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Finally, what about the nightmare scenario: Is CRISPR so easy to use that we need to worry about biohackers—either accidentally or intentionally—creating danger

Finally, what about the nightmare scenario: Is CRISPR so easy to use that we need to worry about biohackers—either accidentally or intentionally—creating dangerous pathogens? Carroll and others think that the danger of putting CRISPR in the hands of the average person is relatively low. “People have imagined scenarios where scientists could use CRISPR to generate a virulent pathogen, ” he says. “How big is the risk? It’s not zero, but it’s fairly small.” Gersbach agrees. “Right now, it’s difficult to imagine how it’d be dangerous in a real way,” he explains It's hard for "normal" people to imagine how sociopaths or those with destructive aims will behave when given flexible tools like this. It's kind of like how no one anticipated how social media networks whose ostensible purpose is to connect friends could be used to undermine elections, abet fraud, commit character assassination, and drive people to suicide. And while the real-life example of using CRISPR to switch the limbs of tiny crustaceans sounds harmless, wait til someone mutates something bigger and more familiar for "better" attributes or capabilities that can cause direct harm or inadvertent effects. It's probably already happened ... but we may not understand the impact for years.

Danihan 9y ago
I wonder what it says about me that it's extremely easy for me to think of most of these implications.. People are just territorial, violent animals that are barely domesticated via a few thousand years of society.
api 9y ago
When I was a bio undergrad student I learned once (in discussion with a professor) about a disturbingly simple and effective GMO path to weaponized microbes discovered back in the 70s by some bio-weapons researchers. This was long before CRISPR. Totally ingenious, simple, and absolute nightmare fuel. I will not repeat it here. The ideas are out there but I'm not going to help anyone find it. Suffice to say that I think it's pure luck that we have not yet had a biological 9/11 attack or worse. Normal people do have trouble imagining what psychopaths will do with things. Our brains do not naturally go there. A good example is what is now being done with social media, mobile, and the Internet in general: radical "dopamine" gamification to make it actually addictive, extreme political manipulation, and all powered by ubiquitous surveillance. There's presently a race to develop the first true AI con artist capable of autonomously conning humans into believing arbitrary things. I did not imagine most of this in 2000 because I'm not a psychopath. I was aware of the surveillance dangers of the Internet but I never pictured the degree to which it would be weaponized against the population by amoral or actively malicious actors. https://thinkprogress.org/hermann-park-protest-houston-28895d563f38/ https://thinkprogress.org/hermann-park-protest-houston-28895... Now whoever triggered that "flash mob" for teh lulz can mail order CRISPR. Sleep well.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
  I've been worrying about this since the late 90s. It's so easy to create and release a zero-resistance >99% kill rate pandemic nightmare that I absolutely agree. And the power of the Internet makes it trivially easy to research and design that nightmare. CRISPR is the equivalent of selling megaton nukes on Amazon.
  - api 9y ago
    99% is tough for various evolutionary theoretic reasons, but another bubonic plague is a hell of a lot easier. These things are more dangerous than nukes. Any technology for creating GMOs should be regulated and licensed for the same reason that we regulate and license fissile material. This should remain true until and unless we can stop killing and hating each other and until a decade goes by without some nut opening fire on a bunch of kids in a church. That guy can now order a CRISPR kit. The people who hang out on 4chan /pol and "pray" for ebola to go airborne so it will de-populate Africa can mail order a CRISPR kit. It wouldn't be the dumbass meme-slinging shitlords. It would be that one lurker with a bio Ph.D and a shrine to Adolf Hitler and a collection of books by Julius Evola and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion all full of highlighting and underlining. "He was just kind of quiet. Seemed nice. Said hi to the neighbors. He spent a lot of time on the Internet and got a lot of FedEx packages. Saw him come and go at night a lot." "Police say the suspect tested the pathogen on human victims to perfect it. He took his victims mostly from homeless camps or hired prostitutes. A mass grave has been discovered on a remote property owned by the suspect and meticulously catalogued tissue samples have been found in a storage locker..." "The disease's lethality was increased by the suspect's attempts to make it fatal only to certain ethnic groups as the inclusion of human antigens causes a reaction similar to that experienced by organ transplant recipients..." "Officials say they can't provide a time-table for how long the quarantine will last. The army is being mobilized to deliver supplies..." ... then a few weeks later just the tone and a scrolling message ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HlP2GHn_Ck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HlP2GHn_Ck I have children. Ban this stuff right now. Edit: I just picked a contemporary motive. There's an endless supply of wills-of-God and causes "that will not be understood now... but history will judge me..."
Gatsky 9y ago
As other people have said, it has been possible to make bioweapons for a long time, but engineered bioterrorism hasn't happened. There are a few reasons I think. Firstly, there is a cultural disconnect between fundamentalism and science heavy weapons development. In the same way that ISIS is not building gigawatt lasers or rail guns, the groups capable of terrorism don't prioritise research. They are often very atavistic, wanting a return to a less technical, less advanced society. The second thing is that engineering even the simplest organsim is still hard. If you are trying to build a pandemic virus, you need a fairly elaborate set up to do it and avoid killing yourself first. This is far less accessible than making explosives, or obtaining guns. The biggest risk is state funded labs in eg North Korea, or the emergence of contract labs willing to do anything for a fee, eg a 'biohacking' equivalent of Hacking Team.
- cirgue 9y ago
  Aum Shinrikyo actually had a bio-weapons program that failed, seemingly due to a lack of technical expertise: http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/revisiting-aum-shinrikyo-new-insights-most-extensive-non-state-biological-weapons-program-date-1/ http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/revisiting-aum-shinriky...
  - Gatsky 9y ago
    That was a fascinating and disconcerting read. The part where a cult member falls into the fermentation tank supposedly filled with botulinum toxin and comes out unscathed I guess illustrates the point I was trying to make.
- fellellor 9y ago
  I have a feeling that suicide is easier when the costs are low. Once a terror organization develops respectable level of technical capability, like north Korea, they would tend to evolve into a criminal organization. I don't know if that is much better since a rational criminal organization may pose a much bigger threat than a fanatical group of terrorists.
1001101 9y ago
> It's hard for "normal" people to imagine how sociopaths or those with destructive aims will behave when given flexible tools like this. Given enough time, you just need one misanthropic individual. Edit: and it doesn't just need to be CRISPR. It could be AI, fusion, you name it. The power of the individual to impose their will on larger and larger numbers of people and parts of the planet keeps increasing with technology.
- fsiefken 9y ago
  Remember the guy in Snow Crash who drove around with his brains wired to a fusion bomb.

Danihan 9y ago

I wonder what it says about me that it's extremely easy for me to think of most of these implications.. People are just territorial, violent animals that are barely domesticated via a few thousand years of society.

api 9y ago

When I was a bio undergrad student I learned once (in discussion with a professor) about a disturbingly simple and effective GMO path to weaponized microbes discovered back in the 70s by some bio-weapons researchers. This was long before CRISPR. Totally ingenious, simple, and absolute nightmare fuel. I will not repeat it here. The ideas are out there but I'm not going to help anyone find it. Suffice to say that I think it's pure luck that we have not yet had a biological 9/11 attack or worse. Normal people do have trouble imagining what psychopaths will do with things. Our brains do not naturally go there. A good example is what is now being done with social media, mobile, and the Internet in general: radical "dopamine" gamification to make it actually addictive, extreme political manipulation, and all powered by ubiquitous surveillance. There's presently a race to develop the first true AI con artist capable of autonomously conning humans into believing arbitrary things. I did not imagine most of this in 2000 because I'm not a psychopath. I was aware of the surveillance dangers of the Internet but I never pictured the degree to which it would be weaponized against the population by amoral or actively malicious actors. https://thinkprogress.org/hermann-park-protest-houston-28895d563f38/ https://thinkprogress.org/hermann-park-protest-houston-28895... Now whoever triggered that "flash mob" for teh lulz can mail order CRISPR. Sleep well.

TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
I've been worrying about this since the late 90s. It's so easy to create and release a zero-resistance >99% kill rate pandemic nightmare that I absolutely agree. And the power of the Internet makes it trivially easy to research and design that nightmare. CRISPR is the equivalent of selling megaton nukes on Amazon.
- api 9y ago
  99% is tough for various evolutionary theoretic reasons, but another bubonic plague is a hell of a lot easier. These things are more dangerous than nukes. Any technology for creating GMOs should be regulated and licensed for the same reason that we regulate and license fissile material. This should remain true until and unless we can stop killing and hating each other and until a decade goes by without some nut opening fire on a bunch of kids in a church. That guy can now order a CRISPR kit. The people who hang out on 4chan /pol and "pray" for ebola to go airborne so it will de-populate Africa can mail order a CRISPR kit. It wouldn't be the dumbass meme-slinging shitlords. It would be that one lurker with a bio Ph.D and a shrine to Adolf Hitler and a collection of books by Julius Evola and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion all full of highlighting and underlining. "He was just kind of quiet. Seemed nice. Said hi to the neighbors. He spent a lot of time on the Internet and got a lot of FedEx packages. Saw him come and go at night a lot." "Police say the suspect tested the pathogen on human victims to perfect it. He took his victims mostly from homeless camps or hired prostitutes. A mass grave has been discovered on a remote property owned by the suspect and meticulously catalogued tissue samples have been found in a storage locker..." "The disease's lethality was increased by the suspect's attempts to make it fatal only to certain ethnic groups as the inclusion of human antigens causes a reaction similar to that experienced by organ transplant recipients..." "Officials say they can't provide a time-table for how long the quarantine will last. The army is being mobilized to deliver supplies..." ... then a few weeks later just the tone and a scrolling message ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HlP2GHn_Ck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HlP2GHn_Ck I have children. Ban this stuff right now. Edit: I just picked a contemporary motive. There's an endless supply of wills-of-God and causes "that will not be understood now... but history will judge me..."

Gatsky 9y ago

As other people have said, it has been possible to make bioweapons for a long time, but engineered bioterrorism hasn't happened. There are a few reasons I think. Firstly, there is a cultural disconnect between fundamentalism and science heavy weapons development. In the same way that ISIS is not building gigawatt lasers or rail guns, the groups capable of terrorism don't prioritise research. They are often very atavistic, wanting a return to a less technical, less advanced society. The second thing is that engineering even the simplest organsim is still hard. If you are trying to build a pandemic virus, you need a fairly elaborate set up to do it and avoid killing yourself first. This is far less accessible than making explosives, or obtaining guns. The biggest risk is state funded labs in eg North Korea, or the emergence of contract labs willing to do anything for a fee, eg a 'biohacking' equivalent of Hacking Team.

cirgue 9y ago
Aum Shinrikyo actually had a bio-weapons program that failed, seemingly due to a lack of technical expertise: http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/revisiting-aum-shinrikyo-new-insights-most-extensive-non-state-biological-weapons-program-date-1/ http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/revisiting-aum-shinriky...
- Gatsky 9y ago
  That was a fascinating and disconcerting read. The part where a cult member falls into the fermentation tank supposedly filled with botulinum toxin and comes out unscathed I guess illustrates the point I was trying to make.
fellellor 9y ago
I have a feeling that suicide is easier when the costs are low. Once a terror organization develops respectable level of technical capability, like north Korea, they would tend to evolve into a criminal organization. I don't know if that is much better since a rational criminal organization may pose a much bigger threat than a fanatical group of terrorists.

1001101 9y ago

> It's hard for "normal" people to imagine how sociopaths or those with destructive aims will behave when given flexible tools like this. Given enough time, you just need one misanthropic individual. Edit: and it doesn't just need to be CRISPR. It could be AI, fusion, you name it. The power of the individual to impose their will on larger and larger numbers of people and parts of the planet keeps increasing with technology.

fsiefken 9y ago
Remember the guy in Snow Crash who drove around with his brains wired to a fusion bomb.