*Biohacker propaganda-of-the-deed.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/8/13/20802059/california-crispr-biohacking-illegal-josiah-zayner
(...)
Why is this happening in California?
Silicon Valley is where biohacking really took off. It’s home to several of its famous proponents, like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. It’s also home to a mentality that is uniquely well-suited to biohackers, whose underlying philosophy is that we don’t need to accept our bodies’ shortcomings — we can engineer our way past them using technology.
As millionaire Serge Faguet, who plans to use biohacking techniques to live forever, put it: “People here [in Silicon Valley] have a technical mindset, so they think of everything as an engineering problem. A lot of people who are not of a technical mindset assume that, ‘Hey, people have always been dying,’ but I think there’s going to be a greater level of awareness [of biohacking] once results start to happen.”
One of the most notorious biohackers, Josiah Zayner, lives in California, where he’s currently under investigation after being accused of practicing medicine without a license. He runs a company called the Odin out of his garage in Oakland, selling biohacking supplies ranging from $20 DNA to a $1,849 DIY genetic engineering kit. In 2017, he injected himself with CRISPR DNA at a biotech conference, live-streaming the stunt. That same year, he started selling a CRISPR kit to target a human gene, the removal of which could theoretically make muscles bigger.
The FDA soon released a notice saying the sale of DIY gene-editing kits for use on humans is against the law. Zayner disregarded the warning and continued to sell his wares. But after getting emails from customers inquiring about how to inject themselves, and after worrying aloud that “people are going to get hurt” because “everybody is trying to one-up each other more and more,” he stopped selling the product this year.
As of now, it doesn’t seem anyone is actually selling the type of DIY CRISPR kit Chang is concerned about — a kit that would work on human genes as opposed to, say, yeast. So why is California passing legislation to crack down on a problem that doesn’t yet appear to exist?
“It’s obviously targeting me,” Zayner told MIT Tech Review, which noted that Chang’s staff has indeed pointed to his products in particular as worrisome. “It’s like, California, people try to find new technology to regulate, make a name, and say, ‘Hey, California is ahead of everyone else.’ To me the law is silly.”
Politicians like Chang see it differently: They want to be proactive about regulating a technology that could pose a danger to public health if amateurs, egged on by stunts like Zayner’s, use it irresponsibly.
Many biohackers say restrictive regulation would be a counterproductive response to biohacking because it’ll just drive the practice underground. They say it’s better to encourage a culture of transparency so that people can ask questions about how to do something safely, without fear of reprisal... (((etc etc)))
