Don't make the apocalypse in a test tube, kids

Dude. Dude. I cannot believe that the word "biohacker" is currently being used. It is oddly applicable and all the more scary for it.

Before I denounce all and sundry I should point out that I am, in principle, not against the biohackers. I can see where they are coming from. The fact that you practically need a PhD and massive amounts of funding (millions of dollars, and I have no idea what the current ROR grant award rate is, so don't even ask)to do any kind of research in biology does bother me. I am all for a cheaper way of doing things and the fact that you can buy the same blender (Warring) from your local store that would costs something like ten times more to buy from a biology research tool&appliances catalogue is utterly ridiculous. It is a blender. It chops things. It's even made by the same company and has no differences in settings and motor voltage so why, people? Why?

(Our lab's microwave that we use for experiments probably comes from Fry's or something. It's cheaper.)

That's not even taken into account the PhD thing. Do you really need a doctorate in your field in order to do good science? Clearly not. Plenty of important discoveries were made by people who have never worked in a field that their knowledge contributed to. Dendrochronology is an example of someone contributing from a different field of science altogether. Lorenzo's Oil and, slightly less so, Something the Lord Made are both good stories (in movie format, even!) about people who are not PhDs who have made significant contribution. Having all that scientific knowledge wrapped up and kept under seal, away from the public, is in fact dangerous. It is the public, after all, who makes the decisions about policies. It is the public's voice, the collective "We" (no dystopia jokes please) whose voice is heard. Therefore isn't a little scary to think that about a third of America still doesn't believe in evolution? Uninformed public is dangerous, but what is more dangerous is a public that has been misinformed. In an age of internet and too much information, both accurate and inaccurate, floating around, is it really a good idea to keep what has been scientifically proven restricted to journals that only scientists would probably ever pay to subscribe to? I have somewhat more faith in humanity than Hobbes, but even so, considering what we are capable of doing right now in the field of biology, I think the imbalance of flow of information is getting to be too great. Something's gotta give. (Greener Than You Think is a satirical account of what could, in theory, happen when the scientific knowledge, for whatever reason, just failed to make it across to people -- a salesman in this case. I always wondered if it might've gone better of the biologist in that story managed to appeal to the salesman better and explained why he had to do things a certain way.)

(Which reminds me to mention again how wonderful PLoS is. Really. I love it. If I had more time I'd read more articles from it besides the ones the PI keeps on forwarding to me.)

Now my issue with biohackers (aha, you say, here it comes, but hear me out) is this. As with the original use of the word hackers in the field of computational sciences, the general public tends to lump the word "hacker" and "cracker" together when the two groups of people are in totally different camps. Similarly, with the ease of ordering and shipping (we get our DNAs Fedex'ed, I think people's worked out how to ship all kinds of things via Fedex now) I worry about the possibility of "biocrackers". I feel like I should remind people that unlike comp sci stuff, bio sci things can literally grow and multiply and take over the world. Anyone who's paid any attention at all to news must know of the possible issues people have with antibiotic resistance in bacteria, GMO, as well as the use of animal in research. All these issues arise from a time when the biologists can pretty much just do whatever they wanted, without having to go through protocol approval and acquisition paperwork. (The original discovery of allergy shots? The MD just went out there and injected volunteers. No prior testing on animals or approval of procedure by an elected committee.) Although these have resulted in a lot of awesome discoveries, they also lead to a lot of abuse and environmental dangers in the future. Who could've predicted the frequency that bacteria swap DNA with? The rapid rate that antibiotic resistance can be passed through all different strains? Who could've predicted that increasing yield in crops can also lead to out breeding and "superweeds?". Or those issues with pesticide? For all that I will grumble and complain about the song and dance we have to go through to get anything new done, I also agree that, to an extend, those procedures are necessary. Therefore, your local backyard biohacker, who does not have a protocol approved by a committee who will ask in detail about what happens in case of cross contamination, spills, and a plethora of possibly dangerous things that can go wrong, can in fact get into some serious trouble, not only for the biohacker but for everyone.

There is only one planet earth, people. (Maybe if I repeat this enough time some of the more recalcitrant folks out there will finally realize that their net income each year matters slightly less than the end of the world?)

So my issue is this: not the hacking, nor the backyard, but the fact that we have no way of knowing whether or not the hackers have had any training at all in dealing with research biology. Whether or not, for instance, they know the differences between biohazards level 0 to 3 and that you can't pour biological waste down the drain or into the trash -- there are rules with 10% bleach and 70% ethanol (now a controlled substance that we have to get our PI to sign in order to buy -- sometimes the safety committee can get overly zealous, yes), depending on what you've used, that apply. We don't know whether or not these hackers know that when you mix certain reagents, a small percentage of it can get aerosolized so the area that you work has to be contained -- all our labs have constant air filtering and are at a negative pressure so whenever we open the door, air is sucked into the lab, never out. We don't know even if these hackers know the basic protocols of what to do in case they spill acid or base and let's face it, theory is very different from reality. Back when I did my safety training the people used to tell stories of this poor guy from physics, who'd never done any lab work, and how he spilled acid on himself and how he then poured base on himself to try to neutralize it on his skin. (For the record, people: do not do that; go stand the affected area under the DI water immediately for 15 minutes instead, that way you might actually avoid third degree chemical burn.) What we need, in addition to possible background checks to make sure the person is a hacker and not a cracker, is this: some sort of system (I suspect it will have to be volunteer based because I cannot foresee a lot of the university committee people voluntarily going out to do this) to make sure that everyone can attend a standard safety training session the first time they order stuff to do biological research. It'll be fairly simple, containing information that can probably fit onto a small packet, but it will have to be a training session because people are more likely to pay some attention that way than if they were handed a packet that easily fits into a recycling bin. You don't need to be a professor to give that kind of training sessions -- anyone who's had any sort of lab experience at all can do it. They can get the packet. Or the powerpoint. Whatever. It will have to contain information such as what to do if you spill things on something / someone and why you must make sure you don't carry whatever critters you've made on your bench with you when you leave and accidentally unleash the apocalypse upon the world.

I'm exaggerating a little, of course. Organisms are surprisingly resilient. Even a doomsday scenario like the one in Oryx and Crake a few humans still made it through, and that was for something that's targeted against humans. So in reality a doomsday scenario will probably only result in decimation of humanity and lots of general difficulties such as lack of clean food, water, and hazmat suits.

So the second half of my title for today's entry is, in reality, "...but if you must, makes sure the tube is capped and you know what to do with it afterwards."

End rant.
Yeah, can you tell this has bothering me a lot since yesterday?