Freelance Biohackers will be at the forefront of tomorrow’s most exciting bioscience projects, playing a key role in tasks ranging from finding the next blueprint for antibiotics to developing genetically modified wildlife.

According to Hank Greely, director of Stanford University’s Center for Law and Biosciences, the fundamental methods for manipulating gene drives are becoming easier and much more widely available to almost anyone. Furthermore, he stressed that it is not difficult to imagine a world where simple eye problems, liver problems and muscular dystrophy can be easily fixed with specific genetic adjustments. He’s willing to bet that twenty years from now, a little biohacker will develop a unicorn. This biohacker will take the genetics of an animal that grows horns, put it into a horse, and a billionaire’s 12-year-old daughter will receive a unicorn for her birthday.

Working from home, or even from the growing number of freelance workplaces, freelance biohackers work on open source software platforms with hundreds, possibly thousands, of others in hive-like teams.

Leading university research departments and drug and bioscience companies will use them to piece together complex DNA-based answers to several of the fundamental questions of the next diseases that will emerge in ten years, from remedies for cancer in aging populations to vaccines for new epidemics fueled by our globalized way of life and accelerating climate change.

As Hank Campbell of the American Council on Health and Science puts it: “These freelancers and mavericks are definitely the future of applied biology because big pharmaceutical companies generally won’t put up with the odds and worry they won’t turn a big enough profit.” “.

UCL artificial biologist Dr Darren Nesbeth predicts that biohackers will drive major medical breakthroughs because, unlike experts in academic institutes, they can spend their valuable time generating ideas and indulging in creative thinking rather than teaching and publishing. articles.

Creating mythical creatures for billionaire clients might be a method for biohackers looking to make a living from home with a laptop coupled with state-of-the-art software processing, but DNA manipulation abilities are also put to nobler uses. .

Feng Zhang, co-creator of the groundbreaking CRISPR gene editing, believes that biohackers will make it possible to save, or even bring back from extinction, species of domestic and wild animals as a growing global human population puts pressure on biodiversity through technology. habitat damage.

An understanding of scientific and medical methodology, combined with education in advanced data analytics, will be core skills for students dreaming of a career as a biohacker in the next decade.

The ability to function naturally, non-competitively, and also in collaboration with large virtual teams you’ll never meet in person is also a crucial individual trait, along with persistence, a watch for details, and an ability to make jump-starts that are easy to use. creativity.

But in a niche that tends to remain loosely regulated to inspire unusual approaches and innovative thinking, people outside of conventional scientific and medical disciplines have the flexibility to play a major independent role in important projects.

Todd Kuiken, an environmentally conscious scientist, says leading bioscientists increasingly feel they don’t need a Ph.D. to be a scientist. He claims that any strong and scientifically inclined mind can help the body of science. The more minds devoted to solving the world’s medical problems, the faster the human race can solve them.

Kuiken is certain that the growing group of biohacking citizens will establish codes of conduct to deal with anxieties about the values ​​and morality of their work.

‘Professional scientists tend to consider the ethical implications of their work after the research is complete,’ he says.

“The biological community began to organize the ethical and safety principles, since it is obviously collaborative and is in continuous discussion about what it is getting involved in and also why.”

Many people now working in the early iterations of the biohacking field think that future biohackers will hold out the perfect hope for game-changing scientific and technological breakthroughs, since they are not tied to the bureaucracy of conventional analysis.

The founder, biohacker, scientist, and Josiah Zayner of the biotech company The Odin, claims that academic and corporate researchers have to fill out a million forms, wasting a ton of time and money in the process. This can delay important research, and people are dying and suffering because of all these rules and committees. Going forward, people like Zayner intend to say, ‘We’ll do it anyway and start healing people since we understand we can.’

He boldly claims that these people will radically change the world if they gain access to the aforementioned programs and technology.