Bio-hacking in the Home

I don’t know exactly how safe the idea of Bio-hacking is. By the looks of it, neither does the press. It would be nice to have a formal study done by regular qualified scientists to make sure that nothing from the bio-hacking community would warrant a ban.

I rather like the idea of bio-hacking. People are able to purchase equipment that is no longer going to be of use to the original lab for pennies on the dollar, and they make a few discoveries. It’s brilliant actually. I think that putting a much larger work force to the task of genetics could provide a lot of insight into the field. We may still need regulations though. Most formal professions have an official code of ethics, and it would be a good idea to have bio-hackers adhere to a set of statements preventing any damage from their work.

If there was a significant chance that a bio-hacker could accidentally produce a “super-bug” that would be resistant to the current medical treatment methods I would not want the process to continue. It is a risk that nobody needs to take. There is clearly a desire from many people to continue in this field, but they don’t wish to obtain formal degrees. Maybe too much of the information is tangential, and they feel alienated from their passion in a classroom environment. It doesn't matter, because they are already practicing this sort of thing. If it turns out to be safe it could provide a great middle class job that could be beneficial to biology in much the same way that moderately trained people were beneficial to the computer industry in the last century. Sure, many of the designers and people in charge were formally trained, but a lot of them weren't  They were able to provide for the industry without ever gaining a college degree. It remains to be seen if any enormous leaps in technology will be made because of the bio-hackers, but it is certainly worth keeping an eye on. They could make medical tests much cheaper, and advance our understanding of human genetics greatly over the next century.