[alevskaya]

What is it about biology that attracts crazy people? As a profession genetic engineer (I've worked on successful engineered CAR-T cell therapy startups, etc.) the most appalling thing about this isn't the hubris or defiance of norms. It's how sloppy and technically laughable all of these preparations and experiments are from a biological point of view - both in terms of what I know about the viral/crispr vector design as well as the biological targets chosen (you're not going to do much by sparsely manipulating myostatin that way as an adult!). This is technical incompetence attempting to masquerade itself as maverick, edgy research for press attention. If you want to be a "biohacker": make a high-penetrance GFP/mCherry tattoo visible to the eye on a patch of your skin that doesn't get rejected by the immune system. i.e. Why take seriously claims about building a supercomputer from people that can't even wire up an 8-bit toy?

[xkcd-sucks]

The pros are worried about career prospects should they publish something pearl-clutchers deem "unethical."

There certainly at least three grad students who have transformed skin cells w/ eGFP (very very low efficiency w/ Lipofectamine) and one with a cosmetic tumor (later removed after it grew too much)