destinyland writes "Falling costs and garage tinkering are creating a grass roots movement of
amateur biologists whose research is more transparent than that of academia.
Building lab equipment using common household items and even synthesizing new organisms,
their transparency also allows the social pressure which creates a more ethical research.
DIY Bio.org fosters lab co-ops for large equipment and provokes important discussions. (Would it be ethical to release a homegrown symbiote that cures scurvy in hundreds of thousands of people?) This movement could someday lead to bottom-up remedies for disease, fuel-generating microbes, or even a social-networked disease-tracking epidemiology.
"In much the same way that homebrew computer science built the world we live in today, garage biology can affect the future we make for ourselves," argues h+ magazine,
which featured the article in their summer issue." Link to Original Source
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