Garage Genome Hackers

“A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ” - John Steinbeck

All technology, perhaps even all knowledge, is a double edged sword. Scientists are often horrified to learn that their “peaceful” discovery leads to new weapons of mass destruction. And sometimes inventions created for the purpose of war (like radar and GPS) have amazing peacetime applications.

The new kid on the block which could cure diseases or create plagues is home-based genetic experiments as discussed in New Scientist magazine, entitled Rise of the garage genome hackers.

[Katherine] Aull's lab is a closet less than 1 square metre in size in the shared apartment she lives in. Yet amid the piles of clothes she recently concocted vials of an entirely new genetically modified organism. Aull, who works as a synthetic biologist for a biotech company by day, created her home lab after hearing about a contest on the science fiction website io9.com for "mad scientists with homebrew closet labs, grassroots geneticists, and garage genome hackers".

These young (unregulated) scientists are creating microbes for biological computers, bacteria that could help rice plants process nitrogen more efficiently, and glow-in-the-dark bacteria to detect deadly melamine contamination. Advocates of closet genome hacking compare themselves to “the Homebrew Computer Club hackers of the 1970s [who] spawned the first personal computers."

This does not make me feel any better. Despite the many virtuous computer hackers who create free-ware, games, etc., it only takes a one dedicated black hat to create a computer virus that destroys data worldwide. Likewise a rogue genome hacker could wreck havoc.

In 1982, Frank Herbert (best known for Dune), wrote the (prophetic?) novel, The White Plague. In the book, a bomb planted by the IRA kills the wife and children of a molecular biologist. He retaliates by creating a plague to kill all the women in Ireland so that the IRA can experience the same loss. The plague spreads and there is world-wide chaos.

Bottom Line

Inexperienced hackers could pose a significant public health threat, warns Richard Ebright, a biochemist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. "Without any oversight from an institution, colleagues or peers, the probability that a cataclysmic entity might be constructed by someone unaware of known cautions is significant." - New Scientist