What if biohackers injected themselves with mRNA?

https://www.economist.com/what-if/2021/07/03/what-if-biohackers-injected-themselves-with-mrna

by tosh • 5 years ago

57 59 5 years ago

ud_0• 5 years ago

As expected, I see the Economist leading the charge against transhumanism here in a near-future scenario I'll call 'the pointless war for a natural and well-regulated humanity':

"The question now is whether governments can put the genie back in the bottle through concerted, co-ordinated action. Many politicians say the power to tinker with biology is too dangerous to have in the hands even just of doctors and must be regulated."

Similar arguments are being made regarding the public's access to general-purpose computing, 3D fabrication equipment, AI agents, and indeed: drugs (both psychoactive and medical). Putting this increasing number of "genies back in the bottle" is infeasible and I would argue harmful. We'll be putting an ever-growing amount of our civilization's resources into controlling technologies and behavior just so we can act as if it's still 1975, while unaccountable mega corporations reap all the benefits of modern technology.

I am utterly unconcerned by what people choose to do to their own bodies and minds. What does keep me up is the potential harm to bystanders, both in premeditated acts of terrorism as well as uncontained accidents. I really don't have an answer to this, but I do know that iron-fisted government control of citizen technology is not going to prevent these horror scenarios.

an_opabinia• 5 years ago

I am utterly unconcerned by what people choose to do to their own bodies and minds.

I don't know, do you think the world would be better if people could sell their organs? "Voluntarily?" Also, I'm confident you think there should be limits on what children can choose to do with their bodies and minds, and I'm confident the line you draw would be as unsophisticated as an age.

krastanov3• 5 years ago

How is age not a sophisticated enough of a line (up to medical conditions and scams)? If someone has the right to vote and the right to bodily autonomy or basically any of the rights in the Bill of Rights, then that person should be able to do whatever they want (biohacking on themselves or even suicide included). Their decisions might be stupid, but as long as they are affecting only themselves, then I have no problem with it.

Compare this to mass scams: If many people are tricked (by a person or by a mass histeria) to do something, then it makes perfect sense to have a regulatory agency step in (e.g. FTC, FDA, SEC, etc). And compare that to people with a medical disability: if someone is permanently or temporarily mentally impaired, then some of these rights are curtailed.

zamalek5• 5 years ago

After a lot of thought a few years back about freedom, I started considering what future generations might fight for, or have. What do we consider immoral today, that would be considered immoral tomorrow?

I don't know, do you think the world would be better if people could sell their organs?

Freedom of destiny. If a spouse wanted to sell their organs to improve the life of the remainder of their family, and made the choice with sound mind, then absolutely. If a person requests assisted suicide when suffering from a terrible disease, then absolutely. Why should someone be forced to die in disgrace, purely to satisfy the dogmatic morals of those around them?

Less moral systems force a certain life on people, but they argue that it is moral. We are forcing a certain death on people, and are arguing it's moral. This line of thinking is in line with the current zeitgeist, and the truth of the matter is that no zeitgeist will ever be perfect - but we can improve things by challenging our core morals (just as we did with slavery, women, LGTBQ+).

rkk32• 5 years ago

I don't know, do you think the world would be better if people could sell their organs? "Voluntarily?"

If someone meets the criteria to donate organs, for free, why shouldn't they also be able to charge for it?

gpm• 5 years ago

People selling their organs isn't them doing what they want with their own bodies and minds. It's them engaging in a mutli party business transaction where one person literally buys part of another person.

Maybe we should make that sort of business transaction illegal, maybe we shouldn't, but it has no bearing on whether or not people should be allowed to do what they want with their own minds and bodies.

People should be allowed to remove their own organs, it's only the selling (the business transaction) that you might (or might not) want to outlaw.

senectus1• 5 years ago

what if one group of peoples messing with their own body creates the next new aids or coronavirus or whatever...

whats the "GreyGoo" concept in biohacking.

swiley• 5 years ago

I could imagine them saying something similar about self hosting compilers.

uoaei• 5 years ago

In times like these it is important to recall the literal definition of "conservative" and recognize how such an approach hinders society's progress.

mandelbrotwurst• 5 years ago

There are times when changing things up is an improvement as well as times when it's not.

h0l0cube3• 5 years ago

It's no axiom that applications of conservatism hinder progress. For instance, being conservative towards something that presents an existential threat to humanity could be enabling of progress. I say this as someone who's predominantly 'liberal'

ashtonkem2• 5 years ago

Similar arguments are being made regarding the public's access to general-purpose computing, 3D fabrication equipment, AI agents, and indeed: drugs (both psychoactive and medical). Putting this increasing number of "genies back in the bottle" is infeasible and I would argue harmful.

I’d argue that the only way to put that many genies back into their bottles is an authoritarian government, which is never worth it no matter what promises a would be tyrant makes.

kennywinker• 5 years ago

I would push back on this framing. Do you consider the FDA or the FCC to be authoritarian? There's a lot of genies they put back in bottles - and while there are some places where people might feel they've infringed on general freedom (the regulation of the content on the airwaves, for example) the fact that our home electronics don't mess with our wifi is something we all take for granted.

Another good example is how you can't photocopy money. Did that stop counterfeiting... no. but it sure did tamp down a lot of casual counterfeiting - and i don't think it actually did harm people's liberty very much.

dTal3• 5 years ago

"Never" is a big word. Let's extend this to its logical conclusion - imagine a world where every person had a button that would glass the planet. How long would humans last? Seconds? An authoritarian government would be acceptable in comparison to the immediate extinction that would follow.

We've already accepted as a society that some technologies are too big and dangerous for private individuals to have access to, for the sheer pragmatic reason that there are people crazy enough to do literally anything. Technology that allows a single human to kill every other human on Earth is a really good candidate for restriction. Biohacking is such technology. It's real-life nanobots.

tzs• 5 years ago

For an interesting take on this, find and read the Isaac Asimov short story "The Dead Past".

halhod• 5 years ago

I am curious that you read this piece as arguing for any particular position. I did not write it with a particular argument in mind. My personal bias is the same as yours

ajcp• 5 years ago

And thus was Iain Banks' Culture universe born.

Confiks• 5 years ago

You mean like the guy who in 2018 claimed to have cured himself of lactose intolerance for a while by ingesting a gene-modifying Adenolike virus? [1] No fancy lipid-bubble-riding mRNA necessary.

The rest of the channel is pure biohacking gold. The yeast spider silk video is much recommended.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3FcbFqSoQY

nceqs3• 5 years ago

mRNA is incredibly complicated to make.

ch4s3• 5 years ago

You can design from known templates in software and order the genetic material from multiple companies in some countries.

Doxin• 5 years ago

You can get mRNA (or even DNA) made to-order. People aren't quite making RNA at home yet, but it's not unavailable either.

new299• 5 years ago

I’m not going to read the article, but if someone has an article from a more scientific source, that would be interesting.

But the answer is probably nothing isn’t it? You need some kind of delivery mechanism. Even then, what do you expect some random fragment of mRNA to do? You might get some temporary effect, but RNA gets digested relatively quickly. I’m sure you can come up some random horrific scenario that is in practice very hard to get working but…

More realistic scenario is “what if biohackers start making their own COVID19-like viruses”. Perhaps someone gets the crazy idea of creating a less harmless variant and synthesizing it? (This suggestion was pretty popular on HN a while back, it’s a bad idea FYI).

Probably possible for a Biohacker to try this now, but also not very easy to pull off…

What if biohackers injected themselves with mRNA?

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