Forwarded with permission... Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/2004/07/13/biohacking/ -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Will synthetic biology spawn biohackers? Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:42:33 -0700 From: fbj lists <mark@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> References: <40F370AC.1070509@private> Declan, You may remember me from last year, we corresponded a bit. I help run the website www.universaltransparency.org and have a degree in Molecular Biology. This article is exactly the reason I started the website, my background made me very concerned about technological innovation, especially in the biological sciences. There would seem to be only two ways to prevent the type of catastrophe that this article mentions - stop technology (a la Bill Joy), or massive transparency to help see this type of problem before it gets manufactured. At any rate, biohackers are a very real threat. Many people may say it is not, many computer scientists, business people and others who really have few credentials to voice such an opinion. Biological Scientists may be shy about confirming this threat as well, as it may panic people and cut funding. Of course mentioning it also gives some people the idea to do it in the first place. Even I have been very quiet on the topic as it gives me nightmares and it also gives nightmares to my friends. I was at a biotech conference in 1997 when a scientist mentioned that they knew of a lab that just as a experiment, made a bacteria resistant to every known antibiotic. This took a few scientists a week to do in between other experiments. They quit quickly after they realized how scary it was. That was 7 years ago! The main reason this kind of thing has not happened yet, in my opinion, is most bioscientists are highly educated "good" people with many oversights. Sociopaths are usually identified before they get a PhD. Unfortunately, automated instrumentation is being exported to many other countries and being used by less educated people. In the near future, automated instruments may be in the hands of less educated or more desperate people. I still have the site up, but have not been doing much with it for health reasons (carpal issues), as well as that mamy people think my ideas are totalitarian. But in the face of biohackers, serious defenses need to be discussed, and I believe that transparency is the most realistic solution. Please contact me if you want to print this. Mark ----- Original Message ----- From: "Declan McCullagh" <declan@private> To: <politech@private> Sent: Monday, July 12, 2004 10:18 PM Subject: [Politech] Will synthetic biology spawn biohackers? > > http://www.eet.com/at/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=22102744 > > Experts worry that synthetic biology may spawn biohackers > By Chappell Brown > EE Times > June 29, 2004 (1:00 PM EDT) > _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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