Ellen Jorgensen: Biohacking -- you can do it, too

186,721 views ・ 2013-01-15

TED


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Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
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It's a great time to be a molecular biologist. (Laughter)
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Reading and writing DNA code is getting easier
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and cheaper.
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By the end of this year, we'll be able to sequence
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the three million bits of information
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in your genome in less than a day
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and for less than 1,000 euros.
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Biotech is probably the most powerful
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and the fastest-growing technology sector.
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It has the power, potentially,
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to replace our fossil fuels,
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to revolutionize medicine,
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and to touch every aspect of our daily lives.
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So who gets to do it?
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I think we'd all be pretty comfortable with
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this guy doing it.
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But what about
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that guy? (Laughter)
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(Laughter)
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In 2009, I first heard about DIYbio.
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It's a movement that -- it advocates making biotechnology
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accessible to everyone,
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not just scientists and people in government labs.
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The idea is that if you open up the science
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and you allow diverse groups to participate,
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it could really stimulate innovation.
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Putting technology in the hands of the end user
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is usually a good idea because they've got the best idea
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of what their needs are.
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And here's this really sophisticated technology
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coming down the road, all these associated
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social, moral, ethical questions,
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and we scientists are just lousy at explaining to the public
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just exactly what it is we're doing in those labs.
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So wouldn't it be nice
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if there was a place in your local neighborhood
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where you could go and learn about this stuff,
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do it hands-on?
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I thought so.
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So, three years ago, I got together
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with some friends of mine who had similar aspirations
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and we founded Genspace.
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It's a nonprofit, a community biotech lab
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in Brooklyn, New York,
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and the idea was people could come,
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they could take classes and putter around in the lab
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in a very open, friendly atmosphere.
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None of my previous experience prepared me
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for what came next. Can you guess?
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The press started calling us.
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And the more we talked about how great it was to increase
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science literacy, the more they wanted to talk
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about us creating the next Frankenstein,
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and as a result, for the next six months,
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when you Googled my name,
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instead of getting my scientific papers, you got this.
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["Am I a biohazard?"]
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(Laughter)
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It was pretty depressing.
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The only thing that got us through that period
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was that we knew that all over the world,
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there were other people that were trying to do
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the same thing that we were.
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They were opening biohacker spaces, and some of them
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were facing much greater challenges than we did,
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more regulations, less resources.
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But now, three years later, here's where we stand.
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It's a vibrant, global community of hackerspaces,
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and this is just the beginning.
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These are some of the biggest ones,
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and there are others opening every day.
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There's one probably going to open up in Moscow,
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one in South Korea,
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and the cool thing is they each have their own
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individual flavor
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that grew out of the community they came out of.
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Let me take you on a little tour.
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Biohackers work alone.
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We work in groups,
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in big cities — (Laughter) —
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and in small villages.
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We reverse engineer lab equipment.
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We genetically engineer bacteria.
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We hack hardware,
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software,
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wetware,
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and, of course, the code of life.
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We like to build things.
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Then we like to take things apart.
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We make things grow.
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We make things glow.
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And we make cells dance.
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The spirit of these labs, it's open, it's positive,
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but, you know, sometimes when people think of us,
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the first thing that comes to mind is bio-safety,
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bio-security, all the dark side stuff.
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I'm not going to minimize those concerns.
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Any powerful technology is inherently dual use,
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and, you know, you get something like
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synthetic biology, nanobiotechnology,
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it really compels you, you have to look at both
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the amateur groups but also the professional groups,
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because they have better infrastructure,
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they have better facilities,
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and they have access to pathogens.
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So the United Nations did just that, and they recently
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issued a report on this whole area,
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and what they concluded was the power of this technology
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for positive was much greater than the risk for negative,
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and they even looked specifically at the DIYbio community,
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and they noted, not surprisingly, that the press
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had a tendency to consistently overestimate our capabilities
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and underestimate our ethics.
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As a matter of fact, DIY people from all over the world,
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America, Europe, got together last year,
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and we hammered out a common code of ethics.
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That's a lot more than conventional science has done.
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Now, we follow state and local regulations.
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We dispose of our waste properly, we follow
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safety procedures, we don't work with pathogens.
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You know, if you're working with a pathogen,
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you're not part of the biohacker community,
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you're part of the bioterrorist community, I'm sorry.
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And sometimes people ask me,
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"Well, what about an accident?"
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Well, working with the safe organisms that we normally
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work with, the chance of an accident happening
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with somebody accidentally creating, like,
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some sort of superbug,
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that's literally about as probable as a snowstorm
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in the middle of the Sahara Desert.
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Now, it could happen,
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but I'm not going to plan my life around it.
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I've actually chosen to take a different kind of risk.
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I signed up for something called the Personal Genome Project.
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It's a study at Harvard where, at the end of the study,
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they're going to take my entire genomic sequence,
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all of my medical information, and my identity,
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and they're going to post it online for everyone to see.
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There were a lot of risks involved that they talked about
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during the informed consent portion.
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The one I liked the best is,
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someone could download my sequence, go back to the lab,
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synthesize some fake Ellen DNA,
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and plant it at a crime scene. (Laughter)
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But like DIYbio, the positive outcomes and
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the potential for good for a study like that
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far outweighs the risk.
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Now, you might be asking yourself,
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"Well, you know, what would I do in a biolab?"
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Well, it wasn't that long ago we were asking, "Well,
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what would anyone do with a personal computer?"
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So this stuff is just beginning.
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We're only seeing just the tip of the DNA iceberg.
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Let me show you what you could do right now.
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A biohacker in Germany, a journalist, wanted to know
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whose dog was leaving little presents on his street?
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(Laughter) (Applause)
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Yep, you guessed it. He threw tennis balls
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to all the neighborhood dogs, analyzed the saliva,
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identified the dog, and confronted the dog owner.
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(Laughter) (Applause)
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I discovered an invasive species in my own backyard.
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Looked like a ladybug, right?
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It actually is a Japanese beetle.
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And the same kind of technology --
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it's called DNA barcoding, it's really cool --
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You can use it to check if your caviar is really beluga,
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if that sushi is really tuna, or if that goat cheese
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that you paid so much for is really goat's.
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In a biohacker space, you can analyze your genome
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for mutations.
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You can analyze your breakfast cereal for GMO's,
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and you can explore your ancestry.
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You can send weather balloons up into the stratosphere,
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collect microbes, see what's up there.
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You can make a biocensor out of yeast
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to detect pollutants in water.
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You can make some sort of a biofuel cell.
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You can do a lot of things.
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You can also do an art science project. Some of these
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are really spectacular, and they look at social,
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ecological problems from a completely different perspective.
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It's really cool.
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Some people ask me, well, why am I involved?
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I could have a perfectly good career in mainstream science.
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The thing is, there's something in these labs
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that they have to offer society that you can't find
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anywhere else.
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There's something sacred about a space where
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you can work on a project, and you don't have to justify
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to anyone that it's going to make a lot of money,
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that it's going to save mankind, or even that it's feasible.
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It just has to follow safety guidelines.
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If you had spaces like this all over the world,
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it could really change the perception
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of who's allowed to do biotech.
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It's spaces like these that spawned personal computing.
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Why not personal biotech?
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If everyone in this room got involved,
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who knows what we could do?
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This is such a new area, and as we say back in Brooklyn,
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you ain't seen nothin' yet. (Laughter)
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(Applause)
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