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Do you know these guys? Maybe not the dude with that telescope, but surely that li;le guy with the pea plant. It’s Gregor Mendel. He was an
amateur scienAst, he was a biohacker. His 21st century successors are the people I’m going to talk about here. Here’s what I’ve called these few
minutes…
Biohacking A new CITIZEN SCIENCE
for the age of genes and –omics
richard friebe
! Cathal Gravey’s ‘Dremelfuge’
Mendel is arguably the most influenAal experimental scienAst the field of biology has hitherto seen.
CiAzen scienAsts:
innovators oUen no degree oUen li;le money enough Ame many ideas
….L. da Vinci, O. Brunfels, C. Haas, G.W. Leibniz, J. Priestley, A. van Leeuwenhoek, T. Jefferson, J.W. Goethe, E.&C. Darwin, G. Mendel….
He found out how inheritance works, and he did so without having a science degree, without working at an insAtute or a university or a biotech
company. What he was, as a monk, was an employee with a secure income and a roof over his head with a lot of spare Ame, with an interest in
science, with ingenuity and paAence.
We tend to think that science and engineering is something really sophisAcated, expensive, oUen dangerous, which is only for professionals with doctorates who work away on extremely complicated stuff with extremely complicated equipment behind thick walls in germ-‐free labs. And it’s largely been like this for the past 100 or so years. But before that, lots of the most important science, lots of the most important thinking, lots of the most important invenAons and engineering mankind is sAll
relying on, were made by amateurs.
They were priests, parsons or monks like Mendel, but also drapers like Antonie van Leuwenhoek who invented the microscope, or librarians like Goaried
Wilhelm Leibniz, or housewifes like Fanny Hesse who started culturing bacteria on agar, something sAll done today. They were ciAzen scienAsts.
In fact, science and engineering have never seized to profit from a large influx from amateurs, as everyone here will surely be aware of. Even in the 20th century, for example some major astronomical discoveries were made by people with no astronomy degree, who just loved the night skies and had a
telescope. And some of the most important invenAons were made by Ankerers and college drop-‐outs.
For biology, especially the kind of biology which calls itself molecular, it’s been a different story. Equipment was expensive, supplies hard to come by, methods were really difficult and required really sophisAcated and clean procedures.
Things have changed. Today there’s people like these. The girl is Kay Aull, and she’s the first person known to have hacked her own genes, sefng up her
own li;le lab in her bedroom closet in Cambridge, Massachuse;s, analysing her own genome for a disease mutaAon she might have had
inherited from her father.
The guy is Mac Cowell, credited as one of the founding fathers of what’s today called DIY Biology and Biohacking. And they’re sifng not in a university lab here, but in a community lab in a li;le town near Boston where you can actually do geneAc analysis and, if you’re paAent and clever like old
Mendel, even some geneAc engineering.
Cheap second hand equipment
easier protocols
Lots of info online
DIY building of equipment
Supplies (and yes: genes) available online, in pharmacies, supermarkets, hardware stores
DIY Bio network
!This is our PCR machine, which used to cost as much as a home in the suburbs 20 years ago, and our centrifuge. Cost of both combined: < 400 Euro
Why is that happening now? Because it can. There is now second hand equipment available via ebay, lab kits which are much less complicated
then just some years ago, supplies are available online, in pharmacies and hardware stores, protocols are available online, and there is a networked
community helping each other out.
These two guys and I, we wanted to know what these biohackers and DIY Biologists do, so we set out on a project to find them and also try to
become biohackers ourselves. We set up our own lab here in Berlin. We wanted find out for ourselves how hard or easy it really is to build a lab and to hack genes. The answer is, it’s not easy, but it’s possible. We
analysed sushi to see if it’s really got the tuna in it that it’s got on the label, we went on to take dog poop to our lab and collect dog saliva in the park to find out which puppy it was that regularly defecated outside our door. We looked at our own endurance and sprinter’s genes. We even -‐ to check for possible hazards and implicaAons -‐ went as far as legally possible along the way of doing something which might be interesAng for prospecAve
bioterrorists.
We wrote down our experience of more than two years of both journalisAc and lab work in this book, and also what we think about chances and risks of this movement. The book’s got about 300 pages, so I can only sum up
quickly here what I think is especially relevant in the context of this conference.
The fact is that all over the world, there are now people who do molecular biology outside of insAtuAonalized labs. In garages, in kitchens, in basements, oUen in community labs which are being set up by
enthusiasAc amateurs, but also by professionals who believe in the power of this new kind of ciAzen science.
From Spifng to Biohacking
The hand axe of DIY biology:
…collect saliva, spit in a shot glass, add some salt, a drop of dish detergent, a drop of contact lens cleaner, shake carefully, carefully pour high-‐percentage hard liquor over it, and you’ll see your very own, very unique, very you-‐defining DNA… may fish it out with a toothpick… and may actually go on and analyze it, using methods which are a li;le more sophisAcated…
They can do much more than just extract some of their own DNA using liquor and dish detergent, as shown here… Serious DIY biologists today make
bioarts, try to send probes into the stratosphere to collect what might be living there, try syntheAc biology, collect and analyse microbes from people’s skin or from people’s ponds and contribute their work to big
networked projects, and much more.
!The glove of the first personal biotech billionaire? Maybe…
What’s more important:
-‐EducaAon
-‐Out of the box innovaAon
-‐Networked, parAcipatory science involving all levels of sophisAcaAon and personal ability
-‐DemocraAc enlightened parAcipaAon in a century-‐defining technology and it’s use ad regulaAon
-‐Challenging elites
-‐PrevenAng and counteracAng “black hat” hacking
They are invenAve in terms of what they use -‐ a camping cooker can make for an excellent Bunsen burner, or a Dremel drill as shown in an earlier slide can be used to turn a centrifuge. But above all they are invenAve in what
experiments they come up with.
They try to make plants glow in the dark and promise people who fund such a project to send them some seeds once they’re done. You might have heard of that project and the controversial discussions around it. So they’re also tesAng the waters, they challenge society to think about
biotech by pufng it out in the open.
There has been a lot of speculaAon about whether among those garage biologist there might be the Steve Jobs or Bill Gates of the of personal biotech. Maybe, maybe not. There are certainly parallels between the computer hacking movement some decades back and the biohacking
movement today, but for sure they’re not the same.
But let me tell you what I think is most important: All this provides people with the opportunity to take a technology which has huge transformaAve powers, which comes with huge risks and opportuniAes, back into their own hands. It can on the one hand create innovaAon by people who are not in the academic science box and thus are able to think out of that box.
But more importantly, it provides an opportunity to learn about this technology hands on, it will help people make up their minds about this technology, will enable them to take part in the democraAc processes
about regulaAon of the technology, in an educated, enlightened way. It can put an end to the exclusive access that scienAfic, economic and poliAcal
elites have unAl now had to this technology.
Don’t illegalize it! …it’s already regulated by law in many countries (Germany: Gentechnik-‐, Chemikalien-‐, InfekAonsschutzgesetz etc.), new regulaAon should be flexible, liberal, trying to make sure that biohackers aren’t pushed underground!
There of course is the issue of whether it’s dangerous to let this happen, to let kids Anker with genes. There is a simple answer: Yes, it might, but if we
want to keep living in a free society where knowledge about a key technology is not locked away and decisions are made by people with
vested interests behind closed doors, there is just no other opAon but to be liberal about this, too. Otherwise, people who really want to do this
stuff will go underground.
We all know from alcohol prohibiAon and drug laws that as long as there is a demand and a technology to supply that demand, prohibiAons never work, they just make things worse and more dangerous and harder to
control. Biotech is out there, and it´s becoming doable for a wider public and it has its uses. We cannot turn back Ame, instead we need to look for ways how to make working with this technology as safe as possible, for example by providing access to school-‐ and community labs and enable safe and meaningful experimentaAon there, and not shufng them down
as has recently happened in Germany, and to get the best out of it.
And there is one lesson from the computer hacking movement and from general social experience: Most people have good intenAons, only very few people want to do harm just for fun, or for Allah or whatever. And
most “black hat” hackers unAl today have met their masters in that huge majority of well meaning people out there.
This is a crucial Ame in history, when the switches need to be worked for how biotechnology should be used in the future. If more people acAvely use and get to know this key technology, there will be a greater chance that
this will go in the right direcAon.
Where to look for more info:
!!!This book DIYbio.org Biohack.me openwetware.org
Thanks to:
-‐Robert Bosch SAUung (financial support) -‐Science secAon of Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (editorial support) -‐Sascha Karberg, Hanno Charisius (friends, co-‐authors, co–biohackers -‐Veronique Ansorge (illustraAons)
This is our book
CHARISIUS, FRIEBE, KARBERG Biohacking -‐ Gentechnik aus der Garage ISBN 978-‐3-‐446-‐43502-‐5. Hanser Verlag 2013
which you get from your local book dealer or via the known sources online, and some places to go to on the web. Also some thanks. All illustaAons by
Veronique Ansorge, Photos by the authors of “Biohacking”
THE END.
This work is licensed under a CreaAve Commons A;ribuAon-‐NonCommercial-‐NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. h;p://creaAvecommons.org/licenses/by-‐nc-‐nd/3.0/deed.en