[gizmo686]

That is why we do long and expensive trials before approving any medication for use.

Having said that, we have we been medically lowering people's cholesterol levels for decades, and the evidence seems pretty clear at this point that it is a net health benefit to those for whom treatment is indicated.

It is not at all obvious that targeted gene editing would be more disruptive to the body compared to flooding the body with a drug that happens to interfere with the one part of the process that we found a drug to interfere with.

Particularly if we are editing the gene to match a form that is already present in much of the population.

[nuc1e0n]

Some issues could only become evident over a period of hundreds of years with gene editing. That's longer than any medical trial I'm aware of. And mistakes made would be difficult, if not impossible, to undo.

If medications can already do what's required for cholesterol issues, why wouldn't we continue to use them rather than making some change to affect a complex balance that could cause problems over very long timescales?

If we were to be editing a specific gene to match what the wider population has, then I'd be more ok with that.