WEBVTT - Biohacking a Ripped Frog 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:07.800 Hi everyone, It's Pierre here and I've got something special 0:00:07.800 --> 0:00:10.280 for you today. Many of you have seen that last 0:00:10.280 --> 0:00:12.840 week we dropped a trailer into our feed. It's about 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:16.239 a new show launching at Bloomberg. It's called Prognosis, and 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:19.160 it's all about the incredible innovation that's happening in health 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:21.599 and in medicine. And this week we're going to play 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:23.919 you an episode from that show. So I'm here with 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:27.120 Kristen Brown, our dynamite reporter, who is bringing you this 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:30.640 week's story. Some of you might actually recognize Kristen's voice 0:00:30.960 --> 0:00:32.839 because a few weeks ago she was right here with 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:35.720 us on Decrypted with a story about how our DNA 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:40.000 is helping to solve cold murder cases. Hey Kristen, Hey, 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:43.199 So the episode that you're bringing us this week is 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:46.960 about bio hacking, which is essentially d I Y science. 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:51.000 For some bio hackers. D i Y means experimenting on 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.680 yourself for experimenting on animals, but either way, it's happening 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:58.320 outside of a traditional lab setting. Right. Bio hackers are 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:00.880 kind of like the hacker punk of the science world. 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:04.600 They don't really worry about rules or regulations governing science 0:01:04.600 --> 0:01:07.760 of medicine because those rules just weren't really designed to 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:11.880 oversee loan self taught scientists in a garage. Yeah, when 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:14.440 I think about bio hackers, what often comes to mind 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:17.960 the guys who put chips under their skin. But a 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:20.920 lot of bio hackers are also working to make cheaper 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:23.920 remedies and to make drugs more widely available. And that's 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:27.000 what you're looking at this week. A lot of those remedies, 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:30.440 once they are available, are just not affordable. So I 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:32.800 guess you could say it's maybe a noble cause trying 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:36.160 to democratize treatment. But I wonder what do scientists with 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:39.680 PhDs think about bio hackers. Has this community produced any 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:43.720 significant breakthroughs? Not really, but we are starting to see 0:01:43.800 --> 0:01:48.560 biohacking expand beyond sort of hardcore hacker types. Biohacking definitely 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:51.200 has an appeal to patients who are dealing with a 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:55.120 terminal diagnosis like cancer. We've run out of other options. 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:58.040 You'll hear from a Norwegian couple an episode who are 0:01:58.040 --> 0:02:00.360 in that situation, and so what's do I having? That? 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:04.120 Is it? The tech is becoming cheaper and more easily available. Yeah, 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:06.560 that's definitely a big part of it. I mean, you 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:09.760 can now buy some of these really advanced machines on 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:13.239 eBay for a few hundred dollars from labs they're discarding them, 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:17.480 so there's access to the technology. The technology and the 0:02:17.480 --> 0:02:21.000 scientific techniques have also just gotten a lot simpler, you know, 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.000 easier to do if you don't have a PhD. And 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:26.160 I think part of this is also people are just 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:29.440 fed up with our health care system. So what are 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:32.000 some of the medical conditions that these bio hackers are 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:35.800 looking at. Well, they have some pretty lofty goals, but 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:38.600 so far, a lot of the bio hackers I know 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:42.480 are looking at treatments that could help them get buffer, 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:46.799 like the frogs were about to hear about. So with that, 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:49.520 let's play everyone the episode. I really hope you enjoy 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:52.240 listening to this as much as I have, And if 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:54.680 you like what you here, please head to your nearest 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:58.360 podcast app and subscribe to Prognosis. The season is just 0:02:58.360 --> 0:03:00.919 getting started and there are a lot of excellent episodes 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:03.959 in the pipeline. Prognosis is going to have new episodes 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:06.639 out every Monday, and I'll see you guys next week 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:16.960 when we're back on Tuesday with Decrypto listeners, beware, Later 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:19.520 in this podcast we'll be sticking a needle in a 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:23.320 little green frog. We'll also report on people conducting experiments 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:26.800 on themselves. We are not advocating you try any of 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:40.760 this at home. Right right than What if the tools 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:44.480 of modern science were so accessible that you could cure 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:51.560 yourself of your own disease? Welcome to Prognosis, the podcast 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:55.960 about health, medical technology, and the mind blowing innovation now 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:59.920 underway in some of the least expected places. I'm your 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:04.040 post Michelle fay Cortes. Today we're taking a peek into 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:08.120 the world of biohacking, where self taught scientists are experimenting 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:11.920 with glow in the dark, beer, insulin producing yeast, and 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:19.880 even do it yourself cures for cancer. There's a history 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:24.160 of scientific innovations shrinking from big, expensive and inaccessible to 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:28.200 personalized and widely used. Just look at computers in the 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:31.720 nineteen seventies. They took up entire rooms and pretty much 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:35.080 only professionals had access to them. Now millions of people 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:39.520 carry pocket sized computers also known as smartphones, everywhere. A 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:43.359 growing contingent of self taught scientists called biohackers, believe that 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:47.880 healthcare may be following a very similar path. Things like say, 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:52.960 genetic engineering are still the territory of experts, scientists and universities, 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:57.040 pharmaceutical companies, and the government, but so called biohackers are 0:04:57.040 --> 0:05:00.400 beginning to experiment a home. So far, all this community 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:03.040 of d I wires has accomplished is a whole bunch 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:07.040 of veiled experiments. There's a guy in Mississippi that's been 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:12.279 trying to make bioluminescent puppies for years, no glowing dogs yet, 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:15.840 and others trying to engineer himself to grow bigger muscles 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:18.560 without having to spend hours at the gym. He's no 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:21.800 more buff than he was when he started. Probably the 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:26.120 most spectacular failure yet was last February at a conference, 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:29.600 the CEO of a bootstrapped bio hacker startup got up 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:32.920 on stage and announced that he had herpes. Then he 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:35.520 stripped down to his boxers and injected himself with the 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:38.799 gene therapy cure that was almost certain to not work. 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:42.760 But these determined bio hackers are growing in number and 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:47.240 in experience. They're sharing ideas online and off about ways 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:50.520 to make science and medicine more accessible to regular folks. 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:54.680 They prophesies one day, just like I carry around a 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:57.080 computer in my pocket, I might have the tools in 0:05:57.120 --> 0:06:00.440 my kitchen to concoct a cure tailored to my own genetics. 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:15.240 Here's Bloomberg's health reporter Kristin Brown with the story. Recently, 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:19.000 I found myself in a West Oakland duplex watching as 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:22.800 a sedated tree frog got a genetic cocktail injected into 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:29.760 its left leg. Hold it like that, remember, and hold 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:33.560 his leg down and just go into the muscle like that. 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:39.840 Object conto. You see it swell a little bit from 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:46.800 the fluid, So you're just injecting one leg. The goal 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:49.120 was to make the frog's muscles grow bigger than usual, 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:53.120 to make the frog get well ripped. To do this, 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:55.360 the frog was getting an injection of a d N, 0:06:55.400 --> 0:06:58.720 a mixture containing a gene called full of statin, which 0:06:58.760 --> 0:07:03.159 seems to play a role in sustle gross So the 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.800 fullest TOATN is the is it likely that it would 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:09.320 just change the one leg or that it would be 0:07:09.480 --> 0:07:12.920 possible body. No, it's possible both right. Because they're so small, 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:15.560 it can get into the blood stream really easy, So 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:17.160 it's likely that it can change the whole body. That's 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:21.000 our measuring weight, but also when you inject into the muscle, 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:23.920 it should affect that muscle the most. We're looking at 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:26.560 that muscle to see how that muscle changes, you know, 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:34.760 getting multiple measurements to see what he's done. This guy, 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:39.680 the mad scientist behind this whole experiment, is Josiah Zaner. 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:43.640 I first met Josiah a few years back. He had 0:07:43.640 --> 0:07:45.880 just left a job at NASA to start a company 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:49.320 called the Odin, selling cheap science supplies over the Internet 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:54.280 to d I Y bio enthusiasts. Now, Josiah is sort 0:07:54.280 --> 0:07:57.240 of a famous science stumpman. He rose to fame after 0:07:57.240 --> 0:07:59.800 a talkie gave last year at a biotech conference for 0:08:00.000 --> 0:08:03.880 pockatively titled A step by step Guide to Genetically Modifying 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:07.680 Yourself with Crisper. Crisper is a much buzzed about gene 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:11.160 editing technology which allows scientists to cut and paste tiny 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:14.360 bits of DNA. To demonstrate how Crisper might work in 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:18.400 a human he injected himself with Crisper right in front 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.400 of the audience. I was actually there, and it was 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:25.040 pretty crazy. Crisper had never been used in humans before 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:28.680 in the US, and it certainly hadn't been directly injected 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:34.560 into anybody's body. The stick inspired some copycats, like that 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:37.880 CEO Michelle mentioned who injected himself with a harpies vaccine 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:41.160 on stage. It also caught the attention of the Food 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:44.360 and Drug Administration. The f d A didn't really like 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:47.760 that Josiah was selling kits too would be bio hackers online. 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:50.559 Josiah wanted to usher in a d i y science 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:54.880 revolution by making science seem accessible and edgy, but his 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:59.160 tactics had sort of backfired. You know. At first, I thought, well, 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:00.880 the way we could do this is let's just like 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:05.240 self experimentation. And I tried that and it did not 0:09:05.360 --> 0:09:08.320 turn out like I imagined it. So then all right, 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:11.240 let's change, let's try something else. He didn't just want 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:14.680 to grab headlines. He wanted to help people and to 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:17.000 teach people how to do science so that one day 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:21.040 maybe they could help themselves. So last summer, Josiah sent 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:23.400 me a message on Facebook asking me if I had 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:28.400 any interest in learning how to genetically engineer frogs. Josie's mind, 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:31.600 teaching people to experiment on animals was one step closer 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:35.840 to teaching people how to experiment on themselves, which brings 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:40.720 us to August Christian. Hello, come on in, how's it going. 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:45.319 That's Esther, one of the Owen's employees. Where are the frogs? 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:51.959 Hey here? Oh my gosh, they're so cute. Oh my gosh, 0:09:52.000 --> 0:09:54.959 take a look at these lines. These are super adorable. 0:09:56.679 --> 0:10:01.120 Oh my god, they're just sprouted LIGs a grouping the table. 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:05.320 The Odin's headquarters looks a little like a science frat, 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:08.400 live stream video games playing the background. The fridge is 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:11.920 stocked with red Bull and Caprice Son, and right now 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:15.560 the headquarters is filled with dozens and dozens of tree frogs, 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:19.199 all in various stages of development. These ones have already 0:10:19.200 --> 0:10:22.720 been experimented on, so we keep them over here. And 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:25.360 these ones have yet to be experimented or anything on, 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:28.840 so we keep them. What kind of frogs are they again? 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:32.760 So they're green tree frogs. It's high less scen area. 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:37.360 They're just like really inexpensive, kind of cool. They look 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:41.640 nice and really common, so that's why we chose them. 0:10:41.720 --> 0:10:45.040 But Josiah's dream is a lot bigger than buff amphibians. 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:48.240 Within the d I y bio community, there's a lot 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:51.400 of hope that making cutting edge science more accessible will 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:55.600 eventually also make medicine cheaper and more accessible. Take insulin. 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:59.559 It's only manufactured by a few pharmaceutical companies and it's 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:03.160 really expensive, but for millions of people, it's also a 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:07.200 life saving medication. So one collective of bio hackers, based 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:09.760 out of a community bio lab in Oakland, has been 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:13.080 working to engineer yeast so that it produces insulin. The 0:11:13.200 --> 0:11:16.960 idea is to eventually develop a safe and FDA approved 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:20.080 method to either allow people to make their own medicine 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:24.600 or at least provided to diabetics for very cheap Josiah's 0:11:24.679 --> 0:11:27.200 first big d i Y experiment was health related to 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:30.760 Since his teen years, he had been plagued by digestive issues. 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:34.280 He had tried treatment after treatment, but nothing seemed to work, 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:37.439 so it took matters into his own hands. In six 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:41.920 he gave himself a fecal transplant. Yes, that is exactly 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:44.520 what it sounds like, and he led a reporter write 0:11:44.520 --> 0:11:49.120 about it. After that, email started pouring in from other 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:51.960 people who were sick and either frustrated with doctors or 0:11:52.000 --> 0:11:55.240 out of options. They'd read stories about things like Crisper 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:57.959 and the News and all its promise of simply snipping 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:01.080 away the disease causing letters and a since genetic code. 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:03.440 They wanted to know whether there might be a d 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:06.920 I Y fix for them too. Here's where the frogs 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:11.199 come in. You can't be afraid of grabbing them too tight. 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.680 They're they're pretty robust. You you won't. Actually, you gotta 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:18.480 like corn them against the wall and just grab them. 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:20.720 I don't want to hurt you won't. You won't. Don't worry. 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:31.560 Oh my god, they're really get them all right, go in. 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:40.120 Oh my god. It's like literally the hardest part of 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:44.520 the whole Jusi experimented on himself to hopefully open people's 0:12:44.559 --> 0:12:47.280 eyes to the promise of d I Y science. But 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:49.400 he realized that if you're going to teach people how 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:51.760 to make a gene therapy for themselves, first you have 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:54.040 to teach them how to test it out, in this 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:57.720 case on frogs. To be honest, I found the whole 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:01.840 thing pretty creepy. Before injecting the frogs with anything, Josiah 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:05.520 knocks them out. They look limp, like they're dead. They 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:08.360 seem like they're slowing down. Does it work like that? 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:11.240 Does it make them slow down? First? Yep? It's taking 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:17.360 in aesthetic right, So we definitely they're still going. Sell 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:19.960 of them go a different piyeh. One of them looks 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:23.640 like he's down already. Over the past few years, genetic 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:27.200 engineering has gotten a lot easier. Jose I actually does 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:29.760 have a PhD, but you don't need one to get 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:32.400 your hands on things like DNA. Jose I ordered the 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:34.880 fullest at in DNA off the Internet, along with everything 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:37.440 else for the experiment, and had it shipped to the office. 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:40.000 Then he just mixes it all up in his lab. 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:44.200 So you put the DNA in these tubes. There's four 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:46.319 of them, word for each frog, and now you're adding 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:51.360 a polymer that will help getting into the frog. And 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:57.280 then what's next next is too way and conject them 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:07.880 way in measuring injection. There's a long history of self 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:11.040 experimentation in science, and not just in the days before 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:15.240 being a scientist required getting a PhD. Nobel Prize winner 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:18.520 Barry James Marshall ingested a type of bacteria to successfully 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:23.720 demonstrate its role in causing ulcers sometimes though it wasn't 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:27.680 so successful. Way back in the nine twenties, Russian physician 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:32.000 Alexander Bogdanov performed multiple blood transfusions on himself he wanted 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:35.600 to test whether the procedure might bring him eternal youth. Instead, 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:40.160 it killed him. But Josiah doesn't just imagine a world 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:43.240 where such self experimentation is done by the brave and 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:45.960 the daring. He wants a world we're whipping up a 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:48.840 d i Y gene therapy no longer seems daring at all, 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:53.560 considering where the science is now. That is a pretty 0:14:53.920 --> 0:14:58.480 radical vision. True. Modern day genetics have made curing many 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:02.000 ones in curable diseases team for the first time realistic. 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:06.280 One gene therapy Externa, approved last year, treats the form 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:11.200 of inherited blindness, but most therapies are still highly experimental 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:14.440 and the abilities of the technology are still really limited. 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:16.960 I've talked with a lot of other people on science 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:19.480 and medicine about Josiah's work, and most of them are 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:22.880 pretty skeptical. But if you or your loved one is sick, 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:26.640 Josia's vision is a pretty compelling one, no matter how 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:31.240 dubious it sounds. That's exactly how Laura's Staurus felt when 0:15:31.280 --> 0:15:34.320 his wife Diane was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:37.800 and she was only thirty years old and had never 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:40.600 spoked No one knows why she got the disease at 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:42.880 such a young age, but it seemed genetics may have 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:47.560 played a role. The pro bolt is very very poor, 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:50.280 and we at the beginning we were just told there 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:54.760 is there's not any hope. You can perhaps delayed an 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:58.200 inevitable a little bit, but not much, and there's really 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:00.960 no hope and no point in trying to tell too 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:04.200 much against it. It's better to just enjoy your last 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:07.040 days together and then that's going to be it. But 0:16:07.200 --> 0:16:10.600 Lars did not give up. Instead, he scoured the world 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:14.040 and the Internet for promising treatments. He eventually stumbled upon 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:17.600 a professor in Germany involved in an experimental personalized PEP 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:22.680 died vaccine project and experimental immunotherapy. Lars and Diane live 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:27.240 in Norway, so Germany isn't all that far. Immunotherapy is hot, 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:30.240 and for good reason. The medical literature is filled with 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:33.720 tales of tumors suddenly shrinking to nothing and terminal illnesses 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:39.960 miraculously reversing. Course. It's a very interesting and scientifically intriguing 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:47.400 way of attacking cancer cells. Uh, and definitely still unproven 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:50.800 and of course even more unproven two years uh. Two 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:53.920 years ago when she started this. But we hope and 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.680 believe that this can be helpful against their cancer, but 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:01.560 there's certainly no proof that it will be. Diane was 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:04.320 traveling to Germany every two weeks for treatment, as well 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:06.399 as adding new things for her treatment regimen when they 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:09.800 seemed promising. Somewhere along the way, a friend Saint law 0:17:09.920 --> 0:17:13.159 Is an article about Josiah, so Laura's reached out curious 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:15.560 about whether a d I Y crisper treatment might work 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:19.679 for Diane. Josiah told him it probably wouldn't, but the 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:22.199 two out of talking it led to a plan to 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:26.800 make cancer immunotherapy more accessible by making a d I Y. 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:29.919 Laura's had a blog where he detailed all of the 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:33.920 different treatments that Diane was trying out. Like Josiah, patients 0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:36.480 often reached out to Lara's after reading it. It was 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:39.560 impossible to tell whether any of Diane's experimental treatments were 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:43.399 actually working, but she was at least still alive and 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:46.400 doing well. And then people are reaching out and they 0:17:46.400 --> 0:17:49.040 asked if they could perhaps to try the same thing, 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:53.119 But then some people didn't have the necessary fun thing 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:55.320 to do it, and all the people who are perhaps 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:59.119 precluded from probably every second week to Germany. So so 0:17:59.200 --> 0:18:00.880 then the quest and well, you know all the other 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:04.959 ways that people can get this type of treatment without 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:09.560 traveling every second second week to Germany and without spending 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:14.200 the small fortune. We have done it. It's a large 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:17.520 start of Facebook group called d I Y Cancer Vaccines. 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:21.240 On Facebook, people with the same diagnosis as Dane could 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:24.520 discuss their treatment, along with the possibility of making a 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:29.000 cancer immunotherapy themselves. The idea of making an immunotherapy wasn't 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:33.560 completely impossible. For a few thousand dollars, anyone can contract 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:37.520 a lab to manufacture a targeted peptide like Dianes. Everything 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:40.400 else can be found at a local pharmacy or online. 0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:46.360 It's promising, but these immunotherapies are also highly experimental. There 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:48.720 was a chance that they could result in devastating side 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:52.760 effects or just altogether not work. Not to mention, it 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.960 would be extraordinarily expensive to d I y a vaccine 0:18:56.400 --> 0:19:00.360 that targeted as many mutations as Dianes did. That would 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:04.240 make the chances of it working even slimmer. Still, as 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:07.360 a Facebook community grew, a few people decided to try 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:11.359 out making the vaccine themselves. One fell in Norwegian tried 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:13.920 her homebrew vaccine on her husband, who would run out 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:16.480 of options after his cancer had spread to his brain. 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:24.080 It didn't work, but Lars was inspired. Last year, with 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:26.800 help from Josiah, he published an online guide for how 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:29.919 to make an immunotherapy targeting a single mutation in a 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:35.240 councers tumor. I think it'll The individual steps by themselves 0:19:35.280 --> 0:19:38.360 are not fully difficult, but there is a hard life 0:19:38.359 --> 0:19:42.800 think both in comprehension like do you understand enough to 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:46.439 actually dare to do it and of course implementing it. 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:49.640 The practical steps, some of them are not so difficult, 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:51.680 some of them are a little bit more tricky. But 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:57.240 I think if you are a reasonably well informed person 0:19:57.440 --> 0:19:59.960 and you have the time I think in particular this time, 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:03.640 and the willingness and the energy to try to get 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:06.200 into this, I think I think many people will be 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:09.600 able to do it. The Internet has galvanized patients with 0:20:09.640 --> 0:20:12.119 all sorts of conditions to take a more hands on 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:15.840 approach to their care. For example, there's a website where 0:20:15.840 --> 0:20:18.360 people with Crowns disease can share what treatments have worked 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:21.000 for them and what has it. It's sort of like 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:25.160 a patient powered Research Network, another site Patients like Me, 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:28.600 connects people with all kinds of ailments. It's clear that 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:30.760 patients are ready to take a more active role in 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:34.320 their care. Perhaps this is just the next step. The 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:38.120 risks Laura's says seem far less daring when you're out 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:41.240 of options for survival. So I think it's like a 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:44.440 small step in a direction to help show people that 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:49.040 something could be possible. Hank Greely, a bioethosist at Stanford 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:52.000 and a frequent critic of Josiah's, told me he's doubtful 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:54.800 anything as significant as a cancer treatment will come from 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:59.880 someone's homebrew biolab. I could imagine somebody taking a rare 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:04.920 genetic condition and showing that in a Petrie dish they 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:10.960 can successfully use Crisper too to reverse an unfavorable mutation 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:15.120 in a disease that, for whatever reason, biotech and pharma 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:18.640 haven't explored. But making the jump from a cell line 0:21:18.640 --> 0:21:20.920 and a Petrie dish, which I think bio hackers might 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:23.399 be able to do, to a drug and a human 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:27.880 is such an enormous jump that I think bio hackers 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:30.480 are likely to play only the smallest of roles in that. 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:34.639 Hank isn't all that concerned about Josiah's frog experiments, but 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:38.360 he is concerned about what it might lead to. Josiah's 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:42.320 public experimentation has already led to copycats. No one has 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:45.840 gotten hurt yet, but they certainly could. That CEO who 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:48.560 injected himself with a Harpies treama on stage did it 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:52.000 without ever testing the treatment and humans first. A few 0:21:52.000 --> 0:21:54.679 months later, he drowned, So it's impossible to say how 0:21:54.720 --> 0:21:57.400 things might have worked out. But who knows what might 0:21:57.440 --> 0:22:00.199 happen when you introduce a foreign substance in to the 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:08.160 endlessly complex human body. That day that I visited Josi's lab, 0:22:08.359 --> 0:22:11.040 he was planning to inject four frogs with full stanton 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:14.280 and four other frogs, the control frogs with the placebo. 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:19.479 It was the first phase of a new experiment. Basically, 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:22.240 all you're doing is you're injecting a liquid and that's it. 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:24.760 Like it's that simple, And I don't think people understand 0:22:24.800 --> 0:22:27.280 that that, Like it's literally that simple you're injecting. He'd 0:22:27.280 --> 0:22:30.560 already gotten good results in one previous experiment. Injecting the 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:34.480 frogs with a different gene also meant stimulating growth. Yeah, 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:38.800 so here's a video that I took. We'll try to 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:41.720 show you the frogs. Actually, this guy is bigger. No, 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:44.080 that's what Esther was talking about. We call him thick 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:48.679 Boy because it's our frog that grew like way bigger 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:51.320 than all the other frogs from the gene therapy. Thick 0:22:51.359 --> 0:23:01.880 Boy sick with two cs. It's such an easy experiment 0:23:01.920 --> 0:23:04.320 to do, right because there's an obvious way to tell 0:23:04.600 --> 0:23:07.680 if it's working. You can weigh the frogs to see 0:23:07.920 --> 0:23:09.840 and if they get big enough you can tell buy 0:23:09.880 --> 0:23:15.200 I Josiah is selling kids to perform these experiments online 0:23:15.320 --> 0:23:20.399 for two that's including six frogs. His hope is that 0:23:20.440 --> 0:23:22.960 it teaches people how fun and simple science can be, 0:23:23.840 --> 0:23:27.240 and just maybe that one day, performing such experiments on 0:23:27.280 --> 0:23:30.120 frogs might empower people to take their health into their 0:23:30.119 --> 0:23:32.960 own hands. The one thing that's important to notice that 0:23:33.000 --> 0:23:38.720 these genes are human genes, they're not frog gains. So theoretically, 0:23:39.760 --> 0:23:42.680 you know, it's testing like a gene therapy that would 0:23:42.680 --> 0:23:45.199 be used in a human but it might not be 0:23:45.240 --> 0:23:49.919 as easy as Josiah insists. Here's Hank Greeley again. I 0:23:49.960 --> 0:23:55.159 think this idea of having a hobby in science is 0:23:55.200 --> 0:23:58.720 a good one in and of itself for the people involved. 0:23:58.840 --> 0:24:00.879 I think there is some chance that they can do 0:24:01.040 --> 0:24:06.000 some scientific benefit, which would be good. Um. I do 0:24:06.160 --> 0:24:12.040 think that development of human drugs and biological products is 0:24:12.520 --> 0:24:14.960 not what they should be focusing on, because I think 0:24:15.119 --> 0:24:18.760 their likelihood of contributing significantly, at least in any very 0:24:18.840 --> 0:24:24.600 direct way to that is very low. Josiah likes to 0:24:24.640 --> 0:24:27.439 say things like, the only thing in the way of 0:24:27.480 --> 0:24:30.240 creating cheap d I Y cures is enough people with 0:24:30.280 --> 0:24:32.200 the knowledge to do it and the market to pay 0:24:32.240 --> 0:24:36.000 for it. Take look start off, that's the eight fifty 0:24:36.000 --> 0:24:39.840 thou dollar gene therapy that treats blindness. Josiah is pretty 0:24:39.840 --> 0:24:42.040 sure he could order stuff off the internet and make 0:24:42.080 --> 0:24:45.520 it for five dollars. Another time he told me he 0:24:45.520 --> 0:24:47.920 could make dragons if there were only enough people to 0:24:47.960 --> 0:24:52.280 pay for it. According to Josiah, it's all about market demand. 0:24:53.040 --> 0:24:57.360 That's why you's so provocative. I interact with a lot 0:24:57.359 --> 0:24:59.760