Some Bio Stuff

1) Neural Network made out of stem-cells made from a foreskin

More insane than Mary Shelley could ever dream of – but all in the name of art etc. It reminds me a bit of the “machine” at the end of Britannia Hospital

So that’s cool.

Elsewhere…

New York City’s Community Biolab is offering a course on how to create DIY Mutant Worms.

Elsewhere…

Genome Compiler

Drag and drop software for hacking DNA – which you can then send off to labs, to have the thing made. Pretty impressive… although I still haven’t a clue what any of this stuff means. I feel about as illiterate as normal people do when faced with computer code.

Their vast eternal (ted-talk) plan here

Finally – interesting article about how The Parma Industry deprives people in the developing world of medicine that exists, and fails to even research really horrific diseases… because there’s no money in them.

“I don’t work for millions of people in Africa.”

The stagnation caused by “IP” again… but it talks about quite an interesting idea – “bounties” for curing diseases… de-coupling research from manufacture. Corporations or researchers or whatever get (for example) $2bn for curing a disease, the resulting cure then being released to the world. No fucking “IP” nonsense, no extortionate $100,000 price-tags. Instead we get what previous generations managed to pull off… the complete eradication of polio… of smallpox… of the killer-diseases we’re faced with today – bearing in mind, that when child-mortality comes down, the birth-rate comes down faster.

Seems like a really good idea. It also talks about a github for medical research – an international R&D treaty… which is so obviously a good idea it’s ludicrous that it didn’t happen long ago – but it’s getting blocked by the US govt.

So something needs to be done about that really. Corporate usurpation of democracy. By whatever means necessary, this has to stop.