By Dan Maloney
July 5, 2021 Source: Hack a Day
Shidonna Raven Garden and Cook. All Rights Reserved. Copyright.
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Unsplash, National Cancer Institute
While bio-hacking is often presented as an opportunity to create designer babies or cure diseases, often the below described bio-data and genetic-data is collected, used and experimented without the knowledge of the donors or recipients all over the world as those in the industry explore new medical and bio-technology fields that have yet to be properly regulated due to the low awareness by the public at large. Not all bio hacking is implemented on a person with their full knowledge and consent. From Brittany Spears to illegal immigrants these new medical and bio-technologies are often carried out on the marginalized, by force or on the unknowing and non-consenting
MICROFLUIDICS FOR BIOHACKING
“Microfluidics” sounds like a weird field, but one that doesn’t touch regular life too much. But consider that each time you fire up an ink-jet printer, you’re putting microfluidics to work, as nanoliter-sized droplets of ink are spewed across space to impact your paper at exactly the right spot.
Ink-jets may be mundane, but the principles behind them are anything but. Microfluidic mechanisms have found their way into all sorts of products and processes, with perhaps the most interesting uses being leveraged to explore and exploit the microscopic realms of life. Microfluidics can be used to recreate some of the nanoscale biochemical reactions that go on in cells, and offer not only new ways to observe the biological world, but often to manipulate it. Microfluidics devices range from “DNA chips” that can rapidly screen drug candidates against thousands of targets, to devices that can rapidly screen clinical samples for exposure to toxins or pathogens.
There are a host of applications of microfluidics in biohacking, and Krishna Sanka is actively working to integrate the two fields. As an engineering graduate student, his focus is open-source, DIY microfluidics that can help biohackers up their game, and he’ll stop by the Hack Chat to run us through the basics. Come with your questions about how — and why — to build your own microfluidics devices, and find out how modern biohackers are learning to “go with the flow.”
Should you be asked before your bio-data or genetic-data be collected and used? Should your bio-data or genetic-data be used in ways your are informed of? What if your bio-data or genetic-data was used to create a clone or in 3D bio-printing?
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