Biohacker Explains How Gene Editing For Gains Is an Undetectable PED

On Episode 15 of AudioCraic we had on Josie Zayner, a biohacker famously known for being the first person to inject themself with gene therapy to increase their muscle mass. This was done during a biohacking Netflix documentary called, "Unnatural Selection." Josie was well-accepted in the science community until January of 2020, when she showed how to develop a DIY vaccine on youtube. This was her honest effort to provide an open-source process to help the world in the midst of a pandemic. She was subsequently de-platformed from YouTube and alienated from the community that once embraced and praised her wholeheartedly. 

Josie's education background is impressive, holding a BA in plant biology from Southern Illinois University, and MSc in cell in molecular biology from Appalachian State University, and a PhD in biophysics from the University of Chicago. After obtaining her PhD in 2013, Josie worked for roughly 2 years at the NASA Ames Space Synthetic Biology Research Center, working on a Martian colony habitat design. While this work was interesting, Josie found the extra research she was doing on Twitter and online chat rooms to be more appealing, leading her to leave NASA and launch her own crowdfunding campaign. This campaign aimed to provide CRISPR kits for letting the general public experiment with editing bacterial DNA. From here, Zayner spent years innovating, highlights which include a full-body microbe transplant (including a fecal transplant from a donor), creating a fluorescent beer, and launching a curriculum ("BioEngineering 101").

Josie joins me to explain how to biohack-yourself to get the most swole ... (while being undetectable by any sort of PED test) ... And she walked me through her career, interests, and experiences. I was left dumbfounded and questioning all of humanity by the end of our time. She raised the essential question of, "where the hell did the first-ever cell come from?"