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The Odin – DIY genetic engineering

the-odin.com

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Re: The Odin – DIY genetic engineering

#161

Post by tga_d »

Dig1t wrote: post #154

The Thought Emporium is one of my favorite YouTubers, he makes videos about DIY genetic engineering and I have a huge amount of respect for his rigor and detail. In one of his videos he talks about sourcing lab supplies and he listed The Odin as the one place you should "avoid at all costs". "Not a single kit they sent me worked", was pretty damning. He lists all the reasons he doesn't like using them including the f…

I have to just say, as interesting as the videos are, The Thought Emporium has some... I guess questionable ethics. They've been repeatedly critiqued for overuse of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in their experiments, and they dismiss it by saying antibiotic-resistant bacteria is already everywhere (yes it is, and the problem is going to get a lot worse if people promote using that as carte blanche to do whatever), and openly discuss how they skirt animal experimentation rules using technicalities like cooking the fish you harvested live brain matter from (you can argue whether the rules are too stringent, but treating ethics as some annoyance to hack around is blatantly missing the point). This doesn't detract from his shopping recommendations, but it does speak to the sort of concerns people have with the way the space operates generally. It's very "myopic engineer sees problem that needs fixing".

Re: The Odin – DIY genetic engineering

#162

Post by robbintt »

hef19898 wrote: post #116
tombaugh wrote: post #21

As a parent of a child with a genetic disorder for which it is perfectly possible to develop a therapy using current technology, I'm delighted to see that biohackers are stirring things up. Let's hope this inspires the industry to rethink their approach to drug development.

Last time something genetics based was developed fast, and succesful, quite a few people went on the fences over it: Covid mRNA vaccines. There are reasons why medical development takes time and money. And why rare diseases are underserved. And no amount of "disruption" is going to change the simple question of cost in that equation. So if VCs want to change that, they can simply use some of their "free" billions to…

Orphan drug funds exist, I don't know how effective they are, and how it relates to prospective research.

Re: The Odin – DIY genetic engineering

#163

Post by Llamamoe »

Dig1t wrote: post #154

The Thought Emporium is one of my favorite YouTubers, he makes videos about DIY genetic engineering and I have a huge amount of respect for his rigor and detail. In one of his videos he talks about sourcing lab supplies and he listed The Odin as the one place you should "avoid at all costs". "Not a single kit they sent me worked", was pretty damning. He lists all the reasons he doesn't like using them including the f…

This has come up again and again on a TTE-adjacent discord, most recently someone was sent gel stain contaminated with DNA.

Re: The Odin – DIY genetic engineering

#165

Post by ajnin »

The "Thought Emporium" channel on YouTube has been exploring this kind of DIY gene editing, up to engineering a yeast with CRISPR technology, and inoculating it himself to cure his lactose intolerance. Very interesting channel in general with a hacking approach to bioengineering.

Re: The Odin – DIY genetic engineering

#166

Post by ajani »

jerf wrote: post #102
josalhor wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The guy that you can see in one of the pictures drinking from a glass recipient was in a Netflix documentary (I can't remember the title from top of my mind) where he was advocating for everyone being able to use genetic engineering for self-improvement, even without any previous knowledge of genetics. You mean the documentary unnatural selection. I have seen it, but I recall something quite different. He did infac…

Broad-scale co-evolution means that if you use your co-evolved common sense on the co-evolved natural world, you will broadly speaking be safe. Even with a bit of experimentation on the fringes. Our technological world has then co-evolved with our common sense, which is why despite the several ways our houses have things running through them which can kill us, they don't manage to do it very often. When you start pla…

I agree. I too am scared by the idea of some random person playing around with genetics.

We don’t allow anyone and everyone to play around with nuclear technology. I wish no one had ever played with nuclear technology. We would have avoided a lot of harm already caused. And a lot of harm that is surely yet to come, because ‘yet’ is a very long time. Infinite even.

And maybe nuclear genetics will nonetheless develop in the hands of power seeking governments. But it’s still better than Steve from 2 streets over accidentally unleashing a strain of resistant bacteria on the neighborhood.

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