High cholesterol is well documented to be heritable. Perhaps more relevantly, even if they would work, lifestyle changes have a significant patient compliance problem, which significantly reduces their effectiveness.
There is a more reasonable brother argument to could make, which is that we have well tested and effective drugs available today for managing cholesterol. Any new treatment would need to clear the bar of being better than those (in at least some circumstances) to be put into wide use. This bar may cleared by the fact that existing treatments often have adverse side effects.
Further, the one time treatment aspect is actually a demerit in some ways, as one cannot stop the treatment if there is an adverse effect. This means that the safety profile would need to be much better than us typically required. And proven over a longer timeline.
Of course, this is all concerns about approval and widespread deployment. We are still in the early human trial phase, where much more risk is accepted (subject, of course, to ethical guidelines).
Genetic treatments have the scope to not only have unintended consequences, but unintended consequences that can last over generations of people. I am in favour of them for some things, but we need to tread very carefully with the technology.
There is a more reasonable brother argument to could make, which is that we have well tested and effective drugs available today for managing cholesterol. Any new treatment would need to clear the bar of being better than those (in at least some circumstances) to be put into wide use. This bar may cleared by the fact that existing treatments often have adverse side effects.
Further, the one time treatment aspect is actually a demerit in some ways, as one cannot stop the treatment if there is an adverse effect. This means that the safety profile would need to be much better than us typically required. And proven over a longer timeline.
Of course, this is all concerns about approval and widespread deployment. We are still in the early human trial phase, where much more risk is accepted (subject, of course, to ethical guidelines).