DIY Biotechnologists – Start Praying

Apparently the new rage is to attempt synthetic biology in one’s home, says this article:

Amateurs are trying genetic engineering at home

(via the Associated Press)

People with no training and only rudimentary knowledge doing genetic splicing in unregulated lab conditions?  Very scary.  And you thought genetically engineered food was bad?  Please.  You haven’t been scared s***less until you’ve seen Joe the Plumber trying to splice vanilla flavoring into E.coli and then injecting it into his Gun’n'Roses tattoo so he can have a scratch’n’sniff bicep.

“We should try to make science more sexy and more fun and more like a game,” says Mackenzie Cowell, a 24-year-old who majored in biology in college and co-founder of the group DIYbio which has set up a community lab where the public could use chemicals and lab equipment, including a free Craigslist freezer.

NO.  No we shouldn’t. Science will always be sexy to the hardcore. and it is sexy to stupid people as well… but it should be kept out of their reach, and restricted to people dedicated enough to pursue it.  Is this a discriminatory statement?  Absolutely not: anyone regardless of background is free to pursue it, but they should be required to obtain the appropriate training and put in the work to get there.  There’s nothing discriminatory about meritocracy.

I cringe everytime I see college kids not using goggles and other safety equipment in lab, and they’re actually being supervised and taught proper lab technique.  Do you really want untrained individuals to be weilding even more responsability than that, in your backyard?