Speaker 1: Hi everyone, It's Pierre here and I've got something special
Speaker 1: for you today. Many of you have seen that last
Speaker 1: week we dropped a trailer into our feed. It's about
Speaker 1: a new show launching at Bloomberg. It's called Prognosis, and
Speaker 1: it's all about the incredible innovation that's happening in health
Speaker 1: and in medicine. And this week we're going to play
Speaker 1: you an episode from that show. So I'm here with
Speaker 1: Kristen Brown, our dynamite reporter, who is bringing you this
Speaker 1: week's story. Some of you might actually recognize Kristen's voice
Speaker 1: because a few weeks ago she was right here with
Speaker 1: us on Decrypted with a story about how our DNA
Speaker 1: is helping to solve cold murder cases. Hey Kristen, Hey,
Speaker 1: So the episode that you're bringing us this week is
Speaker 1: about bio hacking, which is essentially d I Y science.
Speaker 1: For some bio hackers. D i Y means experimenting on
Speaker 1: yourself for experimenting on animals, but either way, it's happening
Speaker 1: outside of a traditional lab setting. Right. Bio hackers are
Speaker 1: kind of like the hacker punk of the science world.
Speaker 1: They don't really worry about rules or regulations governing science
Speaker 1: of medicine because those rules just weren't really designed to
Speaker 1: oversee loan self taught scientists in a garage. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: I think about bio hackers, what often comes to mind
Speaker 1: the guys who put chips under their skin. But a
Speaker 1: lot of bio hackers are also working to make cheaper
Speaker 1: remedies and to make drugs more widely available. And that's
Speaker 1: what you're looking at this week. A lot of those remedies,
Speaker 1: once they are available, are just not affordable. So I
Speaker 1: guess you could say it's maybe a noble cause trying
Speaker 1: to democratize treatment. But I wonder what do scientists with
Speaker 1: PhDs think about bio hackers. Has this community produced any
Speaker 1: significant breakthroughs? Not really, but we are starting to see
Speaker 1: biohacking expand beyond sort of hardcore hacker types. Biohacking definitely
Speaker 1: has an appeal to patients who are dealing with a
Speaker 1: terminal diagnosis like cancer. We've run out of other options.
Speaker 1: You'll hear from a Norwegian couple an episode who are
Speaker 1: in that situation, and so what's do I having? That?
Speaker 1: Is it? The tech is becoming cheaper and more easily available. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's definitely a big part of it. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can now buy some of these really advanced machines on
Speaker 1: eBay for a few hundred dollars from labs they're discarding them,
Speaker 1: so there's access to the technology. The technology and the
Speaker 1: scientific techniques have also just gotten a lot simpler, you know,
Speaker 1: easier to do if you don't have a PhD. And
Speaker 1: I think part of this is also people are just
Speaker 1: fed up with our health care system. So what are
Speaker 1: some of the medical conditions that these bio hackers are
Speaker 1: looking at. Well, they have some pretty lofty goals, but
Speaker 1: so far, a lot of the bio hackers I know
Speaker 1: are looking at treatments that could help them get buffer,
Speaker 1: like the frogs were about to hear about. So with that,
Speaker 1: let's play everyone the episode. I really hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: listening to this as much as I have, And if
Speaker 1: you like what you here, please head to your nearest
Speaker 1: podcast app and subscribe to Prognosis. The season is just
Speaker 1: getting started and there are a lot of excellent episodes
Speaker 1: in the pipeline. Prognosis is going to have new episodes
Speaker 1: out every Monday, and I'll see you guys next week
Speaker 1: when we're back on Tuesday with Decrypto listeners, beware, Later
Speaker 1: in this podcast we'll be sticking a needle in a
Speaker 1: little green frog. We'll also report on people conducting experiments
Speaker 1: on themselves. We are not advocating you try any of
Speaker 1: this at home. Right right than What if the tools
Speaker 1: of modern science were so accessible that you could cure
Speaker 1: yourself of your own disease? Welcome to Prognosis, the podcast
Speaker 1: about health, medical technology, and the mind blowing innovation now
Speaker 1: underway in some of the least expected places. I'm your
Speaker 1: post Michelle fay Cortes. Today we're taking a peek into
Speaker 1: the world of biohacking, where self taught scientists are experimenting
Speaker 1: with glow in the dark, beer, insulin producing yeast, and
Speaker 1: even do it yourself cures for cancer. There's a history
Speaker 1: of scientific innovations shrinking from big, expensive and inaccessible to
Speaker 1: personalized and widely used. Just look at computers in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. They took up entire rooms and pretty much
Speaker 1: only professionals had access to them. Now millions of people
Speaker 1: carry pocket sized computers also known as smartphones, everywhere. A
Speaker 1: growing contingent of self taught scientists called biohackers, believe that
Speaker 1: healthcare may be following a very similar path. Things like say,
Speaker 1: genetic engineering are still the territory of experts, scientists and universities,
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical companies, and the government, but so called biohackers are
Speaker 1: beginning to experiment a home. So far, all this community
Speaker 1: of d I wires has accomplished is a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of veiled experiments. There's a guy in Mississippi that's been
Speaker 1: trying to make bioluminescent puppies for years, no glowing dogs yet,
Speaker 1: and others trying to engineer himself to grow bigger muscles
Speaker 1: without having to spend hours at the gym. He's no
Speaker 1: more buff than he was when he started. Probably the
Speaker 1: most spectacular failure yet was last February at a conference,
Speaker 1: the CEO of a bootstrapped bio hacker startup got up
Speaker 1: on stage and announced that he had herpes. Then he
Speaker 1: stripped down to his boxers and injected himself with the
Speaker 1: gene therapy cure that was almost certain to not work.
Speaker 1: But these determined bio hackers are growing in number and
Speaker 1: in experience. They're sharing ideas online and off about ways
Speaker 1: to make science and medicine more accessible to regular folks.
Speaker 1: They prophesies one day, just like I carry around a
Speaker 1: computer in my pocket, I might have the tools in
Speaker 1: my kitchen to concoct a cure tailored to my own genetics.
Speaker 1: Here's Bloomberg's health reporter Kristin Brown with the story. Recently,
Speaker 1: I found myself in a West Oakland duplex watching as
Speaker 1: a sedated tree frog got a genetic cocktail injected into
Speaker 1: its left leg. Hold it like that, remember, and hold
Speaker 1: his leg down and just go into the muscle like that.
Speaker 1: Object conto. You see it swell a little bit from
Speaker 1: the fluid, So you're just injecting one leg. The goal
Speaker 1: was to make the frog's muscles grow bigger than usual,
Speaker 1: to make the frog get well ripped. To do this,
Speaker 1: the frog was getting an injection of a d N,
Speaker 1: a mixture containing a gene called full of statin, which
Speaker 1: seems to play a role in sustle gross So the
Speaker 1: fullest TOATN is the is it likely that it would
Speaker 1: just change the one leg or that it would be
Speaker 1: possible body. No, it's possible both right. Because they're so small,
Speaker 1: it can get into the blood stream really easy, So
Speaker 1: it's likely that it can change the whole body. That's
Speaker 1: our measuring weight, but also when you inject into the muscle,
Speaker 1: it should affect that muscle the most. We're looking at
Speaker 1: that muscle to see how that muscle changes, you know,
Speaker 1: getting multiple measurements to see what he's done. This guy,
Speaker 1: the mad scientist behind this whole experiment, is Josiah Zaner.
Speaker 1: I first met Josiah a few years back. He had
Speaker 1: just left a job at NASA to start a company
Speaker 1: called the Odin, selling cheap science supplies over the Internet
Speaker 1: to d I Y bio enthusiasts. Now, Josiah is sort
Speaker 1: of a famous science stumpman. He rose to fame after
Speaker 1: a talkie gave last year at a biotech conference for
Speaker 1: pockatively titled A step by step Guide to Genetically Modifying
Speaker 1: Yourself with Crisper. Crisper is a much buzzed about gene
Speaker 1: editing technology which allows scientists to cut and paste tiny
Speaker 1: bits of DNA. To demonstrate how Crisper might work in
Speaker 1: a human he injected himself with Crisper right in front
Speaker 1: of the audience. I was actually there, and it was
Speaker 1: pretty crazy. Crisper had never been used in humans before
Speaker 1: in the US, and it certainly hadn't been directly injected
Speaker 1: into anybody's body. The stick inspired some copycats, like that
Speaker 1: CEO Michelle mentioned who injected himself with a harpies vaccine
Speaker 1: on stage. It also caught the attention of the Food
Speaker 1: and Drug Administration. The f d A didn't really like
Speaker 1: that Josiah was selling kits too would be bio hackers online.
Speaker 1: Josiah wanted to usher in a d i y science
Speaker 1: revolution by making science seem accessible and edgy, but his
Speaker 1: tactics had sort of backfired. You know. At first, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: the way we could do this is let's just like
Speaker 1: self experimentation. And I tried that and it did not
Speaker 1: turn out like I imagined it. So then all right,
Speaker 1: let's change, let's try something else. He didn't just want
Speaker 1: to grab headlines. He wanted to help people and to
Speaker 1: teach people how to do science so that one day
Speaker 1: maybe they could help themselves. So last summer, Josiah sent
Speaker 1: me a message on Facebook asking me if I had
Speaker 1: any interest in learning how to genetically engineer frogs. Josie's mind,
Speaker 1: teaching people to experiment on animals was one step closer
Speaker 1: to teaching people how to experiment on themselves, which brings
Speaker 1: us to August Christian. Hello, come on in, how's it going.
Speaker 1: That's Esther, one of the Owen's employees. Where are the frogs?
Speaker 1: Hey here? Oh my gosh, they're so cute. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: take a look at these lines. These are super adorable.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, they're just sprouted LIGs a grouping the table.
Speaker 1: The Odin's headquarters looks a little like a science frat,
Speaker 1: live stream video games playing the background. The fridge is
Speaker 1: stocked with red Bull and Caprice Son, and right now
Speaker 1: the headquarters is filled with dozens and dozens of tree frogs,
Speaker 1: all in various stages of development. These ones have already
Speaker 1: been experimented on, so we keep them over here. And
Speaker 1: these ones have yet to be experimented or anything on,
Speaker 1: so we keep them. What kind of frogs are they again?
Speaker 1: So they're green tree frogs. It's high less scen area.
Speaker 1: They're just like really inexpensive, kind of cool. They look
Speaker 1: nice and really common, so that's why we chose them.
Speaker 1: But Josiah's dream is a lot bigger than buff amphibians.
Speaker 1: Within the d I y bio community, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of hope that making cutting edge science more accessible will
Speaker 1: eventually also make medicine cheaper and more accessible. Take insulin.
Speaker 1: It's only manufactured by a few pharmaceutical companies and it's
Speaker 1: really expensive, but for millions of people, it's also a
Speaker 1: life saving medication. So one collective of bio hackers, based
Speaker 1: out of a community bio lab in Oakland, has been
Speaker 1: working to engineer yeast so that it produces insulin. The
Speaker 1: idea is to eventually develop a safe and FDA approved
Speaker 1: method to either allow people to make their own medicine
Speaker 1: or at least provided to diabetics for very cheap Josiah's
Speaker 1: first big d i Y experiment was health related to
Speaker 1: Since his teen years, he had been plagued by digestive issues.
Speaker 1: He had tried treatment after treatment, but nothing seemed to work,
Speaker 1: so it took matters into his own hands. In six
Speaker 1: he gave himself a fecal transplant. Yes, that is exactly
Speaker 1: what it sounds like, and he led a reporter write
Speaker 1: about it. After that, email started pouring in from other
Speaker 1: people who were sick and either frustrated with doctors or
Speaker 1: out of options. They'd read stories about things like Crisper
Speaker 1: and the News and all its promise of simply snipping
Speaker 1: away the disease causing letters and a since genetic code.
Speaker 1: They wanted to know whether there might be a d
Speaker 1: I Y fix for them too. Here's where the frogs
Speaker 1: come in. You can't be afraid of grabbing them too tight.
Speaker 1: They're they're pretty robust. You you won't. Actually, you gotta
Speaker 1: like corn them against the wall and just grab them.
Speaker 1: I don't want to hurt you won't. You won't. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, they're really get them all right, go in.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. It's like literally the hardest part of
Speaker 1: the whole Jusi experimented on himself to hopefully open people's
Speaker 1: eyes to the promise of d I Y science. But
Speaker 1: he realized that if you're going to teach people how
Speaker 1: to make a gene therapy for themselves, first you have
Speaker 1: to teach them how to test it out, in this
Speaker 1: case on frogs. To be honest, I found the whole
Speaker 1: thing pretty creepy. Before injecting the frogs with anything, Josiah
Speaker 1: knocks them out. They look limp, like they're dead. They
Speaker 1: seem like they're slowing down. Does it work like that?
Speaker 1: Does it make them slow down? First? Yep? It's taking
Speaker 1: in aesthetic right, So we definitely they're still going. Sell
Speaker 1: of them go a different piyeh. One of them looks
Speaker 1: like he's down already. Over the past few years, genetic
Speaker 1: engineering has gotten a lot easier. Jose I actually does
Speaker 1: have a PhD, but you don't need one to get
Speaker 1: your hands on things like DNA. Jose I ordered the
Speaker 1: fullest at in DNA off the Internet, along with everything
Speaker 1: else for the experiment, and had it shipped to the office.
Speaker 1: Then he just mixes it all up in his lab.
Speaker 1: So you put the DNA in these tubes. There's four
Speaker 1: of them, word for each frog, and now you're adding
Speaker 1: a polymer that will help getting into the frog. And
Speaker 1: then what's next next is too way and conject them
Speaker 1: way in measuring injection. There's a long history of self
Speaker 1: experimentation in science, and not just in the days before
Speaker 1: being a scientist required getting a PhD. Nobel Prize winner
Speaker 1: Barry James Marshall ingested a type of bacteria to successfully
Speaker 1: demonstrate its role in causing ulcers sometimes though it wasn't
Speaker 1: so successful. Way back in the nine twenties, Russian physician
Speaker 1: Alexander Bogdanov performed multiple blood transfusions on himself he wanted
Speaker 1: to test whether the procedure might bring him eternal youth. Instead,
Speaker 1: it killed him. But Josiah doesn't just imagine a world
Speaker 1: where such self experimentation is done by the brave and
Speaker 1: the daring. He wants a world we're whipping up a
Speaker 1: d i Y gene therapy no longer seems daring at all,
Speaker 1: considering where the science is now. That is a pretty
Speaker 1: radical vision. True. Modern day genetics have made curing many
Speaker 1: ones in curable diseases team for the first time realistic.
Speaker 1: One gene therapy Externa, approved last year, treats the form
Speaker 1: of inherited blindness, but most therapies are still highly experimental
Speaker 1: and the abilities of the technology are still really limited.
Speaker 1: I've talked with a lot of other people on science
Speaker 1: and medicine about Josiah's work, and most of them are
Speaker 1: pretty skeptical. But if you or your loved one is sick,
Speaker 1: Josia's vision is a pretty compelling one, no matter how
Speaker 1: dubious it sounds. That's exactly how Laura's Staurus felt when
Speaker 1: his wife Diane was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer,
Speaker 1: and she was only thirty years old and had never
Speaker 1: spoked No one knows why she got the disease at
Speaker 1: such a young age, but it seemed genetics may have
Speaker 1: played a role. The pro bolt is very very poor,
Speaker 1: and we at the beginning we were just told there
Speaker 1: is there's not any hope. You can perhaps delayed an
Speaker 1: inevitable a little bit, but not much, and there's really
Speaker 1: no hope and no point in trying to tell too
Speaker 1: much against it. It's better to just enjoy your last
Speaker 1: days together and then that's going to be it. But
Speaker 1: Lars did not give up. Instead, he scoured the world
Speaker 1: and the Internet for promising treatments. He eventually stumbled upon
Speaker 1: a professor in Germany involved in an experimental personalized PEP
Speaker 1: died vaccine project and experimental immunotherapy. Lars and Diane live
Speaker 1: in Norway, so Germany isn't all that far. Immunotherapy is hot,
Speaker 1: and for good reason. The medical literature is filled with
Speaker 1: tales of tumors suddenly shrinking to nothing and terminal illnesses
Speaker 1: miraculously reversing. Course. It's a very interesting and scientifically intriguing
Speaker 1: way of attacking cancer cells. Uh, and definitely still unproven
Speaker 1: and of course even more unproven two years uh. Two
Speaker 1: years ago when she started this. But we hope and
Speaker 1: believe that this can be helpful against their cancer, but
Speaker 1: there's certainly no proof that it will be. Diane was
Speaker 1: traveling to Germany every two weeks for treatment, as well
Speaker 1: as adding new things for her treatment regimen when they
Speaker 1: seemed promising. Somewhere along the way, a friend Saint law
Speaker 1: Is an article about Josiah, so Laura's reached out curious
Speaker 1: about whether a d I Y crisper treatment might work
Speaker 1: for Diane. Josiah told him it probably wouldn't, but the
Speaker 1: two out of talking it led to a plan to
Speaker 1: make cancer immunotherapy more accessible by making a d I Y.
Speaker 1: Laura's had a blog where he detailed all of the
Speaker 1: different treatments that Diane was trying out. Like Josiah, patients
Speaker 1: often reached out to Lara's after reading it. It was
Speaker 1: impossible to tell whether any of Diane's experimental treatments were
Speaker 1: actually working, but she was at least still alive and
Speaker 1: doing well. And then people are reaching out and they
Speaker 1: asked if they could perhaps to try the same thing,
Speaker 1: But then some people didn't have the necessary fun thing
Speaker 1: to do it, and all the people who are perhaps
Speaker 1: precluded from probably every second week to Germany. So so
Speaker 1: then the quest and well, you know all the other
Speaker 1: ways that people can get this type of treatment without
Speaker 1: traveling every second second week to Germany and without spending
Speaker 1: the small fortune. We have done it. It's a large
Speaker 1: start of Facebook group called d I Y Cancer Vaccines.
Speaker 1: On Facebook, people with the same diagnosis as Dane could
Speaker 1: discuss their treatment, along with the possibility of making a
Speaker 1: cancer immunotherapy themselves. The idea of making an immunotherapy wasn't
Speaker 1: completely impossible. For a few thousand dollars, anyone can contract
Speaker 1: a lab to manufacture a targeted peptide like Dianes. Everything
Speaker 1: else can be found at a local pharmacy or online.
Speaker 1: It's promising, but these immunotherapies are also highly experimental. There
Speaker 1: was a chance that they could result in devastating side
Speaker 1: effects or just altogether not work. Not to mention, it
Speaker 1: would be extraordinarily expensive to d I y a vaccine
Speaker 1: that targeted as many mutations as Dianes did. That would
Speaker 1: make the chances of it working even slimmer. Still, as
Speaker 1: a Facebook community grew, a few people decided to try
Speaker 1: out making the vaccine themselves. One fell in Norwegian tried
Speaker 1: her homebrew vaccine on her husband, who would run out
Speaker 1: of options after his cancer had spread to his brain.
Speaker 1: It didn't work, but Lars was inspired. Last year, with
Speaker 1: help from Josiah, he published an online guide for how
Speaker 1: to make an immunotherapy targeting a single mutation in a
Speaker 1: councers tumor. I think it'll The individual steps by themselves
Speaker 1: are not fully difficult, but there is a hard life
Speaker 1: think both in comprehension like do you understand enough to
Speaker 1: actually dare to do it and of course implementing it.
Speaker 1: The practical steps, some of them are not so difficult,
Speaker 1: some of them are a little bit more tricky. But
Speaker 1: I think if you are a reasonably well informed person
Speaker 1: and you have the time I think in particular this time,
Speaker 1: and the willingness and the energy to try to get
Speaker 1: into this, I think I think many people will be
Speaker 1: able to do it. The Internet has galvanized patients with
Speaker 1: all sorts of conditions to take a more hands on
Speaker 1: approach to their care. For example, there's a website where
Speaker 1: people with Crowns disease can share what treatments have worked
Speaker 1: for them and what has it. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: a patient powered Research Network, another site Patients like Me,
Speaker 1: connects people with all kinds of ailments. It's clear that
Speaker 1: patients are ready to take a more active role in
Speaker 1: their care. Perhaps this is just the next step. The
Speaker 1: risks Laura's says seem far less daring when you're out
Speaker 1: of options for survival. So I think it's like a
Speaker 1: small step in a direction to help show people that
Speaker 1: something could be possible. Hank Greely, a bioethosist at Stanford
Speaker 1: and a frequent critic of Josiah's, told me he's doubtful
Speaker 1: anything as significant as a cancer treatment will come from
Speaker 1: someone's homebrew biolab. I could imagine somebody taking a rare
Speaker 1: genetic condition and showing that in a Petrie dish they
Speaker 1: can successfully use Crisper too to reverse an unfavorable mutation
Speaker 1: in a disease that, for whatever reason, biotech and pharma
Speaker 1: haven't explored. But making the jump from a cell line
Speaker 1: and a Petrie dish, which I think bio hackers might
Speaker 1: be able to do, to a drug and a human
Speaker 1: is such an enormous jump that I think bio hackers
Speaker 1: are likely to play only the smallest of roles in that.
Speaker 1: Hank isn't all that concerned about Josiah's frog experiments, but
Speaker 1: he is concerned about what it might lead to. Josiah's
Speaker 1: public experimentation has already led to copycats. No one has
Speaker 1: gotten hurt yet, but they certainly could. That CEO who
Speaker 1: injected himself with a Harpies treama on stage did it
Speaker 1: without ever testing the treatment and humans first. A few
Speaker 1: months later, he drowned, So it's impossible to say how
Speaker 1: things might have worked out. But who knows what might
Speaker 1: happen when you introduce a foreign substance in to the
Speaker 1: endlessly complex human body. That day that I visited Josi's lab,
Speaker 1: he was planning to inject four frogs with full stanton
Speaker 1: and four other frogs, the control frogs with the placebo.
Speaker 1: It was the first phase of a new experiment. Basically,
Speaker 1: all you're doing is you're injecting a liquid and that's it.
Speaker 1: Like it's that simple, And I don't think people understand
Speaker 1: that that, Like it's literally that simple you're injecting. He'd
Speaker 1: already gotten good results in one previous experiment. Injecting the
Speaker 1: frogs with a different gene also meant stimulating growth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so here's a video that I took. We'll try to
Speaker 1: show you the frogs. Actually, this guy is bigger. No,
Speaker 1: that's what Esther was talking about. We call him thick
Speaker 1: Boy because it's our frog that grew like way bigger
Speaker 1: than all the other frogs from the gene therapy. Thick
Speaker 1: Boy sick with two cs. It's such an easy experiment
Speaker 1: to do, right because there's an obvious way to tell
Speaker 1: if it's working. You can weigh the frogs to see
Speaker 1: and if they get big enough you can tell buy
Speaker 1: I Josiah is selling kids to perform these experiments online
Speaker 1: for two that's including six frogs. His hope is that
Speaker 1: it teaches people how fun and simple science can be,
Speaker 1: and just maybe that one day, performing such experiments on
Speaker 1: frogs might empower people to take their health into their
Speaker 1: own hands. The one thing that's important to notice that
Speaker 1: these genes are human genes, they're not frog gains. So theoretically,
Speaker 1: you know, it's testing like a gene therapy that would
Speaker 1: be used in a human but it might not be
Speaker 1: as easy as Josiah insists. Here's Hank Greeley again. I
Speaker 1: think this idea of having a hobby in science is
Speaker 1: a good one in and of itself for the people involved.
Speaker 1: I think there is some chance that they can do
Speaker 1: some scientific benefit, which would be good. Um. I do
Speaker 1: think that development of human drugs and biological products is
Speaker 1: not what they should be focusing on, because I think
Speaker 1: their likelihood of contributing significantly, at least in any very
Speaker 1: direct way to that is very low. Josiah likes to
Speaker 1: say things like, the only thing in the way of
Speaker 1: creating cheap d I Y cures is enough people with
Speaker 1: the knowledge to do it and the market to pay
Speaker 1: for it. Take look start off, that's the eight fifty
Speaker 1: thou dollar gene therapy that treats blindness. Josiah is pretty
Speaker 1: sure he could order stuff off the internet and make
Speaker 1: it for five dollars. Another time he told me he
Speaker 1: could make dragons if there were only enough people to
Speaker 1: pay for it. According to Josiah, it's all about market demand.
Speaker 1: That's why you's so provocative. I interact with a lot
Speaker 1: of people who have cancer, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: who of different types of cancers that they have no
Speaker 1: treatment for, and they're just trying to stay alive and survive.
Speaker 1: But when it's their choice between dying and trying something,
Speaker 1: most people try something well, if they could try it,
Speaker 1: if they already had a system of platform, an organism
Speaker 1: that's been set up which they could test these things
Speaker 1: on before they try it themselves, so that risk of
Speaker 1: dying is less. Like that's a I think a really
Speaker 1: cool thing. Josie's approach is extreme, but it's rooted in
Speaker 1: a concern sharred well beyond bio hackers. Treatments sometimes take
Speaker 1: decades to make it from petri dish to patient if
Speaker 1: it turns out that is lucrative enough to pursue a
Speaker 1: treatment at all, And when a treatment does make it
Speaker 1: to market, many people can't afford it. Like my dream
Speaker 1: is to get people to be able to genetically modify themselves,
Speaker 1: but it's also to uh. I don't want to say,
Speaker 1: like take down the f DA, but figure out a
Speaker 1: new model that works right because right now there are
Speaker 1: ton of people dying and suffering that don't have access
Speaker 1: to the drugs they need because of the regulations of time,
Speaker 1: the money, I mean everything with the f d A.
Speaker 1: Potty Zetlery used to be an attorney at the f
Speaker 1: d A. Now she's a law professor who studies bio hackers,
Speaker 1: among other things. She told me that self experimentation or
Speaker 1: experimenting on frogs might not be enough to warrant a
Speaker 1: crackdown from the agency, but it also isn't necessarily the
Speaker 1: best way to help people. So from a public health perspective,
Speaker 1: if what we care about is helping people and helping
Speaker 1: a lot of people, there are lots of things that
Speaker 1: are pretty low tech and not very sexy that we
Speaker 1: know work. So there are areas of the country that
Speaker 1: don't even have clean water, right, so giving clean water
Speaker 1: to people in Flint, Michigan and other areas that would
Speaker 1: be a huge public health benefit. That isn't as sexy
Speaker 1: as genetically engineering yourself, um, but it's something we know
Speaker 1: would work, and I I'm very interested in this area.
Speaker 1: Animals prone as anyone to think this is a really
Speaker 1: exciting thing that jose I is doing, But they're just
Speaker 1: all these other things we know that help people on
Speaker 1: a large scale. Back into eyes Lab, I got a
Speaker 1: good taste of how easy it is for things to
Speaker 1: go wrong when you do it yourself after instructing me
Speaker 1: in syringe technique. So cut your thumb down there on
Speaker 1: the bottom right, so then you have some pressure, right,
Speaker 1: because if you push on the back when you try
Speaker 1: to push in and you push all the but then
Speaker 1: how do I push it in? He asked me if
Speaker 1: I wanted to give injecting the frogs that try myself.
Speaker 1: I'm one of those kids who asked to be excused
Speaker 1: from dissecting frogs in high school. Biout, So I declined,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad I did because then this happened. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, he's like breathing really hard. Actually, I think
Speaker 1: I might have got the vein on that one accidentally.
Speaker 1: What do you do if he's bleeding nothing hopefully in
Speaker 1: heels and he's I think that's just starting to breathe again.
Speaker 1: We're starting to be able to see. No, probably not well.
Speaker 1: According to Josi Am the frog did survive, and that's
Speaker 1: it for this week's prognosis. Thanks for listening. Do you
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Speaker 1: the world. We want to hear from you. You can
Speaker 1: email me at m Portes at Bloomberg dot net or
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Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Liz Smith are Ori editor
Speaker 1: was Rick Shein. Thanks to Drew Armstrong, Francesco Levi's had
Speaker 1: a Bloomberg podcast. We'll see you next week.