Josiah Zayner is an interesting character.

Just over 30 years, a doctorate in biophysics from the University of Chicago, has worked at NASA Ames Research Center.
But academic research bores him: too slow, too little innovative.
Zayner invents then a start-up in his garage and starts to sell, thanks to a crowdfunding, a kit for use CRISPR-Cas9 in the kitchen of the house, a sort of small chemical genetic engineering.
Then, this October, he tried to change its genome during a live on Facebook.
In theory, the aim of the experiment is to break the myostatin gene, which blocks the growth of muscles, and replace it with a fluorescent protein, to see how many and which cell is actually managed to arrive CRISPR.
That really happen?
"I do not know," admits Zayner during the live broadcast.
The risks are obviously many, from simple infections and inflammation to cancer if Cas9 were going to cut in the wrong places.
The probability that it works, and you end up with big muscles fluo, is somewhat remote.
But for Zayner it is not important to the efficacy or safety of the procedure.
In words, what interests them is to make these technologies more democratic and accessible as possible, even outside academia and the pharmaceutical industry.
"I want to live in a world where people from drunk instead of going to get a tattoo decides to use CRISPR on itself," he told Buzzfeed News.
Despite the exuberance, Zayner is always very careful about what he says and writes.
He knows to move in a gray area of the law: all materials that sells with its start-up are accompanied by a disclaimer that prohibit its use on humans, and even his guides on how to repeat his experiment at home with myostatin or construct a vaccine for cancer DIY are intended as "exercise of freedom of expression, no therapeutic purpose." Zayner was the first person to self-administer a gene therapy live Facebook, but only for a few days.
Because if for him this is a libertarian-transhumanist crusade to make the modification of their genomes a universal right, others arrive at biohacking in very different ways.
A few days later in livestream went Tristan Roberts, programmer twenty-seven, that in 2011 he discovered he had contracted HIV.
Earlier, following the classical treatment with anti-retroviral cocktails, Tristan could not keep the virus under control, but after a problem with his health insurance, has suddenly found himself without the possibility of following a traditional therapy.
At that point he was contacted by Ascendence Biomedical, a start-up of 3 biohacker of transhumanist inclination, he was looking for guinea pigs for human gene therapy and then publicly disclose the results on the internet.
"We strongly discourage anyone see this video to repeat the experiment at home."
According to a statement to Gizmodo, the treatment is based sull'anticorpo N6, which in rare cases is produced by HIV infected patients, and which has long been considered one of the best candidates to develop a vaccine.
But the timing of the investigation was too slow, and so, sitting next to the CEO of Ascendence that said "strongly advise to anyone who sees this video to repeat the experiment at home," Tristan is a never tested gene therapy is injected before on ' man.
Alone, of course, to get around all legal obstacles.
Ascendence sells the plasmid used "for research purposes", as well as an anti-aging treatment to extend their life expectancy.
The most likely outcome for Tristan is that nothing will happen.
Certainly it does not seem clear though, as a programmer, really knows what that is going to encounter, considered to be in the video confuse DNA and RNA and must be repeatedly explain what treatment from biohacker sitting on the couch at home.
How to find these media should convince regulators to loosen the grip and make it more accessible and democratic these technologies is not very clear.
Zayner argues that a world in which everyone can change their genome at any time "would be much more interesting."
Let's just hope it's not the same kind of interesting world is talking about some ancient Chinese curse.

From Vice