I’ve been reading some comments on bio-hacking and all I can say is I am disappointed. All these people saying bade things, thinking all bio-hackers do is make weapons in our closets. When the government, companies, and the army are making and finding ways to make a biological weapon. I read an article (I don’t know where it is now.) about a group of scientist that made a bacterium that was resistant to strong antibiotics.
In 2003, researchers inadvertently discovered that the virulence of mouse pox could be significantly enhanced by the incorporation of a standard immunoregulator gene —a technique that also inadvertently pointed the way to greatly increase the lethality of any other naturally occurring pathogen like anthrax or smallpox.
Last fall, biologists finally managed to synthesize a key smallpox viral protein that blocks critical aspects of the human immune response.
Link http://www.hstoday.us/content/view/668/92/

My other point is biohackers are harmless; we can only afford what we can.

Hers are those comments I was talking about.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________Regulation should be tight. We already have wide access to alcohol, and look at the damage that does. If we can't keep people from driving drunk, how are we going to keep people from making dangerous diseases without proper security protocols?
Yes, this may keep us in a darker age than we could have been. But I'm still not sold on nuclear energy being an overall benefit. Cheap energy, sure, but I have to live in fear that an early warning system could have a catastrophic failure that leads to a massive launch of ICBMs. We don't let people tinker with nuclear power, in spite of the possible grand improvements such projects could produce. The risks are just too great. It is the same with biohacking. It will take just one "Oops!" to cancel out every single "Great job!" produced by the movement. Written by Great Cthulhu ______________________________________________________________________________________
How about this? To biohack one must have a license. To qualify for a license one must undergo a certificate course on biohazards, related science subjects and on laboratory practice. Only then can one get a permit to store reagents and equipment, either of which may be commercial products or home made ones. The license should require keeping valid records of reagent purchase, usage and experimental data. How about this? To biohack one must have a license. To qualify for a license one must undergo a certificate course on biohazards, related science subjects and on laboratory practice. Only then can one get a permit to store reagents and equipment, either of which may be commercial products or home made ones. The license should require keeping valid records of reagent purchase, usage and experimental data. Written by canadianchinaman
http://www.economist.com/printedition/d ... readBottom

I have to admit it I agree with canadianchinaman, maybe a license would help every. One last thing, people who think one accident will make the T-virus are wrong. Because a lot of the time new code ether will kill or weaken what were working on. So don’t freak out.

Biohacking is a difficult subject to discuss. Because it presupposes basic knowledge of what biohacking entails and how nature works. These are not subjects most people have spent any time studying. So one often ends up in somewhat confused discussions with people who don't know the difference between bacteria and virus but have opinions.

I think a license can be a good idea from an image standpoint(as in hacking minds). I don't think it's all that necessary from a safety standpoint.

If we look at hacking with BioBricks. It's more engineering than biology. The biology of it is crude cut and paste – It's safe hacking that doesn't produce pathogens.

If someone wants pathogens they don't biohack, they buy an airline ticket and fetch what they want from nature.

Evolution/natural selection builds and releases pathogenic microbes all the time. Like the swineflu I'm getting vaccinated against in a few weeks. Luckily swineflu looks like a dud but SARS was a close call and avian flu is still looming in the background. And this is just a selection of the potentially bad pandemics on display, there are more waiting in the reservoirs.

We want a defence against bad microorganisms like these - and garage biology is the breeding ground for the people who will bring us the solutions. We want the smart 15 year olds to play with BioBricks. We want bacteria and viruses to be yet another part of nature we can handle and not have to worry about.

So what about bioterrorism - the prospect of a garage biologist, for some reason, building, cultivating and spreading a dangerous microorganism out of malice? Well, there are no guarantees against it. Then again nature does that very thing all by itself – and has done so since the beginning of time. The sooner we don't have to worry about either of them - the better.

It's very difficult to stop people from doing stupid things. The only time I've heard of someone trying bioterrorism was in 2001 when a scientist working at a government biodefence lab spread anthrax he brought from work.

As Samuel Harris points out it's possible for someone to be highly educated while at the same time have a belief in the supernatural. I think the character most likely to try something bad is the smart, highly educated person who thinks he/she is on a mission from god.

Synthetic biology, hacker culture and garage biology are powers for good.

-Splicer

My country already requires people to have a license before they can buy many common lab chemicals, even basic ones such as ethanol. You have to be affiliated with a registered lab to get them.

I've yet to see a discussion of garage bio in popular media that doesn't bring up some infectious disease that could be messed with.

I don't know if it's just a diet of bad sci-fi "mad-scientists" or a serious lack of understanding of just what it would take for the average hobbyist to set up a lab where you could get close to level 3 biosafety level to begin working with those organisms, but they all assume that we wouldn't be interested in our own self-preservation and would only seek out a way to "weaponize" diseases.