On point at Body Hacking Con this weekend , DARPA film director of biological technology Justin Sanchez bunk through an telling list of the sort of government activity projects that might interest mass go to a group discussion about the integration of humans and technical school , including plan to prevent ball-shaped pandemics by turning the consistency into bioreactor and to mend memory through technologies like brain computer interface .
But Sanchez was not only there to promote the agency ’s expansive inquiry portfolio . He also had a message of pressing cautiousness for so - called biohackers , hoi polloi who have decided the formal drug research and approving process is too cumbersome and who are using themselves as wop pigs for more and more more challenging biology experiments .
“ We may be well-heeled with the risks today , but are there endangerment we have n’t considered ? ” he told the crowd , add up up his keynote address . “ Never shy off from these kinds of questions . I have it off this community is ultimately going to alter the humanity . ”
In an consultation after his stage talk , Sanchez was more circumspect . “ More and more the great unwashed have admission to biotech . It is very democratized right , ” he told me . “ People need to think profoundly . If you do have admission to it , that does n’t mean you should use it . ”
Sanchez brought up the internet , for which DARPA ’s precursor developed the foundational technology .
“ With all applied science , when people get down getting frantic , they take it in a lot of different directions . That ’s what enables technologies to mature and separate out into region that no one ever expected , ” he said . “ I would expect for biotechnologies , the same affair is go to pass . ”
But , he say , that also lead to unanticipated problems .
“ There ’s many levels of safety and security for the net that we as a companionship are struggling with , ” he said . “ We ’re in the other day of biological technologies . countenance ’s think about how to do this in a creditworthy way now so that , as that technology does maturate , we ’re better prepared to use it in a room that will benefit society . ”
Sanchez tell he has concerns that if biohackers break down to think through all the consequences of their work , hoi polloi could wind up getting wound . Some of DARPA ’s newer programme , in fact , are intend to come up with ways to countervail the consequences of biological enquiry gone wrong , like theSafe Genes programme , which is search style to countermand genetic engineering , among other things . DARPA was at Body Hacking Con , he said , in hope of spurring a dialogue about approaching biohacking safely .
“ It ’s so easy to promise something in front of an audience , ” Sanchez enjoin . “ It ’s a very different affair to in reality show that technology work with a human being in a safe fashion and in a manner that has impact . ”
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