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Biohacking

captain piss

18:05 / 25.06.06

I’m quite intrigued by the concept of biohacking. Is this happening yet?

I notice that people have voicing concerns about it for a couple of years now . But it would seem to require getting your hands on some fairly fancy equipment. Although, worryingly, there’s a place called DNA Hack , which is billed as ‘the website for Amateur Genetic Engineering’.

I’m sure it’s something that sci-fi writers have done to death. I can remember reading a Bruce Sterling story called Our Neural Chernobyll, which had some stuff about a rogue genetic strain escaping into the environment that caused an acceleration in neural dendritic growth. This in turn caused raccoons to become hyper-intelligent or something (I can’t quite remember – I could probably do with some of it).

Evil Scientist

11:12 / 27.06.06

I wouldn't worry about it just yet. The technology is still in it's nascent stages, and it still requires a certain level of knowledge (and a lab) to start genetically-engineering micro-organisms.

As the feature you link to points out, there are things which could be done to discourage amatuer genetic engineers from buying the necessary equipment to fiddle about with potentially harmful organisms. Licensing is one way that it can be controlled.

It's not impossible that bioterrorism is, at least, being explored by someone in the world. But the fact of the matter is that it is extremely indescriminate. Unlike an explosive device which just goes off once and kills a few targets a bioweapon keeps on going and could possibly even spread into the population being "defended" by the bioterrorists in the first place.

It's important to be concerned about this kind of thing of course. It is a concievable threat, just an unlikely one at the moment.

Quantum

17:46 / 03.07.06

Don't listen to the blandishments of that villain, I know for a fact ES is tinkering with badgers and squirrels DNA and will one day become the Beast from the New X-Men future that never was (Here comes tomorrow it's called) and splice laser eyes and teleportation into his cloned army of doom Squadgers.

Evil Scientist

09:18 / 04.07.06

Silence Quantopollyon, or there'll be no downloaded Phoenix genes for you!

17:19 / 15.07.06

I dont know, but if there are I would love to talk to them .

33

Henningjohnathan

22:06 / 19.07.06

I remember several years ago being introduced to the idea of "garage genetic engineering." It was basically that genetic scientists would tinker at home in the way that the guys who came up with the home computer tinkered with their tech on their off hours.

Anyone see PRIMER?

I've never actually met anyone who does this sort of thing though, but it doesn't seem that far-fetched.

Evil Scientist

10:13 / 27.07.06

One branch of biohacking which is most certainly going to become a growing field is that of corporate biohacking. Essentially reverse engineering other companies bioproducts to isolate the modified gene-sequences to see if you own genetics labs can come up with something just different enough to get round patent laws.

I remember several years ago being introduced to the idea of "garage genetic engineering." It was basically that genetic scientists would tinker at home in the way that the guys who came up with the home computer tinkered with their tech on their off hours.

Some more information on this would be appreciated.

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