--:-- Joss Fong: I'm Joss Fong, senior video producer at Vox, filling in for Sean Ramos' firm. Today, we are genetically modifying a living organism with the do-it-yourself CRISPR kit that we bought online.
--:-- Joss Fong: So we sell kits and supplies and teach classes that teach people with no experience in science how to do genetic engineering in their own home. And we hope that you don't create zombies.
--:-- Joss Fong: This guy is an actual idiot because one, it's like not safe to inject yourself. Like you have to have a lot of money to have all the tools for that anyway. So it's like not really applicable to the normal everyday peasants like us.
--:-- Joss Fong: It's not applicable to us. California is the first state to try to crack down on these at-home biohacking kits.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So biohacking is this really broad amorphous term that can apply to a bunch of stuff. But the most common way that it gets used is to refer to people who are experimenting on their own bodies with the hope of, quote-unquote, upgrading or optimizing their physical or cognitive performance. And this is outside of traditional labs or universities and stuff like that.
--:-- Joss Fong: Okay. Am I biohacking when I come into the office and get a cup of coffee to make myself smarter?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Yeah. So I just did that a few moments ago.
--:-- Joss Fong: And the thing about biohacking, right, is it's a term that theoretically a ton of common activities we do daily could fall under that heading.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So what exactly is California targeting with this new legislation?
--:-- Joss Fong: So the legislation is basically saying you are no longer going to be able to legally sell a do-it-yourself gene editing kit without a warning. You have to affix a warning to it in really, you know, a bold, conspicuous way and also have the warning on your website saying this is not meant to be self-administered. In other words, do not try this on your own jeans. Do not try this at home.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Got it. But it doesn't say you couldn't try it on someone else's jeans. That's true, I guess, technically. But I think the clear implication of it is not for human use. And so it's just adding that label to the kits.
--:-- Joss Fong: It doesn't seem like the kind of people who would use these kits are sort of the rule-following type. Why not just ban these outright?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Yeah, I agree. I think it might be of limited use, just a sort of warning on a package.
--:-- Joss Fong: The Senator, Senator Chang in California, who put forward this legislation, initially was thinking about just banning selling these kits outright, but got pushed back from various associations and ultimately decided to temper her stance and say, you know what, let's just put a warning for now.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: And how do these do-it-yourself kits work? Could you actually edit your own jeans?
--:-- Joss Fong: In theory, you could, but really what's been on the market to date probably wouldn't actually work to get you to tinker with your genes in the way that you would want to.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: One of the biggest proponents of this sort of biohacking, who has tried gene editing on himself, has admitted that it hasn't actually worked for him the way he was sort of hoping it might.
--:-- Joss Fong: I feel like I remember, this is Josiah Zaner, is that right? The way science is done is completely wrong.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Bingo. Yep. I remember seeing a video of him injecting himself with, I guess it was, the CRISPR gene editing technology.
--:-- Joss Fong: Exactly. So that was a couple years ago. Josiah Zaner live streamed this stunt that he performed at a biotech conference.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: I'm pretty boring myself, so I got to spice it up a little by seducing you with some free human CRISPR DNA and scotch.
--:-- Joss Fong: Basically, he, as you said, he injected himself with CRISPR, which is a gene editing technology. And this is an attempt to disrupt a gene, the removal of which could, in theory, lead you to have bigger muscles.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: It was a very sort of public affair. And I'm watching this video now. It looks like he's just... It didn't actually hurt that much.
--:-- Joss Fong: ...injecting a needle into his forearm.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Mm-hmm. Oh! Hurts a lot more going in.
--:-- Joss Fong: And seems very relaxed and cavalier about it. I don't know. I don't know why people don't try.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: I'll let you know how it works out.
--:-- Joss Fong: Yeah, he does sort of have this cavalier and anti-establishment streak about him.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So it got a lot, a lot of attention. And even though Zaner later confirmed, you know what, this did not work, it kind of egged people on to sort of do some kind of copycat experiments.
--:-- Joss Fong: And that was really the fear. That's what got regulation folks sort of concerned that more and more people were going to start copying him.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: And in fact he himself about a year ago in an interview in The Atlantic said that he regrets that stunt because he feels like it did make people want to do copycat stuff but they might be not super educated about how to do it in a safe way
--:-- Joss Fong: And he said, you know, people are going to get hurt because everyone's trying to one-up each other.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: There's this kind of culture developing of, you know, showmanship and stuntsmanship.
--:-- Joss Fong: And he himself has become really concerned about that and sort of freaked out by the cult of personality that's grown up around him since that stunt.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: It's like if you could add genetic engineering to the show Jackass. It's kind of terrifying.
--:-- Joss Fong: So is Zayner a scientist?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So he actually, yes, has a PhD. He formerly was doing a fellowship at NASA, actually left NASA because he was frustrated with people that he described as just sitting on their asses.
--:-- Joss Fong: He felt like people, scientists are sort of squandering the opportunities given to them, moving too slowly, not advancing and pushing forward the science as fast as they could be.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So he often sounds this note of frustration that you'll hear from a lot of other biohackers, too.
--:-- Joss Fong: So what exactly are these kits that he's selling?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: There's a huge range. So most of them are not actually aimed at human use. Therefore, genetic engineering with bacteria, with yeast, stuff like if you want to be able to make your yeast fluorescent or if you want to make something glow in the dark, you want to just experiment with some basic biology stuff in the gene editing context, these kits are meant to allow you to do that.
--:-- Joss Fong: So some of them are like really, you know, just harmless kits for people who are curious about CRISPR, curious about gene editing, want to try it on some bacteria, not necessarily on themselves.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: I see. So basically little science experiments.
--:-- Joss Fong: Exactly. Yeah. And then the fear is that people will just turn it on themselves.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Yeah, because at a certain point, Josiah Zayner was selling kits that could be used to target human genes.
--:-- Joss Fong: And the concern there is, well, what if you get people who don't really know what they're doing?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Plus, we don't really know all that much yet about how CRISPR works in the body. It's a pretty new technology.
--:-- Joss Fong: So some people are concerned that if you start tinkering with your genes and we don't really know how this is working, you could accidentally cause a mutation that might make you more susceptible to cancer, let's say.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: And I was just sort of perusing Zaner's website a few moments ago. And, you know, there's high schoolers posting comments about how excited they are to have these kits.
--:-- Joss Fong: And so, you know, I imagine that if I were the mom of a high schooler, I would be concerned about them potentially tinkering with their own jeans in my garage.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Definitely. And so do we know if there are people actively pursuing this sort of use?
--:-- Joss Fong: So at the moment, it doesn't seem like anyone is actually selling the kind of kit that this law exists to crack down on.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Recently, Zaner did get called in by the California Department of Consumer Affairs after somebody accused him of practicing medicine without a license.
--:-- Joss Fong: And they're investigating now whether or not that's true.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Anyway, it seems like Senator Chang and the people behind the legislation really are trying to sort of get ahead of what they see as this potential looming problem.
--:-- Joss Fong: They basically are showing signs of increasing nervousness about biohacking, and they seem to think that more regulation is the answer.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: What do the folks in the biohacking community think about this new law?
--:-- Joss Fong: A lot of them think it's silly. Josiah Zaner certainly has said he thinks it's silly.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: If you talk to people in the biohacking community or the DIY bio community, as it's sometimes called, they'll say that they're a really self-regulating bunch.
--:-- Joss Fong: Some of them have been cooperating with law enforcement, like Homeland Security, for many years, working with them to run public workshops on biosecurity, stuff like that.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: There's even a code of ethics that a group of biohackers, international group, formulated a few years back.
--:-- Joss Fong: So for the most part, they are not Josiah Zaner types.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: And some of them feel that people like Zaner aren't giving them a bad name.
--:-- Joss Fong: Yeah, I imagine people who use this recklessly would probably get the most attention.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: And the ones that are more responsible would probably be frustrated with that.
--:-- Joss Fong: Exactly.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So people like Zainer will go on YouTube and post a video of themselves injecting themselves with CRISPR. Whereas a lot of biohackers are just folks calmly experimenting on yeast in, you know, a community lab in Brooklyn, right? Like that's pretty harmless stuff and that's mostly driven by curiosity.
--:-- Joss Fong: Some biohackers are really driven by altruistic motives. They want to save the environment by creating a biofuel or, you know, something like that.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So you have like one name for a group of people with a huge range of different motivations.
--:-- Joss Fong: After the break, a look at biohackers in Silicon Valley, how they're trying to live forever, and why Twitter's CEO is starving himself on weekends.
--:-- Joss Fong: What are you doing Breaking and reviewing What are you doing? Breaking and reviewing What are you doing? Breaking and reviewing What are you doing? Breaking and reviewing You don't know what you're missing Right off some stage you're half up I can't throw whatever you're missing You don't know what you're missing.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Played us on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.
--:-- Joss Fong: What are you doing? Five stars. What are you doing? Love this show. You don't know what you're missing. Five stars. Five stars. Waiting now. Five stars. Today. Today Explained. It's Today Explained.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Seagal, can you tell me a little bit about how this concept got started?
--:-- Joss Fong: So as you might expect, the concept of biohacking really took off in Silicon Valley.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: And that's kind of the perfect place for that mindset to take off in a way because Silicon Valley has a sort of engineering mindset and then grew and grew and grew into this sort of very diffuse, dispersed, but international movement or lifestyle.
--:-- Joss Fong: And now you have people like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and other very high profile folks with big platforms endorsing some sorts of biohacking.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: It's basically this philosophy that we don't need to accept our body's shortcomings. We can engineer our way right past them with technology.
--:-- Joss Fong: And what does the Twitter CEO do to hack his own body?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So Dorsey discussed his biohacking routine or regimen in a podcast interview. This was the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast.
--:-- Joss Fong: And he really outlined there the meditation he does. You're silent, and that means you're giving up all reading material. You can't read. You can't write. You can't have a device. You can't talk with anyone. You can't even look anyone in the eye.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: How he eats only dinner on weekdays, on weekends, doesn't eat at all.
--:-- Joss Fong: I've done that three times now where I do extended fasts where I'm just drinking water. I don't put anything in the water. It's just water, no food.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Until Sunday dinner when I try to ease back into it slowly, starting with bone broth and then building up a little bit as time goes on, but also as the days go on.
--:-- Joss Fong: And he also talked about the Oura ring, this sleep tracking ring that he wears so he can kind of monitor his body's mechanical functions even during the night.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: I can get a lot more predictive around like if I drink too much wine, I know my REM sleep is going to go down. I know my readiness score is going to go down.
--:-- Joss Fong: And that's one of many wearable devices that people in the biohacking community sometimes get into.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: I can understand why he needs to meditate two hours a day because he must be hangry all the time.
--:-- Joss Fong: I definitely would be. I could not handle eating that little. Crazy.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So the things like supplements, smart drugs, meditating, those are sort of more conventional ways of trying to optimize your body.
--:-- Joss Fong: What are the more extreme methods of biohacking? Where does it go from there?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So some of the more extreme things include, let's say, young blood transfusions.
--:-- Joss Fong: So that is basically when you pay for a younger person's blood and pump it into your own bloodstream in the hopes that it will make you younger and fight aging.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Wait, the blood boys from Silicon Valley are real?
--:-- Joss Fong: Yeah. Are you really not familiar with parabiosis?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Can't say that I am.
--:-- Joss Fong: Well, the science is actually pretty fascinating. Regular transfusions of the blood of a younger, physically fit donor can significantly retard the aging process.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: And Bryce is a picture of health. Just look at him. He looks like a Nazi propaganda poster.
--:-- Joss Fong: So people at one point were actually paying, themselves paying, 8,000 bucks a pop to participate in trials for young blood transfusions in hopes that it would make them younger.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Oh, my God.
--:-- Joss Fong: And then what are some of the other things? Are people implanting things in their body?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So other people called grinders like to implant magnets or computer chips in their hands.
--:-- Joss Fong: You know, that can be fun or convenient. It can let you, you know, access your office or your house without a fob.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: People who do that, though, are also often just really curious about what are the limits to which we can push the human body.
--:-- Joss Fong: And in fact, Vox's very own Dylan Matthews has a computer chip implanted in his hand. He wrote an article about that a few years ago on Vox.com.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So, you know, right here in our newsroom, this is happening.
--:-- Joss Fong: You may know a grinder and not even realize it.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Yeah, you probably do know someone who's engaged in some kind of biohacking.
--:-- Joss Fong: And what is the mindset behind this sort of approach to your own body?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: I mean, the mindset is basically we can optimize and upgrade our brains and our bodies, and we don't need to wait for science to catch up.
--:-- Joss Fong: So the idea is, you know, you don't need to wait for a double-blind, randomized controlled trial or anything like that. If you want to feel better right now you can make yourself feel better immediately
--:-- Seagal Samuel: And you can really understand and I have empathy for people who come to this from a place of feeling a lot of pain and desperation.
--:-- Joss Fong: If you're sick and you have been sick for a long time, or you're really old and you're really scared of dying, and no one out there is offering you a solution that can help you with this problem that's causing you a lot of distress, you know, I can understand why you might try to turn to some other less conventional forms of putative treatment.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Right. The medical establishment does move really slowly sometimes.
--:-- Joss Fong: Yeah. And if you're suffering from a really terrible illness or something, that pace can feel cruelly slow.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: And so how much of this is based on real science?
--:-- Joss Fong: It really varies. It really depends on what form of biohacking we're talking about.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So the young blood transfusions, definitely would not recommend. Definitely, we do not have great scientific evidence backing that.
--:-- Joss Fong: There's other things like, you know, fecal transplants. People like Josiah Zaner have actually gone the DIY route on that.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: He actually gave himself a fecal transplant in a hotel room and invited a journalist to come along for the ride and watch and document the process.
--:-- Joss Fong: There has been some medical evidence suggesting that fecal transplants can, when done carefully, be effective and can really help people suffering from gastrointestinal problems, as Zaner was.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: But even in clinical trials, the FDA actually recently pressed pause on those trials because a couple people got infections from doing these transplants.
--:-- Joss Fong: Those infections can be even serious drug-resistant ones. And one of the people in the trials actually died.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: And that wasn't a clinical trial. So you can imagine that if you're doing this at home in your kitchen or whatever, the risks could be significantly more serious.
--:-- Joss Fong: So you could try to tackle a specific health problem, but aren't a lot of biohackers interested in just extending their lives more generally? How far can they go?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Yeah. So I actually, when I started digging into this stuff, I was really curious about that because some folks like Aubrey de Grey are deeply steeped in the science, say that people can live for thousands of years.
--:-- Joss Fong: And in fact, he thinks that the first person who will live to age 1,000 has already been born.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So we're pretty close to that timeline in his opinion.
--:-- Joss Fong: And I sort of thought, could this be true? Is this a thing?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: And I actually reached out to various researchers. And there is actually consensus might be a bit of a strong word, but almost an emerging scientific consensus that we are actually making a lot of progress in anti-aging research.
--:-- Joss Fong: So it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility that we could radically extend our lifespans soon.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: There's a lot of research happening about this, including at the Sinclair Lab at Harvard, for example, where researchers are really starting to pin down some of the primary causes of aging and might be able to slow down those processes.
--:-- Joss Fong: And even living a few decades longer than we're used to, that raises lots of thorny questions about what our societies would be like, doesn't it?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Yeah. So some people are, first of all, concerned about equal distribution. Let's say we do develop a technology to make people live forever, but, you know, you got to pay half a million bucks to get access.
--:-- Joss Fong: So some people say, is this going to lead to an even wider life expectancy gap where the rich live longer and the poor live, you know, a shorter lifespan?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: There's also some concerns that, you know, if you live longer, you're going to take up more resources on the planet.
--:-- Joss Fong: And in an age of climate crisis and sustainability crisis, that's something that a lot of people are worried about.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: For me personally, the biggest concern I would say is that with all of these biohacking pursuits, we are maybe at risk of creating a society where everyone feels so much pressure to be optimal.
--:-- Joss Fong: You don't want to be at a competitive disadvantage with your coworkers, let's say, who are taking smart drugs or who are, you know, enhancing their cognitive abilities.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: You might, if other people around you are doing that, start to feel pressured to do that yourself, even if you have no real desire to change your own biology.
--:-- Joss Fong: So for me, the biggest worry is actually that we might create a culture where people feel it is not OK to be, quote unquote, merely human.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Seagal Samuel writes for Future Perfect at Vox. I'm Joss Fong, video producer at Vox, filling in for Sean Ramos' firm while he's on vacation. This is Today Explained.
