At the end of November 2017, the US Department of Health issued a warning about the dangerous consequences of experiments in genetic engineering at home: an open letter mentions the risks associated with trials of homemade drugs in humans. The fuss in the ministry began after biohackers, one after another, began demonstratively injecting themselves with untested substances in order to induce genetic changes.
Among them was an extravagant young man named Aaron Trivik. At a biohacking conference, he climbed into a chair, lowered his pants, and publicly injected himself with a gene drug against herpes developed in his own laboratory. For this reason, scientists from state institutions called him a nutcase, and biohackers like him called him a visionary. Whether the medicine worked, no one will ever know: on April 30, 2018, Trivik's corpse was found in a Washington spa. He was lying face down in a water-filled sensory deprivation chamber.
Trivik did not live to see the results of the last tests for a couple of weeks, which would have made it clear whether the drug had worked. The story of his death remains a mystery: the Washington police said they were considering a violent death. He was 28.
The herpes drug that Aaron Trivik wanted to test for himself was developed using the popular and relatively inexpensive CRISPR / Cas9 targeted genome editing technology. The CRISPR sequence is able to memorize DNA fragments, and the Cas9 protein is able to cut them out. In 2013, scientists began using the CRISPR / Cas9 mechanism to edit DNA, but so far in the academic environment, this technology is being tested on humans with caution and rarely.
The first unofficial experiments with CRISPR were taken up by biogeneticist Josia Zayner - from him the fashion went to carry out genetic experiments on himself. Zayner looks like a rock star: a row of ten rings in each ear, bleached hair, shaved whiskey, tattoos on his arms.
As a staff geneticist at NASA, he developed bacteria that were going to be sent to Mars. In 2015, when he was 35, he left the agency and started his own business. Now his company, with the pretentious name ODIN, sells DIY gene editing kits.
The cheapest kit in the lineup costs $ 75 and is suitable for educational experiments - for example, it can be used to breed fluorescent yeast to brew a glow-in-the-dark beer. The biohacker says that such a set will suit any student. The most expensive will cost $ 1,849 and, according to Zeiner, it can be used to set up laboratory-level experiments. To sell the kits without problems with the law, they are labeled "not intended for direct human use."
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ODIN's office used to be located in Zayner's garage, but recently moved into a rented home in a poor area of West Oakland, California. The company has less than ten employees, and this is the main job for all.
Zayner loves to push a motivational speech: “You will see, in 10-15 years, editing genes will be as easy as getting a tattoo or rhinoplasty. People will lose weight, treat baldness, strengthen muscles, affecting the structure of DNA. If you want, you will make your skin glow, if you want, you will change your scent.
Two years ago, he injected himself with a solution containing a green fluorescent protein that jellyfish produce. Last fall, he injected a gene into his right forearm that blocks the production of myostatin, a protein that inhibits muscle growth. Myostatin is produced in most animals. Lab mice that have been turned off the production of this protein are more like tiny fighting dogs. Zayner read research papers on these mice before injection. Harvard professor George Church also agreed to consult him.
Zayner broadcasted the drug administration online and drank a glass of scotch after the injection - he says that this is a tradition: he always drinks on public speaking days.
Josia Zayner did not turn into the Hulk and did not begin to glow in the dark, but he did not intend to: he says those injections into the arm were frivolous and safe. Thus, he wanted to popularize medicine and science. At the very least, he managed to get his business back on its feet: in 2017, ODIN earned half a million dollars from the sale of kits for genetic experiments.
When the geneticist raised money to create his kits, he shot a commercial: a one-eyed cat named James Baxter was playing in the frame with an injection syringe, and the test tubes were in the refrigerator next to bottles of beer. After that, Zayner was reproached with a doltish attitude towards sterility. But he does not lack passionarity. “In theory, genetic engineering can grow a tail or feathers,” he says. "People can easily change themselves, genetic engineering will become another way of creative expression."
The late Aaron Triwick had a far more radical attitude than Zayner. His own medical startup, Ascendance Biomedical, was making experimental vaccines. The company planned to distribute ampoules of solutions in Venezuela and other developing countries. The Ascendance website does not list a phone number or address, as the Triwick lab occupies a small rented garage in the suburbs of Washington. But you can sign up for a queue of people who want to try their experimental drugs - not only for herpes, but also for HIV.
In the fall of 2017, Tristan Roberts, a non-medical programmer who participated in the development of the drug, became the first tester of Ascendance's HIV drug. According to the tradition started by Zayner, the injection was broadcast online. The CRISPR syringe went into the skinny bespectacled man's lower belly as he sat on a leather couch in someone's apartment. In the video, company employees warned that their drug was "not intended for human consumption." Tristan contracted HIV eight years ago. Six years later, he stopped taking medications to control HIV due to side effects.
Trillions of plasmids in a syringe were supposed to establish the production of antibodies N6 in Tristan's body. These antibodies, discovered by scientists from the US National Institutes of Health in 2016, are produced in the human body on their own and neutralize up to 98% of the virus in the laboratory, but there are only a few lucky owners of N6 in their blood all over the world. The code of the rescue antibody fits into two files of thirty kilobytes, biohackers downloaded it on the Internet and printed it in one of the private laboratories dealing with molecular biology.
Tristan says that he was not afraid of the injection, but was waiting for her. In the first month after the injection, his skin was covered with a red rash, but it turned out that it was bed bug bites. Six months later, the number of HIV particles in his blood did not decrease - apparently, the medicine did not work. Tristan intends to return to antiretroviral therapy, but for now he is working on a new HIV vaccine. After the death of Aaron Triwick, he, like other biohackers from Ascendance, decided not to quit his job at the company.
Tristan says the drug giants are slowing down drug development to get patients on temporary fixes like antiretroviral therapy, but adds after a pause that there is no evidence. It’s understandable: It’s hard to read about a successful lab test for N6 when you writhe over the side effect of a prescription. It takes 10 to 15 years to launch a new drug on the market. The average research cost is $ 2.6 billion. The reason for the popularity of biohacking is due to the fact that many do not have the patience to wait for the big pharmaceutical companies to release the next miracle cure.
"During clinical trials, scientists don't just sit around in their offices," says Mark Connors, a doctor at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who discovered the N6 antibody. “The long development of drugs has its reasons: the drug must work, but the main thing is to be harmless.”
Tristan hastened: the first human trials of the N6 antibody will begin this summer. It is not difficult for US residents to take part in them: several thousand volunteers will be recruited for each stage of the research. However, when the drug goes on sale, Mark Connors hesitates to even guess. He comments coolly on Tristan's experience: “The chances that after one such injection the body will start producing antibodies are close to zero. This biohacker was lucky and did not harm himself."
Biohackers from Ascendance seem insane, but at all times, doctors have tested themselves - such actions are considered flawless from the point of view of ethics. In the late 1920s, a Russian doctor, Alexander Bogdanov, received a blood transfusion for himself. He believed that the transfusion would help him achieve eternal youth. Bogdanov's ideas inspired Stalin so much that he ordered the creation of the Institute of Blood. The scientist performed ten successful transfusions, but the eleventh killed him. The causes of death were classified by the government of the USSR, but, probably, the blood group did not suit Bogdanov, the Rh factor was discovered only in 1940.
In 1984, Australian physician Barry Marshall drank a solution with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori after failed animal tests to prove its link to gastritis and ulcers. The experiment worked: after a few days, he was sick hourly. The story ended well: the study of bacteria became the main business of Marshall's life, and in 2005 he received the Nobel Prize for it.
A massive genetics experiment is now being conducted by 60-year-old microbiologist Brian Hunley. Three years ago, he developed a gene therapy that could delay old age. Hunley injected himself, after which he underwent a session of shock therapy: he hoped that under the influence of electricity, the cells would better absorb the gene preparation. A year ago, he wrote on his blog: "Testosterone rose by 20%, heart rate dropped by 10 beats per minute." Genome development cost half a million dollars. In the comments on his website, he writes that he would be glad to volunteers, but in posts on Facebook he worries about biohackers. Josia Zayner also wants to nudge like-minded people to experiment on animals rather than themselves, and plans to ship her DIY kits complete with live frogs.
The FBI is keeping an eye on enthusiastic geneticists: they almost regularly lecture for local biohacker groups. In 2012, they organized a large conference and invited members of the DIYbio informal alliance of biohackers to discuss the internal problems of the community. Biohackers from all over the world came to the conference. DIYbio has a branch in Moscow and even a VKontakte group. Its administrator says that our "garage" scientists are testing homemade gene drugs on themselves. Unlike Americans, they are afraid to talk about it publicly, although in Russia experiments on themselves are also legal. In the world, most biohackers keep their distance from DIYbio and other "white" organizations. They hide in closed groups on Facebook, on Reddit, and in encrypted chats.
In the spring, biohackers have a new hero. Justin Atkin is 22 years old. It seems that the ability to eat cheese was his main dream: he decided to defeat his lactose intolerance with the help of genetic engineering. Atkin dispensed with injections and CRISPR, instead making pills with a carrier virus that delivered the new gene into DNA. The biohacker says that his body is now secreting enzymes that break down lactose. Justin wished that this drug was open source - so they say about software that anyone can run and improve.
There are more than a thousand comments on Reddit under the video in which Atkin conjures over the drug. People who claim to be scientists often write, "Boy, this is a great way to make cancer." If the virus delivers the gene to the wrong link in the DNA chain, Justin will have stomach cancer. This is why scientists have switched from viruses to more accurate CRISPR. But Atkin is calm. He is confident that he understands research better than commentators on Reddit, and does not see the point in controversy with them: "The small risk of contracting cancer is nothing compared to the discomfort for life." Justin smiles and talks about the new diet: he ate a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast, and a sandwich with a thick slice of cheddar for lunch.