Um. Not sure this is a good thing............................

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From the final week of Genes and the Human Condition:

With a lab with cheap equipment (like a $260 centrifuge you can build from a kit), you can clone and sequence a gene in a couple of days using freely downloadable protocols.

Kay Aull built her own genetic testing kit in a small room in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  In her makeshift lab, she analyzed a specific gene mutation lined to a gene her father was diagnosed with, called hemochromatosis.  Kay Aull tested her own DNA, to discover she is a carrier of her father's disease, but unlikely to carry the disease herself.

Genspace in Brooklyn, New York is an example of a state-of-the-art DIY biolaboratory, available to biohackers for $100 a month.

The ideas and the drive behind these people are reminiscent of the early computer pioneers who wrote the software (and developed the hardware) that kickstarted the computer revolution.

 

Hmmmm.

The open "freely available" way a LOT of genetic info and technology are handled means that scientists can make progress a lot faster than when things are secret and tightly controlled.

It also means, it seems to me, that some ***extremely*** powerful tools are in the hands of every random person, and not all of them will have pure hearts and good intentions.........


Yikes.


Here's a link to a TED talk by the founder of Genspace.....  She addresses these concerns.

I try to take into consideration what anyone's motivation is, for trying to sell me something.  Her bias is clearly on the side of making all of this science and technology freely available.  But she's convincing........

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