 
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 92 00:17:01 EDT
From: wce@hogbbs.scol.pa.us (Bill Eichman)
Subject: biohacking
To: +dist+/afs/andrew/usr/js9b/Public/camc.dl@andrew.cmu.edu
Message-Id: <33yBRB3w165w@hogbbs.scol.pa.us>
Organization: The Heart of Gold BBS, Lemont PA
Comments: Validated


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From extropians-request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Fri, 18 Sep 1992

Today's Los Angeles Times had an interesting article by Michael
Schrage about the coming emergence of "biotech hackers", the biotech
equivalent of the computer hackers of the 70's and 80's.  I consider
this interesting because it may be a preview of the nanotech hackers
of the 21st century, with some of the same dangers.

(I heard a rumor once that a recombinant DNA hobby kit was offered for
sale in one of the popular science magazines, but was soon withdrawn.)

Here is the article:


The Coming Wave of Bathtub Biotechnology
  by Michael Schrage

Barely a dozen years ago, the high priests of computerdom mocked
"hackers" as clever misfits and dismissed personal computers as
"toys."  The revenge of the nerds, as Bill Gates will cheerfully tell
you, has been both sweet and lucrative.

Today, technology and opportunity are rapidly conspiring to create a
new generation of hackers.  But these folks won't hack software bits
or silicon chips; they'll hack E. coli, restriction enzymes and double
helixes - life itself.  Call them "biohackers."  Instead of joy-riding
computer networks, they'll get their kicks out of reprogramming DNA -
for better and for worse.

While market forces have yet to spawn the Bill Gates of biotech or the
Mitch Kapor of cloning, that's purely a matter of time.  Both
technologically and economically, the time is ripe for biohacking to
emerge as both a technical and entrepreneurial subculture.  Who knows
what the DOS of DNA or the Lotus 1-2-3 of microbial manipulation will
be?  These are now seious questions.  Elite molecular biologists may
scoff, but biohacking is rapidly becoming a widely diffused skill.

"High school kids are doing things on their own that bright post-docs
were doing 10 years ago," says Vivian Lee, a New York-based biotech
industry consultant.  "The technology is likely to become even more
accessible three years from now, so it should become even more
technically trivial to do interesting things....  Could we have
'biotech dweebs' [biohacking] in their kitchens or their bathtubs?
Yeah."

"It's exactly the same as putting together your first radio," insists
Rockefeller University molecular biologist Peter Model, who has a high
school student helping with his virus research.  "In fact, it's even
easier.  It's more like writing software.  You can get the klutziest
student in the world and they'll still do all right.

"You could definitely do interesting - and, under special
circumstances - especially useful things," he continues.  "You could
make your own 'glow-in-the-dark' bacteria or get that bacteria to make
alpha interferon - no question about it."

In fact, it's not brilliant teen-agers but developing countries that
are now showing the way in pioneering and provocative discount
biotech.

"I was bowled off my feet by what I saw family farmers doing in
Vietnam," says John H. Dodds, a professor of horticulture at Michigan
State University and a leader at bringing biotech to the Third World.
"We had a family unit set up a plant tissue culture lab that produced
over 250,000 potato plants for under $100."

Dodds says he wouldn't be surprised to see this sort of biotech-on-the-
cheap come to genetic engineering.

Indeed, any enterprising individual could buy reagents, enzymes and
bacteria to twiddle a few genes at prices far lower than the original
personal computer kits of about 15 years ago.  Model argues that
budding biohackers could even build a cheapo polymerase chain reaction
machine - the machine tool of biotechnology - for under $500.
Clearly, price isn't the problem.

Of course, says Caltech biology professor Elliot Meyrowitz, "You have
to ask yourself why [biohacking] hasn't caught on," even though much
of the technology has already been around for a decade.

While Meyerowitz concedes that barriers to biotech are crumbling, he
says there still aren't all that many exciting things people can do at
home.  But that didn't stop the early computer hackers.

Nor did legal barriers.  The same might be true for the biohackers of
tomorrow.  There is an Environmental Protection Agency, after all, but
how might it track all the bathtub biotech in suburbia?

America wrung its hands over Calgene's FlavrSavr, a single bio-engineered
tomato.  What happens when biohackers start growing genetically
turbocharged vegetables in their own back yard?

Perhaps the issue is cultural.  In the 1950s, kids fooled around with
chemistry sets.  Maybe biochemistry sets in the 1990s hold little
appeal.  In this media age, perhaps bright teen-agers would rather
tinker with clean keyboards than messy enzymes.

On the other hand, biotech is sliding down the same sort of cost curve
as computers.  You can do more and more manipulation with less and
less money.  Is it that silly to imagine that people can be as clever
reprogramming bacteria as they were in programming video games?  Maybe
we'll see the Nintendo of E. coli genetic games.

"I can see it like a cottage industry - like weaving," says Rockefeller's
Model.  "It could attract the same subset of kids who now play with
computers."

And if that subset includes kids like Bill Gates, Mitch Kapor or Steve
Jobs, then the Mercks, Genentechs and Calgenes had better be prepared
for a very interesting time.  So should society.  "Do you really want
your neighbor's kid to be cooking up genetically tinkered E. coli
bacteria?" asks biotech consultant Lee.

All of a sudden, computer viruses don't look so bad after all.
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