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A Biohacker Regrets Publicly Injecting Himself With CRISPR (theatlantic.com)
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.
That's how evil super villains are created and super heros.
We were close to have Herpes-Man running around!!!
The Tide CRISPR challenge!
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Anyone who has played Bioshock already knows how this all ends.
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".
*injects CRISPR*
*becomes raptor hybrid*
*open the door*
*get on the floor*
*everybody walk the dinosaur*
Where is the proof that the canister contained any active ingredients? My bet would be that the Ceo knew that it was only a saline solution and he injected him self to get some media attention.
Suddenly that flat-earther rocket dude doesn't like quite as foolish anymore.
If these Biohackers are successful, we will hail them as risk takers and pioneers. Nobel Prizes Winners who experimented on themselves
And yet you're not "brave" enough to not be an anonymous coward.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
This is evolution in action. Survival of the fittest genetic engineers. Those too stupid to play with the technology will find a way to get a Darwin award. But will any of them concoct something so stupid it will win the award for our entire species, rather than just them personally?
"What would you do for a Klondike Bar?"
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
I'll be the first to day, I guess I'm not in these kinds of news cycles to know that bio-hacking was an actual thing taken seriously. This is just oozing epic levels glory-stunt bullshit. I honestly don't see this as any different than the Philadelphia Eagles fan eating horse shit other than this Josiah guy wearing a business casual suit, some shinny shoes he got polished in an airport, Skagen wrist watch and a $100 frat boi hair cut.
I think we have a new definition of silicon-valley-startup-investor-wrangling think tank triple-dog-dare you shit. What happened to all the simple attention getters in life wrapped in proven work, dedication and education? I guess I'm out of touch with what the new kids do these days.
> And yet you're not "brave" enough to not be an anonymous coward.
Brave? I simply "didn't bother" for the first 6 months.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> 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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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".
I don't buy into your survivorship bias but I do agree that these people should be free to experiment on themselves.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
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 guy.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Does their health insurance cover it?
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.
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.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
You know, he's got ballz to be hacking his own code (DNA), right up until they drop off. Personally, I would never attempt this unless there was a computer simulation, coupled with some AI input on the results to make a risk assessment.
I have no doubt in the next 10+ years we'll get there where near anyone can walk into a doctors office and obtain a custom injection to fix whatever DNA ailment there is. The computing and genomic technology has dropped substantially in cost already compared to 20 years ago. But....today is not the day to be toying around with this on yourself. Oh well, there will always be pioneers in any endeavor. I just wish he, and people like him, take better precautions. Too much bad PR could actually put a bad taboo on this tech, much how shoddy Nuclear engineering killed the industry.
Life is not for the lazy.
There's some funky Darwin Awards around the corner.
Table-ized A.I.
I remember when hacker had one, cool meaning. Shame it died.
I'm taking bets on how long it'll be until someone inadvertently creates a new genetic disease in some reckless attempt to cure something else.
Also taking lower-odds bets on how long until someone dies of cancer caused by gene modification 'therapy'.
Maybe you don't see teachers shooting people because they don't carry guns as part of their jobs?
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Do you want Incredible Hulks? Because that's how you get Incredible Hulks.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
> 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:
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 winners.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I think you're thinking of regular old maturity, and not emotional maturity.
Criminals are not allowed to have guns.
For deadly cancers, China is ahead.
Curing them, or acquiring them?
Seriously, which one?
On the other hand, I also know that the explosion of creativity in the phone and network hacking communities helped accelerate the development of IT. Some of the best hackers found work in the legitimate community. My son happens to be one of those people who are in critical need of rapid advances in genetic therapy, CRISPR/Cas-9 being the front runner technique. I've been following the field with a great deal of interest, in hopes that a new break through will come any day. However, as best as I can determine, by the time CRISPR/Cas-9 leads to a proven treatment for Duchennes Musuclar Dystrophy, it will be too late for my son. As of today, he has maybe 10 or 12 years left to live. But, near as I can tell, for him to ever be mobile again, he'd need genetic treatment within the next year or three and there just isn't any chance mainstream medicine is going to release a CRISPR based therapy in that time frame.
So I find myself hoping that, despite the obstacles of lack of formal training and lack of funding, that these guys make some real discoveries and advances.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
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?
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.
Lead pipes for drinking water.
You must have had nice teachers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmH7tAJ0SfA
"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.)
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
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. Even regrowing teeth with stem cells, a process ready to go, will take 12 more years because of the human testing regime the dental experimenter will have to undergo. Millions will die horribly for lack of treatments we cannot even begin to test. For things to move along at a sane rate, volunteers will have to die.
Sure, the insurance companies will have something to say about this. They own us, as they are free to cut one off for any reason. That's another problem.
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.
Just wait until the SWAT team show up and starts shooting anyone carrying a gun.
You're going to have some additional casualties.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
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.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
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 actually doing things, I pay attention to scientists, not clergy.
I've taken a look at GMOs and global warming, and I fear the latter and not the former.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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 criminals?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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.
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?