturally vote against women's reproductive rights change their minds when the possibility is raised that they might need IVF one day.
It's true that, here in the UK, the idea of the rights of the embryo has never really gathered steam, but it's nevertheless taken as given that if you're pro-choice, then it's your job always to make the case that the destruction of embryos is neither here nor there. And I would make that case, happily – but it doesn't, and shouldn't necessarily, follow that any ethical issue raised by the modification of human genetic material is A-OK, part of the pro-choice package.
There are moral questions here that have very little to do with the abortion debate: is it defensible to make alterations at a genetic level whose impact on future children we simply don't know? Is there any fundamental difference between screening out diseases and screening out undesirable traits? The spectre is sometimes conjured of a Blade Runner future, in which the rich can modify their foetuses to perfection while the poor have to take what nature throws at them. I personally am of the view that, if we do end up in Blade Runner, genetic modification will be one of our lesser problems, but that doesn't mean it's not worth thinking about.
There are clearly implications here that go beyond the curative properties of the technique as it's used at the moment, and questions thrown up to which the answer "think of all the suffering alleviated for mitochondrial disorder sufferers" is insufficient.