Today, Explained - Don't try CRISPR at home

Episode Date: August 28, 2019

Biohackers treat their bodies like a science project. But should they be allowed to edit their own DNA at home? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Joss Fong, senior video producer at Vox, filling in for Sean Rama's firm. Today we are genetically modifying a living organism with the do-it-yourself crispr kit that we bought online. 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. 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. It's not applicable to us. California is the first state to try to crack down on these at-home biohacking kits.

Seagal Samuel has written a lot about biohacking for Future Perfect at Vox. 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. Okay. Am I biohacking when I come into the office and get a cup of coffee to make myself smarter? Yeah. So I just did that a few moments ago. 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. And so what exactly is California targeting with this new legislation? 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 genes. Do not try this at home. Got it. But it doesn't say you couldn't try it on someone else's genes. 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.

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? Yeah, I agree. I think it might be of limited use, just a sort of warning on a package. The senator, Senator Chang in California, who put forward this legislation initially was thinking about just banning selling these kits outright, but got pushback from various associations and ultimately decided to temper her stance and say, you know what, let's just put a warning for now. And how do these do-it-yourself kits work? Could you actually edit your own genes? 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. 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 hopinghacking, who has tried, you know, gene editing on himself, has admitted that it hasn't actually worked for him the way he was sort of hoping it might. I feel like I remember, this is Josiah Zahner, is that right? The way science is done is completely wrong. Bingo, yep. I remember seeing a video of him injecting himself with, I guess it was CRISPR gene editing technology. Exactly. So that was a couple years ago. Josiah Zahner live streamed this stunt that he performed at a biotech conference.

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. Basically, 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. It's stopping us from just all putting this in our shot glasses and making ourselves jacked right now. 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. ...injecting a needle into his forearm. Mm-hmm. Oh! Hurts a lot more going in. And seems very relaxed and cavalier about it. I don't know. I don't know why people don't try it.

I'll let you know how it works out. Yeah, he does sort of have this cavalier and anti-establishment streak about him. So it got a lot, a lot of attention. And even though Zahner later confirmed, you know what, this did not work, it kind of egged people on to sort of do some kind of copycat experiments. 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. 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. And he said, you know, people are going to get hurt because everyone's trying to one-up each other. There's this kind of culture developing of, you know, showmanship and stuntsmanship. 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. It's like if you could add genetic engineering to the show Jackass. It's kind of terrifying. Yeah. So is Zayner a scientist? 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. 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.

So he often sounds this note of frustration that you'll hear from a lot of other biohackers too. So what exactly are these kits that he's selling? There's a huge range. So most of them are not actually aimed at, you know, human use. They're for genetic engineering with bacteria, with yeast, stuff like, you know, 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. So some of them are really 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. I see. So basically little science experiments. Exactly. Yeah. And then the fears that people will just turn it on themselves. Yeah, because at a certain point, Josiah Zahner was selling kits that could be used to target human genes. And the concern there is, well, what if you get people who don't really know what they're doing? Plus, we don't really know all that much yet about how CRISPR works in the body. It's a pretty new technology.

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. 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. 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. Definitely. And so do we know if there are people actively pursuing this sort of use? Why has California decided that they need to act on this? 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. Recently, Zaher did get called in by the California Department of Consumer Affairs after somebody accused him of practicing medicine without a license, and they're investigating now whether or not that's true. 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, they basically are showing signs of increasing nervousness about biohacking. And they seem to think that more regulation is the answer. What do the folks in the biohacking community think about this new law? A lot of them think it's silly. Josiah Zahner certainly has said he thinks it's silly. 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. 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. There's even a code of ethics that a group of biohackers, international group, formulated a few years back. So for the most part, they are not Josiah Zahner types. And some of them feel that people like Zahner aren't giving them a bad name. Yeah, I imagine people who use this recklessly would probably get the most attention. And the ones that are more responsible would probably be frustrated with that. Exactly. So people like Zaner 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. Some biohackers are really driven by altruistic motives. They want to save the environment by creating biofuel or, you know, something like that. So you have, like, one name for a group of people with a huge range of different motivations. 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. What are you doing? Writing and reviewing. What are you doing? Writing and reviewing. What are you doing? Writing and reviewing. What are you doing? Writing and reviewing. You don't know what you're missing. Write out some stitcher, wrap up, I can't throw whatever in this thing. You don't know what you're missing. Write out some stitcher, wrap up, I can't throw whatever in this thing.

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Love this show. You don't know what you're missing. Five stars. Five stars. Five stars. Today. Today to explain. It's today to explain. Seagal, can you tell me a little bit about how this concept got started?

So, as you might expect, the concept of biohacking really took off in Silicon Valley. 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 diffused, dispersed, but international movement or lifestyle. And now you have people like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and other very high profile folks with big platforms endorsing some sorts of biohacking. 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. And what does the Twitter CEO do to hack his own body? So Dorsey discussed his biohacking routine or regimen in a podcast interview. This was the

Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. 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. How he eats only dinner on weekdays, on weekends, doesn't eat at all. 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. And so 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. And he also talked about the Ura ring, this sleep tracking ring that he wears

so he can kind of monitor his body's mechanical functions even during the night. 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. And that's one of many wearable devices that people in the biohacking community sometimes get into. I can understand why he needs to meditate two hours a day because he must be hangry all the time. I definitely would be. I could not handle eating that little. Crazy. So the things like supplements, smart drugs, meditating, those are sort of more conventional ways of trying to optimize your body. What are the more extreme methods of biohacking? Where does it go from

there? So some of the more extreme things include, let's say, young blood transfusions. 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. Wait, the blood boys from Silicon Valley are real? Yeah. Are you really not familiar with parabiosis? I can't say that I am. Well, the science is actually pretty fascinating. Regular transfusions of the blood of a younger, physically fit donor can significantly retard the aging process.

And Bryce is a picture of health. Just look at him. He looks like a Nazi propaganda poster. 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. Oh, my God. And then what are some of the other things? Are people implanting things in their body? So other people called grinders like to implant magnets or computer chips in their hands. You know, that can be fun or convenient.

It can let you, you know, access your office or your house without a fob. People who do that, though, are also often just really curious about what are the limits to which we can push the human body. 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. So, you know, right here in our newsroom, this is happening. You may know a grinder and not even realize it. Yeah, you probably do know someone who's engaged in some kind of biohacking. And what is the mindset behind this sort of approach to your own body? 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. 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. 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. 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. Right. The medical establishment does move really slowly sometimes. Yeah. And if you're suffering from a really terrible illness or something, that pace can feel cruelly slow.

And so how much of this is based on real science? It really varies. It really depends on what form of biohacking we're talking about. So the young blood transfusions, definitely would not recommend. Definitely, we do not have great scientific evidence backing that. There's other things like, you know, fecal transplants. People like Josiah Zahner have actually gone the DIY route on that. 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. 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. But even in clinical trials, the FDA actually recently pressed pause on those trials because a couple people got infections

from doing these transplants. Those infections can be even serious drug-resistant ones. And one of the people in the trials actually died. And that was in 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 people in the trials actually died. And that was in 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. 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? 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. And in fact, he thinks that the first person who will live to age 1,000 has already been born.

So we're pretty close to that timeline in his opinion. And I sort of thought, could this be true? Is this a thing? 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. So it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility that we could radically extend our lifespans soon. 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. 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? 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. 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? So there's concerns about equality and equal distribution there. There's also some concerns that, you know, if you live

longer, you're going to take up more resources on the planet. And in an age of climate crisis and sustainability crisis, that's something that a lot of people are worried about. 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. 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. You might, if other people around you are doing that, start to feel pressure to do that yourself, even if you have no real desire to change your own biology.

So for me, the biggest worry is actually that we might create a culture where people feel it is not okay to be, quote unquotequote merely human. Seagal Samuel writes for Future Perfect at Vox. I'm Joss Fong, video producer at Vox, filling in for Sean Rama's firm while he's on vacation. This is Today Explained. Bye.