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These “biohackers” are just techbros who think they are smarter than all of epidemiology and modern medicine. We do all the things we do because that is the minimum required to know if something works and is safe. Learn about the process and why it exists before claiming you can improve it, please.
Science is how we know what is true. The only way we have to do so. If you’re not doing science, you’re creating useless noise that you think is data because you don’t understand what constitutes science in the field in which you are dabbling. Dabble all you want, but stop having press conferences about your hobby.
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The smarter? ones supplemented rigorous self-experimentation with opportunistic tests on family, friends, and dinner guests.
According to Bryson this guy had blown eardrums so often his party trick was to blow smoke out of one of 'em!
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This guy belongs in the same lunatic bin as anti-vaxxers. He’s just approaching it from the other direction.
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I guess this is neither here nor there, but at first I thought that – for some reason – the article was accompanied by a picture of Lenny Luther.
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Sorry, I was a kid back then, and that’s all the bits I’ve been told over the years. It wouldn’t be appropriate, or nice, to pry out further details, either. Guy was a tinkerer before “hacker” or “maker” was a thing. He had some kind of chronic health condition, I don’t know what exactly, which he wanted to treat himself, and was killed quite literally by his own medicine.
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Start here:
when you are done, if you read it all, you will know everything that every scientist on earth has learned about covid19.
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Hey, we don’t want this guy to mess around too !
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To me insulin price is a political issue, not technological. Look at any other countries than the USA and you will see insulin sold at more reasonable price, free even. And they certainly use the same tech.
So the solution is regulation of the pharmaceutical industry and access to universal healthcare. Not biohacking.
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So, not interested in living in The Culture then? 
Ya know, I wouldn’t mind so much if people like this were self aware enough to see themselves as sources of hypotheses in stead of answers, and if they didn’t seem to want to persuade others to similarly endanger themselves, and vowed to pay for their own medical care out of pocket for all complications.
I prefer DIY denistry.
if you’re planning on removing them, else something worse could end up replacing them
Exactly. See Iranian Revolution 1979.
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Or at least not for very long. Yeah, you want cancer? Because this is how you get cancer. Literally. A random genetic mutation at the wrong, and not necessarily predictable, place and you are in line for the radiation therapy center. Trust me, I did that, it sucks. (The radiation therapy, not the DIY CRISPR)
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There was a teenager rehearsal working on a cheap dialysis machine. It was far enough along that she got some funding from a diabetes group.
Maybe not feasible in the end, but she was no biohacjker.
My point is insulin is ALREADY cheap when you don’t let the industry fix prices.
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It’s (yet another) nice example of how Dunning-Kruger impacts (otherwise) smart people. They assume being smart is a substitute for knowing things. (There’s some narcissism involved, too - they have to be assuming that they’re smarter than anyone else who works or has ever worked in the field.) The tech bros have been doing this with everything - economics, law, politics, etc. They eventually get deep enough into it to discover that, well, actually they do need to know something about the subject, and they don’t know enough. (In the case of politics and other areas that involve social skills, they often discover they’re actually worse at it than the average person.) Before that happens, they end up doing some damage via “disruption” though.
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I mean, I’m in agreement with you on the price of insulin being primarily political here. I’m not suggesting Open Insulin Project as a model that would work for everyone all the time, but it is nonetheless an interesting model that could offer greater agency to patients. As much as I’d like to be able to count on widespread insulin pricing reform, it ain’t in the bank yet.
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I’ve met about 20 people who have tried various DIY gene therapies, from injecting AAVs to snorting CRISPR. Each and every one of them was, how shall we say, special.
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