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posted by Fnord666 on Friday March 16 2018, @05:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the meanwhile-at-NXNE dept.

Pharmaceutical giants are holding sessions about topics such as childhood cancer and anti-aging drugs at South by Southwest (SXSW). But it is the lightly regulated "biohacks" that seem to get all of the attention:

"I'm here to make the argument that you have a moral imperative, if you're an employer, to hack your employees," said Dave Asprey, founder of Bulletproof 360, during a session called "Would You Let Your Boss Biohack You?"

Asprey's company sells products with names like Brain Octane Oil, containing supplements Silicon Valley calls nootropics, which are purported to enhance cognitive function. He is also a biohacker. That means he takes nootropics to improve his performance in life, refuses to ingest a long list of chemicals that includes fluoride, and averages six hours and six minutes of sleep every night. During his talk, Asprey was wearing sienna-toned sunglasses, which, he explained, were hacking the light.

At Bulletproof, every employee has access to nootropics and is encouraged to expand his or her mind accordingly. Asprey is particularly fond of modafinil, which he calls "the Limitless drug" in reference to a 2011 movie in which Bradley Cooper finds a pill that makes him a genius. Sold under the brand name Provigil, modafinil got Asprey through the Wharton School, he said, and it has "the safety profile of ibuprofen," a statement with which the Drug Enforcement Administration would disagree.

And the biohackers are around too. This one seems to have gotten hold of a MinION:

Heshan Illangkoon is a self-diagnosed polymath who divides his time as an entrepreneur in residence at the University of Florida between astrobiology and synthetic biology. He goes by Dr. Grasshopper. Among his scores of business ideas is one derived from surprisingly hairy mice. He and his fellow Ph.D. scientists dosed lab mice with a bunch of insulin and noticed that they began sprouting hair. When they took a look at the follicles, they realized it was the result of a hormone called IG1, which reared up in response to the insulin. Now they've got plans to whip up a hormone-laced gel they believe could safely replicate that phenomenon on the bald pates of humans. "That's a billion-dollar product right there," Illangkoon said.

And what about the years-long process of getting FDA approval? Illangkoon responded with a not-fit-for-print suggestion for what could be done with the FDA. He then retrieved from the pocket of his pastel pink pants a handheld genome sequencer to demonstrate how new technology has democratized what had once been monopolized by the gatekeepers of Big Science.


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  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday March 16 2018, @09:35PM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Friday March 16 2018, @09:35PM (#653815) Homepage Journal

    After pointing out that smoking DMT was like smoking burning plastic, the DMT explained that he had the wrong number of arms, legs, fingers and toes.

    My schoolmate readily agreed yet was overcome with the worst kind of horror because he could not figure out why.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
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