DIYbio on Genome Technology and it's not favorable
Jim H
Just catching up on all the traffic and emails and saw this:http://
www.genome-technology.com/issues/blog/general/151504-1.html
Your Very Own Organism and Jail Cell
December 29, 2008
The Associated Press reports on the rise of do-it-yourself genetic
engineers who have little formal training as biologists. One, a
computer programmer, is trying to insert GFP into yogurt bacteria so
that it will glow in the presence of melamine. Others are worried
about DIY biology. Jim Thomas from the biotechnology watchdog
organization ETC Group told the AP, "Once you move to people working
in their garage or other informal location, there's no safety process
in place."
Hobbyists might also want to note this story that PZ Myers mentions on
his blog: An enthusiastic chemistry student in Canada was arrested,
accused of first having a meth lab and then of having "materials
necessary to produce explosives" which Myers calls "an awfully low bar
to set." He adds, "Don't criminalize reagents. Monitor them, sure, but
instead target the products of criminal chemistry."
Nadeem Mazen
Bryan Bishop
> I am a bit behind on the GG front today. Busy shuffling labs around.
>
> Just catching up on all the traffic and emails and saw this: http://
> www.genome-technology.com/issues/blog/general/151504-1.html
Yeah, we were talking about that yesterday-
http://groups.google.com/group/diybio/browse_thread/thread/90f6f81eac70f424/d1f4d339d233aea4?lnk=gst&q=just+read+this+on+the+blogosphere#d1f4d339d233aea4
And a similar topic from November-
http://groups.google.com/group/diybio/browse_thread/thread/3ccec012a202ce90/ab75049dd39907bf?lnk=gst&q=Article%3A+Underground+Science+%26+Home+Chemistry+Labs#ab75049dd39907bf
On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 7:40 PM, Scott Kerr wrote:
> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/12/when_they_criminalize_chem...
>
> Who do you think is next?
The article:
"""
Another casualty in the War on Drugs: an enthusiastic science student,
of the sort that would normally go on to be a scientist, is arrested
for having a chemistry lab.
A Canadian college student majoring in chemistry built himself a home
lab - and discovered that trying to do science in your own home
quickly leads to accusations of drug-making and terrorism.
Lewis Casey, an 18-year-old in Saskatchewan, had built a small
chemistry lab in his family's garage near the university where he
studies. Then two weeks ago, police arrived at his home with a search
warrant and based on a quick survey of his lab determined that it was
a meth lab. They pulled Casey out of the shower to interrogate him,
and then arrested him.
A few days later, police admitted that Casey's chemistry lab wasn't a
meth lab - but they kept him in jail, claiming that he had some of the
materials necessary to produce explosives. Friends and neighbors wrote
dozens of letters to the court, testifying that Casey was innocent and
merely a student who is really enthusiastic about chemistry.
Errm, having the "materials necessary to produce explosives" is an
awfully low bar to set. If we're going to go that route, let's round
up and arrest all the farmers — they've got fuel oil and fertilizer in
bulk, and are a far more serious danger.
"""
I just got done glancing at the link up on Slashdot today with an
RIAA-related case:
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/28/2215211
.. the arguments that were made are sad. "Does anybody here use file
sharing applications?" *no hands*. And yet nearly every one of them
said they use email, or a web browser. What utter failure of
understanding.
On Dec 28, 11:51 pm, "Aaron Hicks" <aaron.hi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Locally, they sell 50-pound sacks of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Provided
> one has the money, you could walk in and buy a pallet of the stuff- no
> questions asked (although you might get some odd looks from the staff- but
> ask them if you could pin a copy of you bogus "Lawn and Garden" business
> card on their "Services" board, and they wouldn't think twice).
>
> But if you were to have half a pound of high purity, double-recrystallized
> ammonium nitrate from Fluka, it would probably be cause for a visit by a
> HAZ-MAT team, and maybe the BATF. Certainly the county bomb squad would come
> out.
>
> Now- the AN prill is made in two fashions: one is smooth, like a ping-pong
> ball. This is for fertilizer use. The other sort is coarse and porous, which
> is for explosives use as it absorbs and retains fuel more readily. The
> manufacturer can label and sell the explosives-grade stuff as fertilizer if
> they run out of bags- but they can't label fertilizer stuff for explosives.
> So there's always a chance the stuff at Agway will be explosives-grade,
> packaged as fertilizer.
>
> Yet somehow the crystalline form- arguably the worst for use as a detonable
> compound- would still be perceived as a grave risk, causing your neighbors
> homes to be evacuated. Substitute the "Fluka" label with "Fertilizer," and I
> doubt they'd do the same thing.
>
> Someone remind me how that's a terrorist act, but crashing and burning the
> economy and getting paid $700 billion to do so isn't.
>
> Rant off. Back to the lab.
>
> -AJ
And:
Jason Bobe wrote:
> "Not all of us [with home chemistry labs] are mad bombers or
> drugmakers," Ernst says. "We would like to be able to practice our
> hobby in peace if there's a reasonable way for us to figure out the
> guidelines."
>
> From this article, mentioning Victor Deeb among others:
>
> Bethany Halford. Underground Science: Chemistry hobbyists face a
> labyrinth of local and state regulations. Chemical and Engineering
> News. November 10, 2008. Volume 86, Number 45. pp. 38-40.
>
> http://pubs.acs.org/cen/science/86/8645sci1.html
>
> Jason Bobe
And:
On Nov 12, 4:55 pm, "Mackenzie Cowell" wrote:
> "Rebecca Blood: "Wide adoption of the Internet has fueled a resurgence of
> citizen science. Cornell's Project Feeder Watch employs 16,000 volunteers
> across North America who record their sightings on a website that will
> automatically ask them to double-check if they report sighting a bird that
> normally does not range in their area. In Canada, Frogwatch has set up
> systems for reporting and mapping observations so that volunteers can see
> the results of their input immediately.And Earthdive is working on a global
> scale, allowing recreational divers and snorkellers to record their
> experiences. Members can search and explore dives, snorkel trips, science
> logs, and personal experiences recorded all over the world. By including
> sightings of key indicator species during their dives and trips, Earthdive
> members are creating a daily global snapshot of the state of our planet's
> oceans." (http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002974.html) "
>
> from http://p2pfoundation.net/Citizen_Science
Jim H
Yes, I know. I guess I am concerned about the tone of the "blurb",
which twists PZ's conclusion and gives more weight to the
"uncontrolled safety hazards" mantra than the potential benefits of
DIYbio. Just worried it will reach a new or different audience and
unleash a sh*t storm.
On Dec 29, 10:35 pm, "Bryan Bishop" <kanz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 9:22 PM, Jim H <gah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I am a bit behind on the GG front today. Busy shuffling labs around.
>
> > Just catching up on all the traffic and emails and saw this: http://
> >www.genome-technology.com/issues/blog/general/151504-1.html
>
>
> And a similar topic from November-http://groups.google.com/group/diybio/browse_thread/thread/3ccec012a2...
> 1 512 203 0507
Jim H
A hybrid of Meridith's AP story and Mac's Boston Globe gig. Damn Mac,
you're one popular guy. At least I think this one is a bit more
favorable, although the title is ominous.
Strange News
Fear: Hobbyists Will Create New Life Forms
By Robert Roy Britt, Editorial Director
posted: 28 December 2008 12:52 pm ET
Amateur biologists are goofing around with genetics in garage-based
labs that some fear could unleash new and dangerous life forms.
The new effort, dubbed biohacking, harkens to revolutions in infotech
hatched by individuals that founded Apple, Hewlett Packard and Google.
While, individual kitchen-counter chemists may become biohackers, the
field has already become organized: One of the more serious examples
is a community lab set up by a Cambridge, Mass. group called DIYbio
(do-it-yourself biology). Co-founder Mackenzie Cowell said amateurs
might do things as diverse as creating new vaccines to using squid
genes to make tattoos that glow.
"We should try to make science more sexy and more fun and more like a
game," Cowell said in an Associated Press story.
Some worry things could get out of control, with dangerous organisms
escaping a lab.
"Once you move to people working in their garage or other informal
Group, a biotechnology watchdog.
At the root of biohacking is the field of synthetic biology, which is
not new. For years, researchers have been trying to engineer and build
or redesign living organisms, such as bacteria, to carry out specific
functions. The field is a scientific playground for the genetic code,
where previously nonexistent DNA is formulated in test tubes. The
promise is that the novel organisms will fight disease, create
alternative fuels or build living computers.
The field "is potentially controversial because it raises issues of
ownership, misuse, unintended consequences and accidental release,"
according to a report earlier this year commissioned by the
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council in England.
Thank you for voting!
Good. Science should be for everyone. 51% (765 votes)
feedback bar
Evil. Efforts to create artificial life should be banned. 5% (82
votes)
feedback bar
Neither. But let"s keep this in the traditional halls of science where
it can be regulated. 44% (655 votes)
feedback bar
Total Votes: 1502
Return To Poll
PollDaddy.com
Meanwhile, research on the professional side has made great strides.
Scientists last year took a big step toward creating artificial life
with the successful transplant of genetic material from one microbe
species into the cellular body of another.
"It's equivalent to converting a Macintosh computer to a PC by
inserting a new piece of software," said J. Craig Venter, who leads
the J. Craig Venter Institute in Maryland where the research was
conducted.
Venter's life story will resonate with the new garage-based
biotinkerers. He is known for setting up his own company that raced a
government effort to fully sequence the first human genome.
Venter's team aims to create artificial life with lab-crafted genomes.
Also on the horizon: Cybrids. A British group plans to "inject human
DNA into empty eggs from cows, to create embryos known as cytoplasmic
hybrids that are 99.9 per cent human in genetic terms," according to
an article earlier this year in The Times of London.
The approach at DIYbio sounds downright fun. The group started by
showing amateurs how to extract DNA and do genetic fingerprinting
using the kitchen sink and stuff around the house.
Cowell and his colleagues see their effort as one to democratize
science.
"It shows you how much science can be about duct tape and having a few
screws in the right place," Cowell said in a Boston Globe article in
September. "It shatters that clinical image."
Krank Bitz
On Dec 29, 10:57 pm, Jim H <gah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Another new one just hot Digg:http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/081228-create-life.html
>
> A hybrid of Meridith's AP story and Mac's Boston Globe gig. Damn Mac,
> you're one popular guy. At least I think this one is a bit more
> favorable, although the title is ominous.
>
> Strange News
>
> Fear: Hobbyists Will Create New Life Forms
feel the need to step in and point out a flaw in the anti-DIYbio
crowd's philosophy. They feel that it is possible to investigation,
exploration, and invention. I have no doubts that they can curtail it,
but to bad ends. To rehash an old analogy, when science is outlawed,
only outlaws will have science. But that's just the tip of the
argument. Looking back at history, time and time again there has been
prohibition and monopolies granted to the privileged few, and when
this happens progress in that field is slowed (patents cut both ways,
both encouraging and discouraging scientific and technological
progress, but that's another topic). Progress comes when the shackles
are removed. Oh sure there will be some messes created, but these can
be cleaned up.
FUD is so easy to spread. The fear that the world would become a black
hold when the Large Hadron Collider was turned on. Or that the first
nuclear explosion would ignite the atmosphere of the earth. But most
significantly, the disproven notion that living organisms are somehow
fundamentally different than non-living organisms, and that humans are
different than other life, because we have a soul (I believe that the
soul is that in us which exceeds the sum of the parts: while there is
no organ that contains it, it nonetheless exists as the function and
of the parts).
I've held these beliefs since I was an adolescent. I was told at the
time that when I was older and wiser, I would see the wisdom of the
regulations that science, at that time, was enduring. Now I am older,
and I believe I am wiser, and have changed my views about many things
but this is not one of them. I was raised in the "NO NUKES" crowd,
who refused to believe that it was possible to responsibly split the
atom. "Split wood, not atoms" they would say. Any improvement in
safety features, or in oversight, was not good enough for them. As
much as I like a nice fire in the stove or fireplace (one would
certainly be nice for today's snowstorm), I know that wood fires
cannot replace nuclear power, and I use reason to back up that belief.
Neither do I believe that nuclear power can solve all our energy
problems, again through the use of reason.
I really hope that DIY bio doesn't have to go underground. But we
should prepare for that possibility. So, let's make a list of how
"they" would try to regulate us, and stop us from bypassing their
regulations by requiring licenses for certain equipment, and head them
off by purchasing the equipment while we still can...just in case.
I also suggest that we have some sort of conference, in person get to
know each other. Let's grow our numbers a bit more, and then plan it.
Cambridge seems like a natural place to have it (I admit that I am
biased by being local), but the cost of hotel rooms in the area is
absurdly high. Perhaps we can arrange some summer event and use
available dorm space.