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makery.info

Conflict of method among

biohackers
Ewen Chardronnet
9-11 minutos

Published 20 February 2018 by

Clash in the DIYbio community around the

controversial manager of a biotech company
that claims to offer DIY vaccine injection kits
and other treatments for diseases such as aids
or herpes.

Austin, Texas, February 4, 2018. The Bdyhax 2018

convention set itself to be an important body hacking
rendezvous with a transhumanist trend. There was talk about
implants of new vibrating sexual organs, MDMA or other
psychedelics assisted therapies. Even the artist Stelarc was
present to show his ear implanted under the skin of his
forearm. The afternoon was dedicated to DIY healthcare and
set the tone with an opening of Ford Fisher’s documentary
Transhuman: Biohackers and Immortalists that praises the
eradication of all diseases through biohacking. Various
projects were presented, Mixael Laufer from Four Thieves
Vinegar explained to us how to make your own medicine at
home.

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The highlight of the afternoon was produced by Aaron

Traywick, the young 28-year-old manager of the controversial
company Ascendance Biomedical, who was due to inject
himself live on social networks with what he presents as a
vaccine against herpes. Traywick, who has no scientific or
medical training, presents the company team that developed
a “vaccine” and “treatment” against herpes. Andreas
Stuermer, geneticist engineer, organizer of the Ars
Electronica Center Biolab in Linz Austria, was presented as
the “lead scientist” of the project. Traywick then lowered his
pants and injected himself in the thigh with the supposed DIY
vaccine. On the pretext that the regulations of the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) on gene therapy are too strict and
too slow, his company gave itself the mission to offer low cost
DIY “treatments” faster. The team seemed convinced of the
miracles that gene therapy and the genome editing technique
CRISPR-Cas9 can produce. To a point where it gave the
audience the impression that it was neglecting, even openly
showing contempt for the basic rules of cohort and rigorous
clinical trials.

Live injection of the anti-herpes DIY treatment, Bdyhax,

February 2018:

Media stunts

It wasn’t Traywick’s first stunt. In October 2017, he had also

created a buzz around another “treatment” against HIV this
time, no less. One of his collaborators, Tristan Roberts, who
had aids and refused tri-therapy, injected himself under the
skin and live on social networks with an alleged gene therapy
treatment able to stimulate the production of N6

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antibodies—a study from the National Institutes of Health

(NIH) had recently shown that the latter neutralized up to 98%
of HIV strains)—, with the hope of becoming “patient zero” of
a revolutionary treatment. However, one month later, the
Ascendance Biomedical team was in for a reality check. The
injection of the miracle remedy had not functioned, the
presence of strains had even increased.

A biohacker self-administers an anti-aids “treatment”,

October 2017:

Josiah Zayner, aka The Odin, another media stunt specialist

(we told you about him here and there), also had publicly led
and broadcast on social networks, a few days before Roberts,
a CRISPR-Cas9 self-injection in order to modify his genome
with the objective of increasing his muscle mass.

Following both of these two high-risk experiences, the

American health security authority published a release in
November 2017 warning about the self-administration of gene
therapies. “FDA is aware that gene therapy products intended
for self-administration and “do it yourself” kits to produce
gene therapies for self-administration are being made
available to the public. The sale of these products is against
the law. FDA is concerned about the safety risks involved.
Consumers are cautioned to make sure that any gene
therapy they are considering has either been approved by
FDA or is being studied under appropriate regulatory
oversight.”

Josiah Zayner and the “DIY Human CRISPR”, October

2017:

Josiah Zayner at first expressed his surprise on social

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networks of the rapidity of the FDA reaction, then claimed he

had indeed carried out all the verifications and appropriate
scientific studies.

Miracle remedy or charlatanism?

On February 5, in the night that followed Traywick’s injection

in Austin, Josiah Zayner came up with a communiqué
criticizing Ascendance Bio: “The idea that any scientist,
biohacker or not, has created a cure for a disease with no
testing and no data is more ridiculous than believing jet fuel
melts steel beams. Ascendance Bio are not legit in any
measure. They have created no cures. In my opinion they
don’t deserve the moniker of biohacker or scientist. (…)
Unfortunately, it has reached a point where they are gravely
misleading people and are making the biohacker community
look like idiot scammers. They seem more interested in
attention then access. They claim transparency but have
provided no data, information, DNA sequences or materials to
third parties for testing and verification. And lastly, they are
breaking the number one rule of biohacking, Never put
another person’s life at risk.”

Zaner even apologizes: “Looking at my actions in the past,

which unfortunately did include a public injection in a semi-
ridiculous manner, I want to apologize, in that I could have
inspired people to think I was doing things on a whim when I
was not. My goal is and has always been to make
biotechnology accessible and sometimes that means cutting
out a lot of the normal jargon or unnecessary ceremony and
ritual so people can understand what is going on. (…) I
always consult with other medical and scientific experts to

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see if I a missing anything and always encourage others to do

the same. Science is sometimes more about figuring out how
not to do things wrong then how to do them correctly. As far
as we know Ascendance has never done any preliminary
experiments. They have never provided preliminary data and
yet still every therapy they try is claimed to be a cure.”

And the story becomes viral

The injection of the “remedy” against herpes becomes viral in

the press and on social networks and sparks controversy in
the community on the scientific whys and wherefores of the
operation. The idea for the treatment came from Andreas
Stuermer, the 25-year-old biohacker and bio-artist from the
Ars Electronica Center. The young Austrian biohacker had
already attracted attention in DIY groups with his enthusiastic
and untimely declarations calling for “CRISPR for all” and
continuously complaining about the legal restrictions in this
field. Stuermer had approached Ascendance to attempt to
produce a vaccine against herpes, having come across a
particularly intriguing scientific article. It seemed rather easy.
To enter cells in the human body, herpes relies on a protein,
“glycoprotein D”. It would just be about removing the protein
from the virus and then the virus could no longer spread. The
disarmed virus could thus become the basis for a vaccine,
according to Stuermer. He intended to self-inject the vaccine
in public at the Austin body hacking conference. But a week
before the event, Stuermer wasn’t all that sure about his
“vaccine”. The method quoted by the scientific article had
only been tested on mice. Its reliability was subject to caution
insofar as mice have significantly different immune systems

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from those of human beings…

And then, Stuermer started having doubts on DNA vaccines

and the development of auto-immune diseases. At the last
moment, he changed his mind. With surprise, the community
discovered in Austin that Traywick himself would self-inject
the vaccine…

In a DIYbio Facebook group, Andreas Stuermer expresses

his doubts one week before the injection (screenshot). © DR

On the Saturday before the injection, the affair turned into a

farce. The conflict was open between the members of the
project. Some of them wished to get their equipment back for
an estimated value of $50,000. But Traywick had the locks
changed on the Jacksonville lab in Florida where it was
stored. The situation ended up in a fight. Traywick even
barricaded himself inside for several hours. He pressured the
web developer into closing the company site internet for
maintenance, claiming the company would supply more
scientific arguments later on.

The following day, Tristan Roberts, Andreas Stuermer and

half of the Ascendance team gave an improvised press
conference on Facebook.. They announced they were

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breaking with Traywick and explained they would no longer

work for Ascendance, since Traywick allegedly pushed them
to neglect the scientific concerns in order to respect the
deadlines set to reveal his famous new therapies to the
press.

Tristan Roberts even declared one must “eliminate” Traywick

from the biohacker community before he “hurts people”. He
assured the latter was a “con artist” who was deceiving his
investors and was blinded by his capitalist ambitions. He in
fact explained that Traywick meant to test his anti-aids
treatment in Venezuela soon…

Tristan Roberts points the finger at one of the truly

problematic concerns: Traywick constantly talks about a
“remedy”, it’s an abuse of language, whereas he says “our
scientific team is legitimate, its science is legitimate”. And he
adds “We can do better, we will do better.”

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