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Showing posts with label Body Hacking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Body Hacking. Show all posts

Monday, July 2, 2018

What Does an Infamous Biohacker’s Death Mean for the Future of DIY Science?

Kristen Brown
The Atlantic
Originally posted May 5, 2018

Here are two excerpts:

At just 28, Traywick was among the most infamous figures in the world of biohacking—the grandiose CEO of a tiny company called Ascendance Biomedical whose goal was to develop and test new gene therapies without the expense and rigor of clinical trials or the oversight of the FDA. Traywick wanted to cure cancer, herpes, HIV, and even aging, and he wanted to do it without having to deal with the rules and safety precautions of regulators and industry standards.

“There are breakthroughs in the world that we can actually bring to market in a way that wouldn’t require us to butt up against the FDA’s walls, but instead walk around them,” Traywick told me the first time I met him in person, during a biotech conference in San Francisco last January.

To “walk around” regulators, Ascendance and other biohackers typically rely on testing products on themselves. Self-experimentation, although strongly discouraged by agencies like the FDA, makes it difficult for regulators to intervene. The rules that govern drug development simply aren’t written to oversee what an individual might do to themselves.

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The biggest shame, said Zayner, is that we’ll never get the chance to see how Traywick might have matured once he’d been in the biohacking sphere a little longer.

Whatever their opinion of Traywick, everyone who knew him agreed that he was motivated by an extreme desire to make drugs more widely available for those who need them.

The information is here.

Friday, January 19, 2018

AI is Fueling Smarter Prosthetics Than Ever Before

Andrea Powell
www.wired.com
Originally posted December 22, 2017

The distance between prosthetic and real is shrinking. Thanks to advances in batteries, brain-controlled robotics, and AI, today’s mechanical limbs can do everything from twist and point to grab and lift. And this isn’t just good news for amputees. “For something like bomb disposal, why not use a robotic arm?” says Justin Sanchez, manager of Darpa’s Revolutionizing Prosthetics program. Well, that would certainly be handy.

The article and pictures are here.

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

‘I want to help humans genetically modify themselves’

Tom Ireland
The Guardian
Originally posted December 24, 2017

Josiah Zayner, 36, recently made headlines by becoming the first person to use the revolutionary gene-editing tool Crispr to try to change their own genes. Part way through a talk on genetic engineering, Zayner pulled out a syringe apparently containing DNA and other chemicals designed to trigger a genetic change in his cells associated with dramatically increased muscle mass. He injected the DIY gene therapy into his left arm, live-streaming the procedure on the internet.

The former Nasa biochemist, based in California, has become a leading figure in the growing “biohacker” movement, which involves loose collectives of scientists, engineers, artists, designers, and activists experimenting with biotechnology outside of conventional institutions and laboratories.

Despite warnings from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that selling gene therapy products without regulatory approval is illegal, Zayner sells kits that allow anyone to get started with basic genetic engineering techniques, and has published a free guide for others who want to take it further and experiment on themselves.

The article is here.

Monday, April 24, 2017

Scientists Hack a Human Cell and Reprogram it Like a Computer

Sophia Chen
Wired Magazine
Originally published March 27, 2017

CELLS ARE BASICALLY tiny computers: They send and receive inputs and output accordingly. If you chug a Frappuccino, your blood sugar spikes, and your pancreatic cells get the message. Output: more insulin.

But cellular computing is more than just a convenient metaphor. In the last couple of decades, biologists have been working to hack the cells’ algorithm in an effort to control their processes. They’ve upended nature’s role as life’s software engineer, incrementally editing a cell’s algorithm—its DNA—over generations. In a paper published today in Nature Biotechnology, researchers programmed human cells to obey 109 different sets of logical instructions. With further development, this could lead to cells capable of responding to specific directions or environmental cues in order to fight disease or manufacture important chemicals.

Their cells execute these instructions by using proteins called DNA recombinases, which cut, reshuffle, or fuse segments of DNA. These proteins recognize and target specific positions on a DNA strand—and the researchers figured out how to trigger their activity. Depending on whether the recombinase gets triggered, the cell may or may not produce the protein encoded in the DNA segment.

The article is here.

Thursday, March 31, 2016

'Body Hacking' Movement Rises Ahead Of Moral Answers

Eyder Peralta
NPR
Originally published 10, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

Sometimes, he said, technology moves too fast and outpaces accepted social boundaries — not to mention laws. He argued that was part of the reason why early wearers of Google Glass were called "glassholes."

"It created a social misunderstanding," Salvador said. "You didn't know what was going on."

To Salvador, the boundaries of acceptance are a matter of our social philosophy, an area that he argued was driven by esoteric discourse without tangible moral and ethical recommendations.

The philosophers, he said, are letting us down.

Alva Noë, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley and a contributor to NPR's 13.7: Cosmos and Culture blog, has written extensively on what he calls "cyborgian naturalness." He disagreed that the modern philosophers dropped the ball, saying that tackling the matter would involve unpacking two questions:

  1. Is it OK to cut into human bodies for these kinds of experiments?
  2. How much tolerance should society have for artificially enhancing the body?

To the first question, Noë said he found the "body hacking" experimentation on humans "ethically disturbing" and couldn't fathom a doctor or any other scientists conducting these kinds of operations.

The second question was more complicated.

The article is here.