There's an ethical debate to be had about 'three-parent babies' but nobody seems keen

There doesn’t seem much doubt about which way the Commons vote today on ‘three-parent babies’ will go, does there? A combination of dismissive metaphors, characteristically British sentimentalism and morally astigmatic scientists seems likely to do the trick. Today in the Telegraph, Lord Winston, IVF supremo, opined that the thing was no more problematic than a blood transfusion. In the Times, Matt Ridley, dismissed the importance of mitochondrial donation (the ‘third parent’ bit) as no more important to us than our gut bacteria. A Daily Mail journalist on the Westminster Hour last night brusquely observed that the technique was rather like changing a spare tyre. Add to the mix a photogenic would-be beneficiary of the technique in the papers, plus the intervention of the Catholic and Anglican bishops against the proposal, and hey, the issue is now science (and compassion) versus religion. And we know how that’ll go.