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Hi, my anme is Meredith Patterson. My background is computer science. I had an
intership at IDT, they make their nucleotides. If you've worked at a lab that
uses nucleotides, then you probably used IDT stuff. The corporate culture-
they weren't happy with commercial DNA sequencers, so they built their own. A
lot of the water cooler conversation was about how to do interesting biotech
stuff on the cehap. We came up with everyone from using a salad spinner for a
centrifuge and building a thermocucler out of a break block. Out of that, I
was still interested in working on it, but I felt like I was out there on my
own. And thent wo years ago, I discovered the diybio mailing list, and there
actually is a growing culture of people out there who are starting to develop
their own, starting to turn citizen science into a real movement. Every
movement needs a manifesto, so I wrote one and this is it.
http://maradydd.livejournal.com/496085.html
Scientific literacy is necessary for a functioning society in the modern age.
Scientific literacy is not science education. A person educated in science can
understand science; a scientifically literate person can *do* science.
Scientific literacy empowers everyone who possesses it to be active
contributors to their own health care, the quality of their food, water, and
air, their very interactions with their own bodies and the complex world
around them.
Society has made dramatic progress in the last hundred years toward the
promotion of education, but at the same time, the prevalence of citizen
science has fallen. Who are the twentieth-century equivalents of Benjamin
Franklin, Edward Jenner, Marie Curie or Thomas Edison? Perhaps Steve Wozniak,
Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard or Linus Torvalds -- but the scope of their work is
far narrower than that of the natural philosophers who preceded them. Citizen
science has suffered from a troubling decline in diversity, and it is this
diversity that biohackers seek to reclaim. We reject the popular perception
that science is only done in million-dollar university, government, or
corporate labs; we assert that the right of freedom of inquiry, to do research
and pursue understanding under one's own direction, is as fundamental a right
as that of free speech or freedom of religion. We have no quarrel with Big
Science; we merely recall that Small Science has always been just as critical
to the development of the body of human knowledge, and we refuse to see it
extinguished.
Research requires tools, and free inquiry requires that access to tools be
unfettered. As engineers, we are developing low-cost laboratory equipment and
off-the-shelf protocols that are accessible to the average citizen. As
political actors, we support open journals, open collaboration, and free
access to publicly-funded research, and we oppose laws that would criminalize
the possession of research equipment or the private pursuit of inquiry.
Perhaps it seems strange that scientists and engineers would seek to involve
themselves in the political world -- but biohackers have, by necessity,
committed themselves to doing so. The lawmakers who wish to curtail individual
freedom of inquiry do so out of ignorance and its evil twin, fear -- the
natural prey and the natural predator of scientific investigation,
respectively. If we can prevail against the former, we will dispel the latter.
As biohackers it is our responsibility to act as emissaries of science,
creating new scientists out of everyone we meet. We must communicate not only
the value of our research, but the value of our methodology and motivation, if
we are to drive ignorance and fear back into the darkness once and for all.
We the biopunks are dedicated to putting the tools of scientific investigation
into the hands of anyone who wants them. We are building an infrastructure of
methodology, of communication, of automation, and of publicly available
knowledge.
Biopunks experiment. We have questions, and we don't see the point in waiting
around for someone else to answer them. Armed with curiosity and the
scientific method, we formulate and test hypotheses in order to find answers
to the questions that keep us awake at night. We publish our protocols and
equipment designs, and share our bench experience, so that our fellow biopunks
may learn from and expand on our methods, as well as reproducing one another's
experiments to confirm validity. To paraphrase Eric Hughes, "Our work is free
for all to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you don't approve of our
research topics." We are building on the work of the Cypherpunks who came
before us to ensure that a widely dispersed research community cannot be shut
down.
Biopunks deplore restrictions on independent research, for the right to arrive
independently at an understanding of the world around oneself is a fundamental
human right. Curiosity knows no ethnic, gender, age, or socioeconomic
boundaries, but the opportunity to satisfy that curiosity all too often turns
on economic opportunity, and we aim to break down that barrier. A thirteen-
year-old kid in South Central Los Angeles has just as much of a right to
investigate the world as does a university professor. If thermocyclers are too
expensive to give one to every interested person, then we'll design cheaper
ones and teach people how to build them.
Biopunks take responsibility for their research. We keep in mind that our
subjects of interest are living organisms worthy of respect and good
treatment, and we are acutely aware that our research has the potential to
affect those around us. But we reject outright the admonishments of the
precautionary principle, which is nothing more than a paternalistic attempt to
silence researchers by inspiring fear of the unknown. When we work, it is with
the betterment of the community in mind -- and that includes our community,
your community, and the communities of people that we may never meet. We
welcome your questions, and we desire nothing more than to empower you to
discover the answers to them yourselves.
The biopunks are actively engaged in making the world a place that everyone
can understand. Come, let us research together.
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