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It seems like you are asking why eugenics has been rejected as unethical. If so, Wikipedia has some starting info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Ethics

First of all nobody is talking about enforcing anything, so the "you want to kill people!" slippery slope is out of the way. Second: where is the line then? If I have AIDS should I have children (and not get treatment to avoid infecting them)?, if you say "no" that is eugenics. I, myself, I'm carrier of a disease that I is mostly genetic, so I decided that I will never have children. Discouraging the (pre-) existence of unhealthy childs is not nazism and people should stop pretending it is.

You just confused Eugenics with Euthanasia which are completely different things.

Eugenics is reproductive control on a very high level, and may go even as far as governmental control on procreation.

Aside the ethical problems with Eugenics there's also a problem raising from simple statistics: In which way shall it be decided who may procreate with whom and who not? Any kind of biased selection eventually leads to a drop in genetic diversity. However the smaller the genetic diversity the higher the chance for illnesses and defects to spread within the population. So if the ultimate goal is genetic diversity the only sound selection would be to make as much mix-and-matches as possible.

Interestingly enough mitochondrial transplantation adds a little to genetic diversity, because it dissolves the meiosis relationship between female nuclear DNA and mitochondrial DNA.

Genetic diversity is not a problem when your sample population is of 7 billions.

Two questions:

(1) is it fair to prohibit someone from having one biological child, while others can have five or six, just because she got unlucky in the genetic lottery, assuming she can afford the procedure?

(2) assuming legalization, is the number of children born from parents with this problem really going to have a significant impact in the worldwide population levels? Isn't it like stopping bathing to save water while you continue to water your lawn every day?

I think it's more like ceasing to wash your hands after using the bathroom while continuing to shower and water your lawn.

Selection of those who are allowed to be most fecund seems to me like a natural extension of neo-darwinism. We've fallen in to a position where the human race has engineered in - by social and technical changes - the ability for those with low morals and low intelligence and low natural survivability to survive and reproduce. It's not like we've been neutral, we're already currently acting to alter the survivability of different traits in humans.

Luck doesn't seem to have a scientific basis. No one chose for the person to have an innate biological inability to produce healthy offspring whilst another person does have that ability [to a greater extent]. How is it not fair? Clearly being unfair is allowed as you said "assuming she can afford it", why should financial ability trump biological suitability? That doesn't seem fair nor sensible.

Will children born from parents who are otherwise unable to reproduce, due to their innate biology, contribute to global population increase over the long term? Well, yes, if we allow it to. Or as is suggested here, we choose it.

Use your shower water to water your lawn, make sure you're washing without chemicals that are going to cause a detrimental impact on flora, waterlife, groundwater and such.

To use your analogy I'd say choosing to enable the continued acceleration of global population increase is like legislating to guarantee the use of lawn sprinklers when there's a shortage of drinking water. Your analogy is twisted as without allowing this procedure to take place we will still have more people than we need to continue the human race [of course if we need more people in the future for colonisation of other planets, or whatever, then the argument may well change].

"engineered in the ability for those with low morals and low intelligence and low natural survivability to survive and reproduce"

On the other side, we've also engineered in the ability for societies with low morals and low intelligence and low natural survivability to thrive on foreign aid and green revolution and raw minerals export.

Maybe we should be fixing this from the angle of letting poor and inefficient cultures starve, rather that preventing more productive cultures reproduce?

Luck doesn't seem to have a scientific basis. No one chose for the person to have an innate biological inability to produce healthy offspring whilst another person does have that ability [to a greater extent]. How is it not fair?

That she has an inability is not fair nor unfair; it simply is. That you chose to criminalize her decision to have children via this procedure is a choice, and in my opinion, it's unfair since it discriminates people and for no good reason.

I'm a fat, lazy slob, and I'm allowed to have children, and she isn't? That's simply wrong.

Clearly being unfair is allowed as you said "assuming she can afford it", why should financial ability trump biological suitability? That doesn't seem fair nor sensible.

Who says it should trump? As far as I'm concerned neither should be restricted from having children. You're the only one arguing for restrictions.

The idea of financial ability was merely to say that my position doesn't require others to pay for it.

Use your shower water to water your lawn, make sure you're washing without chemicals that are going to cause a detrimental impact on flora, waterlife, groundwater and such.

What "chemicals"? It's just a child like any other. We have no reason to believe it's more harmful than mine or yours. If she should prevented from having them, on what grounds shouldn't we prevented everyone else?

To use your analogy I'd say choosing to enable

Ah, but that's the thing. You view this as "choosing to enable". But nobody is asking you to enable anything; just to not throw people who decide to have the procedure done in prison (or fining them or whatever).

"To me our current population seems barely sustainable"

Which population?

Population in Africa is barely sustainable, but they aren't getting mitochondria implants there, not even diag.

Population in e. g. Germany is shrinking, they have money and they certainly want to make sure everybody who is willing to bear kids get them.

That's two different populations with different solution.

The african continent is 30 million square kilometers and 1.1 billion people. India is 3 million square kilometers with 1.2 billion people.

Okay, we're excluding India too. How about Europe?

The global population of 8 billion for the resources available on the planet in order to create sustainability going forward that will allow the planet to continue to sustain 8 billion people - and the greater number as death rates decline - for the foreseeable future.

According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany, Germany's natural population as deaths-vs-births has declined by up to 0.24% (-2.4 per mille listed on Wikipedia) per annum. However, the same page indicates that Germany has the largest migrant population - 10 million people - who are not in those figures.

I've not looked at their population stats in detail but first indications are that their population is not falling.

Natural population of European countries falling doesn't create extra resources on the planet.

Lets turn it around, explain why Germany need an increase in endemic population? How does that benefit the rest of us?

Endemic German population don't need to explain itself to "the rest of you" because it is self-sufficient and even generating substantial "revenue" being an industry locomotive.

On the other hand, endemic African population can't even feed themself and rely on foreign aid and still starve.

It is obvious that we should make sure stable and productive society remains stable. Yes, lifting Africa out of poverty is important, but more important is not kicking Germany into poverty.

Which might as well happen if we populate it with random starving people from that 8 billion and order them fed no matter what.

So, Germans are going to try to keep their endemic population and culture because they can and should. And the "rest of you" should probably learn how to survive without wasting precious planetary surface.

> Now, I'm sure if I were in the situation of this enabling me to have a biological family then I'd want it [...]

Personally, I wouldn't be so sure. Having kids is a leap of faith and involves risks no matter what you do, of course, but if I had a problem which a) prevented me from having kids without assistance and b) may result in unknown complications later for my child, I'm not sure I'd do it. At that point being a loving, generous, responsible parent may mean not being a parent at all (or adopting).

I'd have to know what the odds and severity of any potential problems would be in order to compare that to other (normal) genetic risks, though.

Population growth is an interesting phenomena. If you look at the end-game, we have a trend of industrialization and 3rd world countries industrializing. After a country has industrialized, birth rates tend to drop off, even past the point of sustaining population level. Population declines have many negative economic consequences.