CRISPR (acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a tool for hacking bacterial genes. Therefore, we can say that these bacteria are the original biohackers. They use it as a tool to protect themselves from reinvasion by bacteriophages, similar to the adaptive immunity of our immune system. I generally think of biohacking as biohackers who do things that are difficult or impossible to do within the system.
Another well-known biohacking experiment was carried out by Elizabeth Parrish, executive director of BioViva, a Seattle-based biotechnology company that works to develop treatments to slow the aging process. In recent times, biohacking has expanded the boundaries by turning one's own body into a playing field for experimentation. So why do people try to hack biological products? It seems that a key motivation for many biohackers is a sense of frustration with “overregulation” and the slow pace of progress that this entails. Biohackers are people who experiment with their own bodies outside the realm of traditional medicine in the hope of increasing physical or cognitive performance.
Thanks to a combination of these factors, a controversial type of “influencers” has emerged on the Internet: gene self-publishers or “biohackers”. I found it interesting to see that what Ascendance was doing was described as biohacking because I was working on therapies that, in fact, many professional scientists are working on, but with more regulation. The limited series explains the innovative advance in gene-editing technologies using CRISPR and the implications of BioHacking. Zayner is no stranger to biohacking acrobatics, which are loosely defined as experiments, often with oneself, that take place outside traditional laboratory spaces.
But why has interest in biohacking grown so much? What allows people without medical or scientific training to play with this technology directly in their homes? When Josiah Zayner saw an executive director of biotechnology pull down his pants at a conference on biohacking and inject himself with an unproven herpes treatment, he realized that things had gone bad. The company's own biohackers who created the treatment but who weren't being paid rebelled and the CEO locked himself in a laboratory. Techniques such as meditation, fasting and Vipassana have existed for a long time and can be included in biohacking. Carolyn Chapman, bioethicist and professor affiliated with the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine, said: “I understand the feeling that computer biopirats seem to express, which is that they want access and that the regulatory system prevents access.
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