East Bay Biochemist Sells ‘Gene-Editing Kit’ For The Masses
East Bay Biochemist Sells ‘Gene-Editing Kit’ For The
Masses
By John RamosJanuary 29, 2019 at 6:49 pm
MORAGA (KPIX 5) — After scientists unlocked the secrets
of the human genome in 2003, there was immediate concern about how that
knowledge might be abused in the wrong hands. Now, an East Bay entrepreneur
wants to put that power in everyone’s hands.
Dr. Josiah Zayner has a PhD in biochemistry and worked
for NASA, engineering organisms to help astronauts survive on Mars. But that
wasn’t innovative enough for the young, self-described “Bio Hacker.”
“Normal scientists want to study, like, how fruit flies
have sex or something, something that nobody really cares about,” said Dr.
Zayner. “And what I want to study is, how do we make dragons or super-humans or
something like that?”
Zayner wants others to do it as well. Out of a West
Oakland apartment, he operates a company called The Odin that sells
“gene-editing” kits; they come with all that’s necessary to create your own Genetically
Modified Organism.
The Odin’s “Genetic Design Kit.”
The kit teaches novice scientists how to inject tree
frogs with a type of human growth enzyme that causes the frogs to double in
size in about a month.
“It sounds ridiculous,” Dr. Zayner said, “but we’ve been
doing gene therapy on human beings since the late 90’s, right? The stuff works,
we know how to do it, I want to teach people that. I want people to see how it
works.”
But at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, biology professor
Vidya Chandrasekaran says there are ethical concerns about an untrained person
using a live animal for experimentation.
“Using it in this manner, I’m not sure is the right way
to approach biology,” she said.
Dr. Zayner frequently uses himself as a guinea pig. He
once injected himself with a growth accelerator while live-streaming a talk at
a bio conference. Dr. Chandrasekaran said that’s the kind of thing that occurs
when people use science without accountability.
“It really matters whether the people who are doing these
things understand the implications and the outcome of it,” she said.
But according to Dr. Zayner, new and powerful
technologies are always feared at their beginnings. He pointed out that
computers were once giant machines used only by business, government and
universities.
“And if you ask yourself now, ‘Was it the correct thing
to do to allow people to have access to computers?’, there’s nobody in the
world who would say no,” he said.
“When you make a technology available to everybody,
innovation happens.”
Whether gene-altering technology for the masses is the
next innovation or a case of science gone mad is a question that only time will
answer.
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