A Biohacker Regrets Publicly Injecting Himself With CRISPR (theatlantic.com) 131
Sarah Zhang, reporting for The Atlantic: When Josiah Zayner watched a biotech CEO drop his pants at a biohacking conference and inject himself with an untested herpes treatment, he realized things had gone off the rails. Zayner is no stranger to stunts in biohacking -- loosely defined as experiments, often on the self, that take place outside of traditional lab spaces. You might say he invented their latest incarnation: He's sterilized his body to "transplant" his entire microbiome in front of a reporter. He's squabbled with the FDA about selling a kit to make glow-in-the-dark beer. He's extensively documented attempts to genetically engineer the color of his skin. And most notoriously, he injected his arm with DNA encoding for CRISPR that could theoretically enhance his muscles -- in between taking swigs of Scotch at a live-streamed event during an October conference. (Experts say -- and even Zayner himself in the live-stream conceded -- it's unlikely to work.) So when Zayner saw Ascendance Biomedical's CEO injecting himself on a live-stream earlier this month, you might say there was an uneasy flicker of recognition.
Ascendance Bio soon fell apart in almost comical fashion. The company's own biohackers -- who created the treatment but who were not being paid -- revolted and the CEO locked himself in a lab. Even before all that, the company had another man inject himself with an untested HIV treatment on Facebook Live. And just days after the pants-less herpes treatment stunt, another biohacker who shared lab space with Ascendance posted a video detailing a self-created gene therapy for lactose intolerance. The stakes in biohacking seem to be getting higher and higher. "Honestly, I kind of blame myself," Zayner told me recently. He's been in a soul-searching mood; he recently had a kid and the backlash to the CRISPR stunt in October had been getting to him. "There's no doubt in my mind that somebody is going to end up hurt eventually," he said.
Ascendance Bio soon fell apart in almost comical fashion. The company's own biohackers -- who created the treatment but who were not being paid -- revolted and the CEO locked himself in a lab. Even before all that, the company had another man inject himself with an untested HIV treatment on Facebook Live. And just days after the pants-less herpes treatment stunt, another biohacker who shared lab space with Ascendance posted a video detailing a self-created gene therapy for lactose intolerance. The stakes in biohacking seem to be getting higher and higher. "Honestly, I kind of blame myself," Zayner told me recently. He's been in a soul-searching mood; he recently had a kid and the backlash to the CRISPR stunt in October had been getting to him. "There's no doubt in my mind that somebody is going to end up hurt eventually," he said.
Guys guys guys.... (Score:4, Funny)
That's how evil super villains are created and super heros.
We were close to have Herpes-Man running around!!!
Re:Guys guys guys.... (Score:5, Funny)
We were close to have Herpes-Man running around!!!
As I understand things, there are quite a lot of them running around already.
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Imagine if Herpes-man's super-power was to eliminate herpes in anybody that they swap bodily fluids with... talk about popular!
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You're so very very close..
I did really upset a woman once because she had herpes. I didn't even say, "Get away from me you disease ridden hag", I just said, "This isn't going to work out."
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That's how evil super villains are created and super heros.
We were close to have Herpes-Man running around!!!
This is almost the plot of "Future Man" on Hulu.
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A new Youtube sensation (Score:5, Funny)
Splicers! (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone who has played Bioshock already knows how this all ends.
Re: Splicers! (Score:2, Informative)
Im already stocked up on plasmids and have a working drill arm prototype.
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And I've been harvesting Little Sisters for spare Adam!
I mean.... umm....
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Anyone who has played Bioshock already knows how this all ends.
Bring on the underwater libertarian paradise!
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Communist propaganda! It'll be a new world, pitiless and pure! Everything will be super!
Hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
When he does it it's because he's a "social activist", when others do it it's because "to get press and get publicity and get famous".
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"hypocrite" is basically a synonym for "social activist".
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1. Perform stunt -> gain publicity
2. Publicly regret stunt -> more publicity
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No, what the dude regrets is stopping, because he stopped getting attention. He's making noise now because others are getting the attention.
"Oh man, this is out of hand! I should know, because I used to do this myself. I basically started this whole scene. Wow. It's so out of hand now, guys. Look what I've done! I stopped and I"m responsible now, so don't blame me for anything bad. But remember, if anything useful comes out of this or it becomes some giant industry, it was because I was such a pioneer."
Re:Hypocrisy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hypocrisy (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't hypocrisy. This is a change of opinion.
For many people, there is no distinction. This is what is behind public distrust of science.
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Also, Zayner was doing stuff with his own body, which I find perfectly reasonable. He probably started to realize there would be copycats, and that he might have inspired other people to hurt themselves.
Re:Hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
It is so important that people stop thinking this way.
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He didn't change his mind, he supposedly felt sorry for setting off the trend ... but he assigned entirely different motivations to himself than he did to others.
Saline solution (Score:5, Interesting)
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to get some media attention.
Worse than that, it's the only way he could get anyone to look at his naked bottom.
Flat-earthers vindicated (Score:3, Funny)
Suddenly that flat-earther rocket dude doesn't like quite as foolish anymore.
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Few Nobel Prizes Winners did similar things (Score:5, Interesting)
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And if they are not, there may not be anyone around to point the finger.
Also, Bruce Sterling called it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Yep. Scientist who proved ulcers were caused by infections had to prove it to his own satisfaction by injecting himsef. Nothing grants forgiveness like being right.
Immaturity runs amok (Score:1)
People injecting untested bio-treatments as publicity, the Prez suggesting that the answer to school gun violence is to arm all teachers, political think tanks suggesting that we can safely ignore global warming...
Is there a strain of the flu going around that reduces emotional maturity to that of an 8-year-old?
I don't think the social landscape reflects right vs. left, I think it reflects the lowest common denominator; what is the base level of maturity that most people seem willing to embrace? Is it just
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> Is there a strain of the flu going around that reduces emotional maturity to that of an 8-year-old?
Perhaps you thought blind faith in science wouldn't lead to something like this? You're probably part of the cabal that thinks we can treat the guys in white lab coats the same as people that wear the same color robes in the clergy.
Why is this unlike having blind trust in the pro-corporate GMO narrative or the global warming narrative?
At least he eats his own dog food.
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At least he eats his own dog food.
Does he, though? For all we know there was just saline solution in the thing he injected himself with. Dropping trow in front of an audience and injecting as a publicity stunt? A bit different than Barry Marshall [wikipedia.org].
It is no different than companies that do science via press release. No releasing of findings, just a press release that says "we discovered something that turns physics on its head!" And then a bunch of years and millions of research dollars later, nothing [wikipedia.org].
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> Is there a strain of the flu going around that reduces emotional maturity to that of an 8-year-old?
Perhaps you thought blind faith in science wouldn't lead to something like this?
Better than blind faith in blind faith to cure/prevent the flu, as recommended by Evangelical Trump adviser tells people to skip flu shots in favor of prayer [theguardian.com]:
A Texas evangelist preacher and member of Donald Trump’s faith advisory council told parishioners to skip the flu shot in favor of prayer, inviting scorn from concerned medical professionals and epidemiologists.
“Jesus himself gave us the flu shot,” Gloria Copeland said in a video posted last Wednesday that has slowly begun to go viral, no pun intended, after some observers highlighted Copeland’s ties to Trump.
“Just keep saying that ‘I’ll never have the flu. I’ll never have the flu,’” she continued. “Inoculate yourself with the word of God. Flu, I bind you off the people in the name of Jesus. Jesus himself gave us the flu shot. He redeemed us from the curse of flu.”
On the other hand, perhaps they'll all be Darwin Award [darwinawards.com] winners.
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It appears that some people are going to have blind faith in something. They apparently need it. Given that, blind faith in science is a lot more innocuous than blind faith in a politician or a religion.
I actually do tend to treat scientists the same as the clergy I know, but then I don't have blind faith in either of them. (My religion has no clergy, and certainly doesn't need any until there are at least two of us.) I find religion and science to be fascinating, so I ask questions. For purposes of
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For deadly cancers, China is ahead.
Curing them, or acquiring them?
Seriously, which one?
Talk about immaturity (Score:1)
Only the most childish would think that adding armed people in an environment where only criminals are allowed to have guns is a bad idea.
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Criminals are not allowed to have guns.
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In other words, you're saying that prison guards should keep their handguns when entering a prisoner area? Or is it that, if there are already criminals with guns somewhere, we should add more criminals with guns? Or am I misinterpreting it, and you mean that adding criminals to an environment is a good idea, since they're the only ones allowed to carry guns there (although I can't think of anywhere where criminals are allowed to carry guns and others aren't), and hence adding armed people is adding crim
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Maybe you don't see teachers shooting people because they don't carry guns as part of their jobs?
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I'd rather trust a cop who has supposedly trained in how to use a gun than my Latin teacher who was generally clueless and most likely to shoot himself or some random innocent.
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That's OK, one of the other teachers would mistake him for an intruder and shoot him. With a bit of luck the second teacher will only plug two or three kids before he hits what he was trying to aim at.
Half a dozen tops, not too bad. Then you find out there was no shooter, he saw an oboe player and heard a car backfiring.
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Just wait until the SWAT team show up and starts shooting anyone carrying a gun.
You're going to have some additional casualties.
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I saw teachers at the shooting range when I was in school. Hunter safety courses where taught by our family physician (an army veteran).
I live in the mid-west in a small community near a military base with a lot of farmers and retired military guns are very common but shootings and gun accidents are not.
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Shows the value of training. I think you should be required to have a license with mandatory training and buy insurance just like a car. That would cut down on stupid gun accidents.
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I figured that the easiest and most reliable way to secure a gun from accidents when I had kids was to not have one at least until after they where old enough and had completed a gun safety course. I don't currently own a gun but will again eventually.
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You must have had nice teachers.
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Actually, I trust them to teach better when they aren't required to be prepared to shoot people, including students, at a moment's notice. (If they aren't, then their guns aren't going to do much good.)
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I think you're thinking of regular old maturity, and not emotional maturity.
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It's the long term effects of low-grade environmental lead poisoning in effect. Despite mostly banning it in fuel it is still present in potentially harmful quantities (the updated information from the surgeon general's office now says there is NO SAFE AMOUNT of lead for children) throughout the environment even in places where they aren't still using lead pipes. Yes, hard to believe, but in many places in the continental U.S. they're still using lead pipes, legally.
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Lead pipes for drinking water.
Please don't pee in the gene pool (Score:1)
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But will any of them concoct something so stupid it will win the award for our entire species, rather than just them personally?
I doubt it, we're incredibly complex and you would need to specifically engineer it to have some mechanism of transmission (practically a whole new branch of a life cycle) - even if you managed to do that viruses mutate a lot, bacteria are easy to kill, and even if your objective were specifically to make it impact everyone you'd fail. It might be possible to make some kind of new STD or flu, but even then your total infected is going to be quite low (even if Madagascar doesn't close their borders.)
Can't Wait For Their New Sponsor (Score:4, Funny)
"What would you do for a Klondike Bar?"
Re:Can't Wait For Their New Sponsor (Score:5, Funny)
"What would you do for a Klondike Bar?"
"Would you become a Klondike Bar?"
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I'd biohack my mammary glands to release Klondike Bar® flavored ice cream. MMMmmm soft serve
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I'd biohack my mammary glands to release Klondike Bar® flavored ice cream. MMMmmm soft serve
Oh Great Rule 34, please let there be pr0n of this. No exceptions.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Someone is going to get hurt ... (Score:1)
And it's probably HIM, already. Anyone remember how CRISPR lets them change the thing they want to change, but also causes thousands of random genetic changes in unrelated DNA? The exact reason why more responsible researchers have said that CRISPR is not ready/suitable for use on people? And that the likely result is going to be nasty strains of cancer everywhere in his body
Coining a new term like "Biohacker" is a cheap attempt to re-brand a "crackpot dumbass".
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In the computer realm I heartily endorse the "poke it to see what breaks" method of learning.
I'm not sure I'd recommend it in the DNA realm but there's no denying that it's an effective way to learn.
I just hope they leave good notes.
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We do CRISPR (Score:3)
We make a hundred or so mutants, in an effort to get a few independent events targetting the single gene we are trying to knock-out or replace. That's a success rate of a few percent if you can do math. That's much more accurate than before, but not accurate enough to be a medical treatment at this stage. We try to get a few independent mutants because of off-target effects (the CRISPR doing something to some other gene), if you have a few independent events, it's much more likely the gene you are testing actually does the thing you think it does. Otherwise, if you can't disprove off-target effects, you haven't actually proven it.
Analogy (Score:2)
CRISPR is to biology research as Bitcoin is to economics.
Yeah something good may come of it, but there are a lot of people screwing around.
I see no difference between that CEO and the Bitconneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeect [youtube.com] guy.
Re:Analogy (Score:5, Insightful)
I will make a pedantic comment in response:
There's nothing fundamentally flawed or bad about the underlying technologies of both. They are well understood, practical solutions that can solve really important problems. CRISPR more than blockchains, but still.
The issue is the snake-oil sellers, confidence men, and their ilk. We call them startups now, but the same applies.
Anyone can take a product or process that isn't well understood and sucker rubes with it. It doesn't make that product or process illegitimate.
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Indeed. CRISPR and public blockchain are powerful technologies. In the 19th century, the railroad was a set of awesome technologies, ones that we depend on today for our modern economy, where almost every early company went bankrupt, while a few clever and ruthless insiders pocketed a lot of money. The past may be giving us hints about the present.
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Here's another analogy: when humans set out on the ocean (or heck, even across the Mediterranean) many never came back. Millenia later in the age of sail, ships were still leaving port never to return.
Gene editing is a vast new frontier in human exploration. Why should we expect that it will be less dangerous than the previous ones?
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If it goes wrong (Score:2)
Does their health insurance cover it?
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Wolfman Jack (Score:2)
There's some funky Darwin Awards around the corner.
Definitions. (Score:1)
I remember when hacker had one, cool meaning. Shame it died.
Taking bets (Score:2)
Also taking lower-odds bets on how long until someone dies of cancer caused by gene modification 'therapy'.
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Or becomes a Vampire, and Wil Smith comes along to save us all.
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Cause and effect (Score:2)
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No, you use gamma rays to get Hulks. You use mutations to get X-Men. Sheesh.
I have two thoughts on this: (Score:2)
Ok sure, these guys seem irresponsible (Score:2)
However, what if one of them does crack the case on HIV or Herpes or something like that? What if I could take a single injection that made my metoblism 10% faster, increased muscle mass 10% for absoloutely no risk, once off injection?
If they crack the case on all this stuff, it'll be world changing.
Oh and while I'm at it, did any of the injections work, not work?
That's some Cave Johnson shit right there (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmH7tAJ0SfA [youtube.com]
"I'll be honest, we're throwin' science at the wall here to see here what sticks. No idea what it'll do. Probably nothing.
Best case scenario, you might get some superpowers. Worst case, some tumors. Which we'll cut out."
(And honestly, no one made a Portal reference already? Really? Oi.)
Do as thou wilt (Score:2)
I'm fine with biohacking onesself. One can hardly sue anyone for malpractice.
Sure people will get hurt. They also die from car accidents, and we let cars exist. People also die from diabetes melitis, HIV, bathtubs, and occasionally peanuts.
Freedom means many things; it can mean not being subject to fussbudgets who want to save people from themselves.
Human experimentation is broken, especially in the US where everyone is completely focused on reducing risk to the experimenter and subjects. We can't move. Eve
Re:First Post (Score:5, Funny)
*becomes raptor hybrid*
*open the door*
*get on the floor*
*everybody walk the dinosaur*
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Well.. yeah.. Velly Intellesting.. but, er..um.. shouldn't the headline actually have something to do with the article, instead of referring to an incidental ..well.. incident?
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And yet you're not "brave" enough to not be an anonymous coward.
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> And yet you're not "brave" enough to not be an anonymous coward.
Brave? I simply "didn't bother" for the first 6 months.
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I don't buy into your survivorship bias but I do agree that these people should be free to experiment on themselves.