Re: [DIYbio] Re: civil disobedience and diybio

While you are technically correct, I am not talking about intractable problems in organic chemistry. Synthesis of tons of a compound is dead easy if you have a synthetic route. If you have to isolate 10g of (in the example, galegine) to do a study, you could be talking about kilos of lilac. You would need to find where in the plant it is made. And while you could isolate and clone the specific genes that produce the specific enzymes and put them into a model organism, you might still not get a very significant yield, and that's $$$ down the drain when you could have done it for $ with organic chemistry.

 

If you want to talk theoretical and hypothetical, fine, enzymes are obviously the way to go. But between enzymes -> ??? -> profit, you've got nothing to convince me that the DIY bio community has any handle on the ??? part. That's speaking as a natural products chemist who has used enzymes extensively for years, and as a DIY biohacker, not just an off-the-street enthusiast. Don't wave your hand and pretend it is all solvable with mol bio.

 

I'm not trying to be discouraging- I am trying to encourage people to be realistic, and talk in terms of what they want to accomplish. Once we know that, then we can work on removing the real barriers to making that happen. The legal boundaries are all solved once you form a (shell) corporation- there's not a single qualification you need other than the proper paperwork to do anything if you happen to be a corporation. Yes, individuals have trouble ordering drug precursors and nitric acid and the like, but how many corporations face the same barriers, except for the really hot items like iodine (!).

 

In all things, the right tool for the job is always going to win. DIY craftsmanship making furniture, metalwork, art cars, and the like have known this for years. You don't DIY a hammer by using the backside of a wrench, you use a hammer, you find someone with a hammer, you borrow a hammer. Not just any hammer, the right hammer.

 

The real barrier is that the tools for mol bio are way overpriced, are one offs that have little utility beyond a dedicated application. A PCR machine is a peltier with a little programming- why is it that the feedback I get on DIY solutions is that they're not so reliable? We need to infuse the DIY Bio community with a sense of craftsmanship, idea-to-finish bespoke quality. The idea of DIY, as I understand it, is that you replace money with time.

 

Reason sez:

 This is simply not true for the most part. Yes, if you want to use crystalline iodine, or distill ethanol, and advertise the fact, you're going to attract unwanted attention, but you have just as much to be worried from criminal elements raiding your lab for supplies as getting shut down by the feds, and the more money you pour into your hobby, the more risk you incur in terms of theft. Now, you might argue, no drug war->no gangs. But the unwanted attention is by far the smallest part of the challenge- the biggest is getting the knowledge into people's hands to actually accomplish things, instead of talking. Unwanted attention could also mean curious teens who want to see what happens when you build a bomb. Unwanted attention could be hangers-on that have no money and no skills but want to be up in your grill all the time and wonder why a cure for cancer isn't free as in beer free.

 

I think a new model where everybody shares their toys and works toward making the tech very, very cheap will transform the playing field, and that's why I'm in the game. I think the "I could be successful if x and y law weren't keeping me down" attitude, and the rebellious, lawbreaking "nuh uh" in response, are two sides of the same coin. I'm not interested in that filthy money.

 

-matt

 

On Wednesday, May 29, 2013 4:10:09 AM UTC-7, Cathal Garvey (Android) wrote: