> If the NHS starts giving out vaccines today they'll be giving out botox in a few years time, right!?
People can already (though perhaps to a lesser extent) have designer bodies, if they can afford it, thanks to modern medicine. Genetic medicine doesn't seem to introduce a fundamentally new problem.
Can't we just extend whatever laws with the addition of this specific treatment? Anything else has to be looked at on a case by case basis.
Cue people shouting about how politics are slow and killing people while also forcing politicians into making medical judgements that they may not be qualified for, further increasing the chance that they become the playthings of lobbyists who "do their homework for them".
I'm utterly divided on this issue by the way, just noting the inevitable discussion that follows your logic.
> "But one thing is for sure, once this alteration has taken place, as someone has said, once the gene is out of the bottle, once these procedures that we're asked to authorise today go ahead, there will be no going back for society."
Replacing mitochondria is very different to designing genetic traits, either through careful selection of eggs and embryos, or splicing, and I think that conflating the two is silly.
If laws were introduced that would allow modification of the primary genetic material that debate would be had then. This law will not shoo-in laws that provide for that kind of genetic modification.