Ashlee Vance tours a community biopunk lab with open-source bioprinters that print human tissue. The lab celebrates a history of self-experimentation, from the first self-performed cardiac catheterization to a researcher who infected himself with ulcer bacteria to prove his theory. Biopunk differs from biohacking: it's about rebellion and mutual aid, not personal gain.
This is my favorite floor, biotech. You may remember it from my story on the Chinese peptide rave. Remember when you read it?
Hello!
Peptide lab! Yeah! Oh my God, good to see you! Me too!
What's up?
Nothing much, shootin'.
So this is the Biopunk lab. Over here we have bioprinters.
What?
Yeah, so this is a number of open source projects to print human tissue.
Ew. Yeah. Can I get any weird diseases in here? No! No, no. Not at all. I'm just curious.
Part of the point of a space like this is that it's a realm where you can come learn and play in biology. Uh, that's not really allowed anywhere else. One of the things that's sorely lacking, particularly in the sciences, is bravery more than anything else. And if you look back in history, there are a number of Nobel Prizes that were actually awarded for people who were self-experimenting. So, ranging from the guy who first did a cardiac catheterization, um, who did it on himself, all the way to this, uh, person who discovered, uh, stomach ulcers. And ended up drinking a martini filled with this bacteria that caused him to have stomach ulcers to prove a point. And so we have this amazing history of scientists who are brave and experiment on themselves, and I don't think that's really put into the limelight or celebrated.
Is that the biopunk ethos?
There's, there's a difference between hacking and punks, right? Biohacking is this idea of exploitation of a system for personal gain, where biopunk is an idea of rebelling against a system for mutual aid. Doing it in a way where it's safe and also you're among community.
Also, is this pee? It looks like pee. No.
That's bacteria food.
What other experiments are you doing in here?
Well, if you are menstruating, you can come in and donate menstrual blood and then—
