5 ms·

Not going to happen. "Biohacking" is 100% hype. 0% science. On insulin specifically: http://blog.indysci.org/insulin-is-hard-but-not-impossible/ http://blog.ind

by ff7c11 11y ago

Not going to happen. "Biohacking" is 100% hype. 0% science. On insulin specifically: http://blog.indysci.org/insulin-is-hard-but-not-impossible/ http://blog.indysci.org/insulin-is-hard-but-not-impossible/

erkkie 11y ago
Biohacking is 100% gonna happen, probably sooner than later. Trying to pretend otherwise is ignoring all the technologies becoming available on a ramen budget.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  And also ignoring all the commercial pharmaceuticals whose prices are being jacked up by orders of magnitude with no warning. Martin Skreli can make the mainstream news by jacking up the price of anti-infection drug pyrimethamine by 5555%. Cycloserine can go up 2160%. Isoproterenol, nitroprusside, tetracycline, and doxycycline went up abruptly. When your quality of life, or even the remaining duration of it, is largely in the hands of a few executives at a single company, it's generally a good move to do whatever is necessary to reduce your dependence on them, before they realize that they can bleed you dry--along with those like you--with a few keystrokes in their inventory system. It is inevitable that people made desperate by medical circumstance will do dangerous things with biology on a shockingly low budget. For instance, did you know that some people are doing at-home fecal transplants using thrift-store blenders and over-the-counter enema kits? How long do you think it will be before someone tries converting cells in their intestinal lining into beta cells, or implanting an artificial pancreas made from their own cells? It is very likely that any successes will be unknown, while the first person to inadvertently kill himself while attempting to cure his own diseases with garage-scale biotech will be criticized and demonized worldwide. And that will be the spark falling on dry tinder, as people realize that the cost of biohacking is now low enough to be within reach of ordinary people.
cinquemb 11y ago
As someone who works in neuro lab who occasionally reads about "Neurohacking" I could easily dismiss it as 100% hype, but I won't (although I do call out when someone talks to me about any of the devices on the market having seen manufactures come through our lab and try to peddle their… stuff). "A lot of biohackers (even PhD level biohackers ensconced in academia) are basically script kiddies – cut and paste these bits of DNA and cross your fingers and hope the result you expect pops out." Same is true of Neuro phds: "scan brains in fmri/eeg that i have no idea how it works from a physics perspective", run this matlab script here, use this proprietary software there, calculate "connectivity|power|correlation" - "does this look good for my paper? yes, shiny grant coming right up! Will it move the field forward? Not anymore than the thousand other papers out there but the university pr office is on it!" (in no particular order). I say this because if all this was more out in the open (methods, software, caveats on every level on a git repo) and more available to people in other fields/expertise to look at and source materials and parts, a lot could be moved forward in general from what I'm observing going on in academia now along the lines of: "As I worked on insulin in grad school, I risked my job as a lowly postdoc, chiming in and pointedly telling him (in front of the program manager) why it wouldn’t work. Some of my coworkers speculated that I might not show up the next day, but I survived to tell the tale." I see some well intentioned people fumbling around, being derided in private by academics (who play the same human status games in different ways) who are still willing to talk with such people (because $$$, and maybe because some other academic they "collaborate" with is talking with them), who are pretty smart in their field (who are finding alternative funding sources!) who I secretly hope burn a fire under the ass of what goes now, so I won't write it all off.
- dnautics 11y ago
  Author of the blog post here - to be a good sport, I gave the open insulin guys the design they're using. I think the chemistry is solid and it will work, but I can't say I'm confident the team will be able to get it together. Insulin is hard. I could probably whip it up myself, but I'm already stretched thin doing two biology projects that aren't paying me anything - and in fact are costing me (my nonprofit and a startup) and I make barely enough on some part-time contract coding work that I am really lucky to have landed through roommate-nepotism. As to why I'm not really that excited about helping the Open Insulin Project any further: I've become kind of wary about prevailing attitudes in the tech-to-bio transition field that basically takes an exploitative attitude following the Postdocapalypse... There's this investor class expectation that they can hire frustrated grad students and postdocs for cheap. I think this is true, but they better watch out, in 99% of cases they are going to get what they are paying for. I've decided to quit impostor syndrome and accept that I am kind of a biochemistry badass (I redesigned an enzyme and made it 4x better on my first shot based on first principles), and that if anyone wants my expertise they have to pay $$ for it. The other week an ALS advocate showed me a drug candidate structure and I correctly identified the mechanism of action without knowing much about the target. I've never been terribly excited about bringing the marginal cost of scientific labor closer to zero, and the OIP is basically that. But good luck to them.
dnautics 11y ago
well this is fun. 1) wrote that blog post and 2) gave the open insulin guys the design they're using. I am a little bit dismayed that credit for the design is somewhat buried in the public facing materials, but whatever. and 3) agree that it's mostly hype - both this project and 'biohacking' in general. I run a nonprofit that is working on an patent-free cancer drug. Raised 60k and I'm doing ok, about to launch into production phase pre- animal model study. I would hesitate to call myself a biohacker - I have a PhD in chemistry and two postdocs in biochemistry and molecular biology, so I'm not coming from the CS/IT side - although I do currently code for a living. but 4) think that whatever, the project could be interesting. As it is, the way insulin is manufactured is pretty terrible, it could be way cheaper, and it's with that in mind that I designed the scheme the way that I designed it.
- januswandering 11y ago
  Hey Issac. Sorry that we didn't make your design contributions clear enough in our promotional material. I was wondering if you might be willing to either write up a lab note for experiment.com or an article for our publication so we can point to it and do a better job of giving you credit.
- januswandering 11y ago
  I would try to write something up, but honestly although I studied biochemistry in undergrad, I don't have a clear enough understanding of the differences in the design you gave us vs. other strategies.

by ff7c11 11y ago

erkkie 11y ago

Biohacking is 100% gonna happen, probably sooner than later. Trying to pretend otherwise is ignoring all the technologies becoming available on a ramen budget.

logfromblammo 11y ago
And also ignoring all the commercial pharmaceuticals whose prices are being jacked up by orders of magnitude with no warning. Martin Skreli can make the mainstream news by jacking up the price of anti-infection drug pyrimethamine by 5555%. Cycloserine can go up 2160%. Isoproterenol, nitroprusside, tetracycline, and doxycycline went up abruptly. When your quality of life, or even the remaining duration of it, is largely in the hands of a few executives at a single company, it's generally a good move to do whatever is necessary to reduce your dependence on them, before they realize that they can bleed you dry--along with those like you--with a few keystrokes in their inventory system. It is inevitable that people made desperate by medical circumstance will do dangerous things with biology on a shockingly low budget. For instance, did you know that some people are doing at-home fecal transplants using thrift-store blenders and over-the-counter enema kits? How long do you think it will be before someone tries converting cells in their intestinal lining into beta cells, or implanting an artificial pancreas made from their own cells? It is very likely that any successes will be unknown, while the first person to inadvertently kill himself while attempting to cure his own diseases with garage-scale biotech will be criticized and demonized worldwide. And that will be the spark falling on dry tinder, as people realize that the cost of biohacking is now low enough to be within reach of ordinary people.

cinquemb 11y ago

As someone who works in neuro lab who occasionally reads about "Neurohacking" I could easily dismiss it as 100% hype, but I won't (although I do call out when someone talks to me about any of the devices on the market having seen manufactures come through our lab and try to peddle their… stuff). "A lot of biohackers (even PhD level biohackers ensconced in academia) are basically script kiddies – cut and paste these bits of DNA and cross your fingers and hope the result you expect pops out." Same is true of Neuro phds: "scan brains in fmri/eeg that i have no idea how it works from a physics perspective", run this matlab script here, use this proprietary software there, calculate "connectivity|power|correlation" - "does this look good for my paper? yes, shiny grant coming right up! Will it move the field forward? Not anymore than the thousand other papers out there but the university pr office is on it!" (in no particular order). I say this because if all this was more out in the open (methods, software, caveats on every level on a git repo) and more available to people in other fields/expertise to look at and source materials and parts, a lot could be moved forward in general from what I'm observing going on in academia now along the lines of: "As I worked on insulin in grad school, I risked my job as a lowly postdoc, chiming in and pointedly telling him (in front of the program manager) why it wouldn’t work. Some of my coworkers speculated that I might not show up the next day, but I survived to tell the tale." I see some well intentioned people fumbling around, being derided in private by academics (who play the same human status games in different ways) who are still willing to talk with such people (because $$$, and maybe because some other academic they "collaborate" with is talking with them), who are pretty smart in their field (who are finding alternative funding sources!) who I secretly hope burn a fire under the ass of what goes now, so I won't write it all off.

dnautics 11y ago
Author of the blog post here - to be a good sport, I gave the open insulin guys the design they're using. I think the chemistry is solid and it will work, but I can't say I'm confident the team will be able to get it together. Insulin is hard. I could probably whip it up myself, but I'm already stretched thin doing two biology projects that aren't paying me anything - and in fact are costing me (my nonprofit and a startup) and I make barely enough on some part-time contract coding work that I am really lucky to have landed through roommate-nepotism. As to why I'm not really that excited about helping the Open Insulin Project any further: I've become kind of wary about prevailing attitudes in the tech-to-bio transition field that basically takes an exploitative attitude following the Postdocapalypse... There's this investor class expectation that they can hire frustrated grad students and postdocs for cheap. I think this is true, but they better watch out, in 99% of cases they are going to get what they are paying for. I've decided to quit impostor syndrome and accept that I am kind of a biochemistry badass (I redesigned an enzyme and made it 4x better on my first shot based on first principles), and that if anyone wants my expertise they have to pay $$ for it. The other week an ALS advocate showed me a drug candidate structure and I correctly identified the mechanism of action without knowing much about the target. I've never been terribly excited about bringing the marginal cost of scientific labor closer to zero, and the OIP is basically that. But good luck to them.

dnautics 11y ago

well this is fun. 1) wrote that blog post and 2) gave the open insulin guys the design they're using. I am a little bit dismayed that credit for the design is somewhat buried in the public facing materials, but whatever. and 3) agree that it's mostly hype - both this project and 'biohacking' in general. I run a nonprofit that is working on an patent-free cancer drug. Raised 60k and I'm doing ok, about to launch into production phase pre- animal model study. I would hesitate to call myself a biohacker - I have a PhD in chemistry and two postdocs in biochemistry and molecular biology, so I'm not coming from the CS/IT side - although I do currently code for a living. but 4) think that whatever, the project could be interesting. As it is, the way insulin is manufactured is pretty terrible, it could be way cheaper, and it's with that in mind that I designed the scheme the way that I designed it.

januswandering 11y ago
Hey Issac. Sorry that we didn't make your design contributions clear enough in our promotional material. I was wondering if you might be willing to either write up a lab note for experiment.com or an article for our publication so we can point to it and do a better job of giving you credit.
januswandering 11y ago
I would try to write something up, but honestly although I studied biochemistry in undergrad, I don't have a clear enough understanding of the differences in the design you gave us vs. other strategies.