Looking for a new hobby? Have you considered bio-hacking and genetic modification? Hopefully, your answer is, "No, I would never try to play God in my spare time." But for a select few, bio-hacking is just another DIY project. And you don't need a license or a degree to do it. In a recent article, Fusion contributor Kristen V. Brown interviewed several hobbyists who are using Crispr to tinker with plant genetics.
According to Fusion, "Crispr—a memorable acronym for the mouthful, “clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats”—gives scientists an unprecedented ability to decrypt and reorder genes, opening up a dazzling and terrifying universe of possibilities. This year, a top national security official called gene-editing a weapon of mass destruction—along with nuclear detonation, chemical weapons and cruise missiles—because it could be used to create “potentially harmful biological agents or products.”
Crispr is every sci-fi future that we have ever dreamed about or feared: designer babies, unlimited energy, and the end of genetic diseases like Alzheimer’s."