UK to allow babies from three people

That stopped some time ago for humans, at least in industralized countries. Modern medicine, long periods of peace and (eventually) welfare provisions have taken care of that. This is a further step in that direction.

Evolution works over huge numbers, both in life and death; by effectively reducing the death-count around the globe, we're progressively abolishing it for humans.

> If anything, genetic modification will allow the less gifted to pool funds and improve their own gene pool in a way that was simply not possible before.

I fear that "pooling funds" could signal a mischaracterization of poor people as "less gifted", which is absolutely not the case. "The poor" are the ones who have historically improved our genepool, by constantly churning huge numbers of children who would then proceed to fight to death (often literally) for survival and success. "The rich" have always opted for in-breeding, low numbers and social welfare among their peers, resulting in weak genes and lots of hereditary diseases surviving the centuries. In this sense, "the poor" have absolutely nothing to gain from genetic manipulation: children are their only resource and they will continue to produce as many as they can, resulting in a stronger and more variegated gene pool without having to add anything to the process.

The GATTACA scenario is real in the sense that a certain mindset is common around modern elites, a view that the rich must be somehow superior to the poor (smarter, healthier, harder-working, etc) otherwise they wouldn't be where they are. Policies like Tony Blair's suggestion that "fat people should pay more for healthcare" are appallingly neo-darwinistic, but they've also been mostly rejected out of a sense of human decency. I expect this will continue to be the case; as a lot of modern history reminds us, it takes very little to send entire populations back to the Middle Ages, and genetic discrimination would light a very powerful fuse.

So, a health secretary?

We have to keep in mind that, e.g. in Japan the fertility rate is 1.4/woman.

The rich people make less children than poor.

Beside, in rich countries fertility rate is dropping, especially in big cities.

Therefore, one way of seen this could be just as palliative.

It's a mitochondria transplant.

We don't start calling people "frankenstein's monsters" because they've had a lung transplant, even though that technically makes them a "person from FOUR people!" Shock!

I would hazard a guess there is a possibility, down the track, that a court will have to determine whether a child has a right to know from whom her DNA comes.

It will be interesting to see, from the comfort of my arm chair, how this all unfolds over time.