Garage Genomics

I've stumbled across a couple of websites in the last six months devoted to biohacking - hobbyists tinkering with genetically modifying organisms in their toolsheds. I haven't seen any actual examples - there doesn't seem to be a biohacker equivalent to hackaday - though I do faintly remember a team from my university getting together to take part in some sort of biohacking competition that used parts from MIT's BioBricks program, so it's not that new a concept. The idea behind BioBricks, if you haven't heard of it, is to:

isolate discrete biomolecular mechanisms and define standard interfaces for them so that they can be assembled in much the same way as electronic circuits.

It's all quite interesting. Biohacking in my basement doesn't appeal to me, but then I already use computers at home; if I wanted to bring in a genetics lab too then why bother ever leaving work?

So what would you want to do it for? Fun and profit, I suppose. Well, that and terrorism; presumably you could hack together some sort of terrible plague, if you had enough time and money. Some elements of the media (Not necessarily the EE Times, they just had a nice, concise article) have latched on to this idea. It sells quite well to scaremongerers: not only are we at risk from bioterrorism, we're at risk from bioterrorism built in our backyard for twenty bucks. Should the government be bringing out tougher regulations? Should tinkering with genetics outside a lab be made illegal? (actually, that's another thing that I haven't seen mentioned in relation to biohacking: don't health and safety regulations in most countries already prohibit genetic modification in the home?)

Groups could use homegrown genetics for their own evil purposes but surely the type of organisation that wants to unleash biological destruction on us is the type of organisation that wouldn't bother messing around with e.coli in a garage when (bearing in mind that it'd actually be pretty difficult to actually weaponize anything) there are far faster and cheaper ways of causing mayhem. There's an interesting PDF available from the aforementioned MIT BioBricks people called Risks and Rewards, which suggests that people should balance the potential benefits of biohacking (people inventing useful things in their spare time) with the risks (to quote the PDF: "Bin Laden Genetics Ltd.")

I agree with that, but the same PDF also has some rather shaky sounding suggestions for how to combat the threat that biohacking might present in the future: sticking to a code of ethics, for one - because terrorists are ethical? - and encouraging biohackers in the first place so that there's always a pool of amateurs ready to help governmental organisations find vaccines or cures or whatever is neccessary: this is akin to one of the arguments for open source software, I guess, though to look at suspect code an open source coder can use an everyday PC; to look at a suspect, highly virulent strain of genetically engineered flu or something presumbably you need a high grade containment facility of the kind unavailable through mail order.

So that's the terrorism aspect. Then there's the profit: one could (plausibly) design innovative biological solutions to engineering problems, or genetically modify crops and vegetables - presumably to patent rather than to produce and then sell from a stall on the sidewalk outside your house. I'm happy with people doing this up to a point: there are fairly obvious ethical considerations once people start messing with animals, which should be a strictly enforced no-no (you'd think that the genetic modification of higher order organisms would be too complex a task for a lone amateur in any case).

Which brings me to Eduardo Kac, who is an artist, a biohacker and the creator of GFP Bunny, on which I reserve judgement. To his credit, Eduardo does say that creating glow-in-the-dark bunnies:

must be done with great care, with acknowledgment of the complex issues thus raised and, above all, with a commitment to respect, nurture, and love the life thus created

... but as some pointed out at the time perhaps creating an animal purely in service of art breaks that commitment to respect.