Source: The Financial Times

People as Data. Imagine having your body wired 24/7/365 to collect data on what you eat, how you move, when you go to the bathroom,… when (or IF) you get laid…, and that data is used to tweak your body and mind through organic or cybernetic means. Orwell revisited? Google’s or Apple’s business plan?

Nope.

Financial Times’ April Dembosky reports on a growing group of bio-hackers, or “self-quantifiers,” who are doing just that, and they even have a website where other would-be bio-hackers can find more info (Quantified Self) and meat - er, meet - each other. They held a conference in late May in California to explore the possibilities and discuss the effects of self-quantification not only on each other, but on society as a whole (link for more info).

Past is prolog. The idea of self-quantification isn’t new, as a paragraph on Benjamin Franklin shows how he kept track of 13 virtues that he would check off when violated. This would help him keep his moral bearing straight. Modern self-quantifiers see themselves doing something similar, only with modern implantable equipment like pacemakers and insulin pumps. And the medical community is also taking notice. Modern medicine has always had a “magic bullet” or “one size fits all” mentality for treating ailments. With the data gathered by willing self-quantifying patients, doctors can better tailor treatments for those cases where the standard issue treatments can cause adverse side effects… like killing the patient. That could save lots on insurance and lawsuits.

Already these self-quantifiers are comparing themselves to a group of 1970s era computer geeks: Early-adopters and hobbyists with visions of everyone in every household quantifying themselves to tweak their meat for optimum performance. One possible system described is the Sprout:

The self-tracking equivalent of an early model, 30lb, four-part desktop computer is Fujitsu Laboratories’ Sprout, as worn by software engineer Alex Gilman at the Quantified Self Conference: a maze of sensors and wires send data from his ear, chest and arm to the pocket-sized computer clipped to his belt – the Sprout. The Sprout synchronizes the physical data from the body sensors and from the apps on his iPod Touch where he records his moods and drowsiness levels. What is now a mess of raw, useless data can be calculated and translated into a neat graph that will eventually be used to measure stress and fatigue, manage weight loss, even predict illness.

The potential of the Sprout is intriguing, but mass appeal will only come when such devices are consolidated into small, wireless, all-in-one products that make data collection completely passive, says Chang. Most will require little to no human effort and some will even be “game-ified”, he says, made as fun and addictive as Angry Birds.

Speaking of games, I can already see athletes at ALL levels wanting to use self-quantification and bio-hacking. They probably already do, with a poke of ster… I mean “vitamins.” But using this system is not considered cheating… yet.

The Bigger Question: Do you REALLY want to be tracked and quantified? Self-quantification may sound pretty cool, until you need to find a place to put all your biometrics. Not only do you need large enough space, but that space needs to be secure from unauthorized access:

The implications for privacy are dramatic. Advocates and politicians were in an uproar when they realised the kind of access that Apple and Google have to geographic data derived from phones. Imagining three years worth of heart rate data or depression symptoms travelling through mobile devices – potentially being offered for sale to drug or insurance companies, exploited by advertisers or hacked by cyber criminals – puts watchdog groups on alert.

“What consumers need to realise is there’s a huge, huge demand for information about their activities, and the protections for the information about their activities are far, far, far less than what they think,” says Lee Tien, a privacy attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “A lot of these cloud services fall outside the federal and state privacy regimes.”

To put it another way, do you want to hear from Lulzsec that you are genetically predisposed to being gay or homicidal?

Most, if not all, self-quantifiers do it of their own free will, in the name of self-improvement. To many outsiders, they can’t get over the feeling of orwellianism mixed with a bit of narcissism. Even former self-quantifiers admit to taking the quest to perfection to the extreme:

“People thought I was narcissistic. What they didn’t see was the self-punishment, the fear, the hatred behind the tracking,” writes Alexandra Carmichael, one of the founders of CureTogether.com, in a poem about why she stopped tracking herself. “I had stopped trusting myself. Letting the numbers drown out my intuition, my instincts.”

Despite the perils, the self-quantifiers are willing to continue the tracking and tweaking in hopes of making humans a better species. Will they become Friedrich Nietzsche’s ubermensch, or just a bunch of skin-eating mutants roaming the streets? Nobody has come up with an app for that, and that leads to the most important question:

How do you measure perfection?

Sources: MSNBC, now everywhere.

‘Build-A-Bear’ but with babies. A fertility clinic in Los Angeles is giving prospective parents a chance to mod their babies via genetic manipulation. The technique, called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), allows parents and doctors to screen out potential gene-borne diseases and other “defects,” but soon could be used to increase the chance of a baby to have certain “choice” attributes like height, hair color, and even IQ.

Such genetic screening has been around forever, but in a much more natural form (discovered by Charles Darwin). It was even discovered that you could “choose” the gender/sex of your offspring with a timing method. But with the mapping of the human genome and genetic screening, it is now possible to fine-tune the looks and abilities of your children.

Master race, anyone?

Gattica, here we come! Maybe. The idea of spawning a Frankenstein-baby may be scary or exciting, but it may not catch on due to some major problems to be worked out. First off, the PGD process does not guarantee success; It only increases the odds that a child will have selected traits. Secondly, they have to use in vitro fertilization which doesn’t always work. And at $18K US per attempt, you can only afford one attempt.

Then, you have to deal with all the “eugenics” issues that will inevitably arise. An assembly-line master race may not be possible just yet.

Of course, that can all change when the machines take over…

Source: Associated Press (via Yahoo!)

Building germs in the garage? Why not? The computer industry started out in garages, and now future genetic engineers may come from the same location. These biohackers are currently twisting the double-helix of life in hopes of finding breakthrough cures and therapies, or at least creating mutant strains to help humanity. They don’t have the PhD’s or advanced medical knowledge, but they can find most of the info, materials, and equipment they need off the Internet. A Massachusetts company is also helping the DIY gene-twisters:

In Cambridge, Mass., a group called DIYbio is setting up a community lab where the public could use chemicals and lab equipment, including a used freezer, scored for free off Craigslist, that drops to 80 degrees below zero, the temperature needed to keep many kinds of bacteria alive.

Co-founder Mackenzie Cowell, a 24-year-old who majored in biology in college, said amateurs will probably pursue serious work such as new vaccines and super-efficient biofuels, but they might also try, for example, to use squid genes to create tattoos that glow.

Cowell said such unfettered creativity could produce important discoveries.

What’s the worst that could happen? There are critics who see this DIY attitude as an open invitation to terrorism, or at least a recipe for disaster. But given how the current system is used just to make profits, and how hacker innovation has allowed computer technology to explode to its current state, biohackers may be better than the money-driven model.

The current average lifespan of a human is around 80 years. The oldest person lived to be 122 years, while an Israeli Arab woman is claiming to be 120. And many gerontologists believe that 125 years is the maximum. But if researchers in California are right, they can possibly extend human life to 1000 YEARS.

From The Independent (UK), Science section:

A genetically engineered organism that lives 10 times longer than normal has been created by scientists in California. It is the greatest extension of longevity yet achieved by researchers investigating the scientific nature of ageing.

If this work could ever be translated into humans, it would mean that we might one day see people living for 800 years. But is this ever going to be a realistic possibility?

Valter Longo is one of the small but influential group of specialists in this area who believes that an 800-year life isn’t just possible, it is inevitable. It was his work at the University of Southern California that led to the creation of a strain of yeast fungus that can live for 10 weeks or more, instead of dying at its usual maximum age of just one week.

By deleting two genes within the yeast’s genome and putting it on a calorie-restricted diet, Longo was able to extend tenfold the lifespan of the same common yeast cells used by bakers and brewers. The study is published later this week in the journal Public Library of Science Genetics.

One thousand years of life? The idea of centuries-to-an-eon life span in humans may sound wrong to those who study aging, but even aging occurs at different rates in different people, which would explain why some live over one hundred years while others die early (for reasons other than suicide or murder, of course). Longo believes that this is the result of genetic programming:

“Basically, it is the first demonstration, to our knowledge, that ageing is programmed and altruistic,” Longo says. “The organisms we have studied die long before they have to in order to provide nutrients for ‘mutants’ generated within their own population. Thus, billions of organisms die early so that a few better-adapted individuals can grow.”

This raises the possibility that the same process happens in humans, and that, as a result, many people are dying earlier than they need to. “Programmed human ageing is just a possibility. We don’t know whether it’s true yet or not. But if ageing is programmed in yeast, and the [metabolic] pathway is very similar, then isn’t it possible that humans also die earlier than they have to?”

While yeast is a far cry from humans, it is the first step to extending human life as the methods used can be adapted and refined to extend the life of other increasingly complex organisms. By that time, they may know enough about aging to slow the process down to extend life even further, and other advances in stem cells and bionics may allow one to replace their aged, obsolete bodies completely.

As always, stay tuned… This is going to get interesting.