Emerging and complex, biohacking is a practice that requires collective pondering
Dealing with emerging and thus often not scientifically backed techniques, biohacking could be both a means of emancipation and a trap when coopted by charlatans
Popularized in the United States in 2005, the biohacker movement is associated with the experimentation of biomedical technologies outside the scientific and corporate contexts. It has both scientific and political concerns as followers are concerned about power relations established between medical institutions (both corporate and public) and how patients might be submitted to decisions that, in face of their technical unfamiliarity, could be prejudicial.
I previously wrote about Xenofeminism, this new wave of feminism that is also associated with biohacking where it provides women technical and medical support. In the manifesto written by Helen Hester in 2018, it is mentioned how, in the 1970s, the American self help movement incentivized a DIY attitude among women who, at the time, were submitted to procedures such as sterilization and hysterectomy without their consent.
In response to that, women created Del-Em (a uterine suction method used to remove menstrual material) and speculum for self-exam and collection of material for diagnostics. In a similar way, contemporary collectives such as Gynepunk have been developing open code hardware for self-diagnosis and self-care, while other activists such as Ryan Hammond were, in 2015, producing hormones for people in gender transition who had a hard time with American healthcare.
In Brazil, biohacking is both an experimental and subcultural movement as it has acquired a more commercial approach, as I described here. It is not so different from what they have in the United States, with the dissemination of startups focused on nootropics or in mobile apps to monitor intermittent fasting.
People like Ben Greenfield are known specifically for experimenting with their own bodies and also selling content to guide those who want to follow their steps. Still, how is it possible to make a distinction between biohacking as a resistance movement that experiments with emerging technologies (therefore not completely scientifically backed) and a niche market full of charlatans that sell “miraculous” solutions to improve humanity?
I talked with Juliano Sanches about this. As a PhD candidate in the Department of Scientific and Technological Politics in the State University of Campinas, he explained to me that, since biohacking is an emerging movement, there are many questions that are not completely defined yet. One of them is, for instance, the ambiguity between biohackers and artists.
Juliano mentions Neil Harbisson, a Spanish artist that presents himself as a cyborg but whom the Brazilian researcher considers to be a biohacker. According to Juliano, the development of the antenna implanted in Harbisson’s skull, which is able to translate colors into sounds transmitted directly into his brain, is a countercultural attitude that has the same transgressive appeal of a hacker in the context of information technology and the punk in the artistic context — thus the existence of the terms biohacker and biopunk.
Juliano explains that “the way biohackers build their identity in relation to their body evokes social, political, historical, and cultural meanings that, besides contestatory, cannot be reproduced only in the scientific context or removed from its particular context”. As an example, he mentions body modification, a practice that is more than scientific, but also aesthetic, social, cultural, and political.
Juliano mentions Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” (1985) as the harbinger of this discussion, while the “Biopunk manifesto”, published in 2010 by Meredith Patterson, tries to present the biohacking movement as a critic of the hegemonic models of the body. I wrote a bit about this relation between biohacking and body art previously, by the way.
One way to make the movement more known and therefore more developed is to ask for more flexibilization to the access of biomedical technologies, as well as substances such as cannabidiol and psychobilin. In Brazil, amateur groups and researchers have been organizing discussions and activities to develop more scientific content. “We must work on the development of public policies focused on biohacking and how these measures should be taken with the participation of a variety of actors, such as social organizations and startup representatives”, recommends Juliano.
The researcher says that one way to establish this connection between the State and biohacking is through tax rebates to patients who enroll in courses or practice integrative medicine, something that is already happening in the Netherlands: “As citizens generate less expenses to the government, for example, when requiring treatment for diabetes from the public healthcare, the State can benefit from a resource management perspective.” But at what point the use (and stimulation) of integrative medicine is something desirable, when we have practices in this area that do not have enough scientific comprobation about their efficacy? And how much of this stimulation is not actually a transfer of the State’s responsibility to the individual?
As discussed in an article published at Questão de Ciência, there is not really a difference between the concept of integrative medicine and alternative medicine:
This is due to the fact that integrative and complementary practices are simply the same old “alternative practices”, which have no scientific support. From the 29 practices offered by the Brazilian public healthcare (including apitherapy, family constellation, bioenergetic, geotherapy, chromotherapy, homeopathy, florals etc), only yoga, meditation, and phytotherapy could be considered scientifically backed practices; the first one as a physical activity, the second as a method for stress mitigation, and the third for specific cases of plants that were really submitted to adequate clinical tests. The remaining ones either have not enough comprobation or, such as the case for homeopathy, were already rejected by the scientific method as inefficient.
Besides, many of these practices associated with integrative medicine are, actually, the same ones practiced by alternative medicine, but they are rebranded with other names that “disguise” their origin. It is in this crossfire that we also find the dilemma about what is really fake and inefficient and what is that which simply doesn’t have enough scientific comprobation for being an emergent area.
The regulamentation of therapeutic practices could be one way to point out what is recommended and functional, but, as mentioned before, even the Brazilian public healthcare (SUS) offers therapies that were already rejected by scientific method. For Juliano, the regulamentation of biohacking goes against the emancipatory spirit of the movement. Also, whenever something is taken as forbidden, the more people feel attracted to do it. “This discussion is much more about the non-authorized way of biomedical technologies by biohackers. Overall, there is more concern about how research on the so-called technologies for cognitive enhancement are being financed by military agencies”, he explains.
In other words, whether they are regulated or not, these techniques are still being used in military projects that could be creating the so-called “super soldiers”. What biohackers stress is how an average person, outside of the military context, can also have access to the same resources, so that they can develop something much more interesting and beneficial to humanity than a martial weapon. In both cases, it is the ethics that come as the hard, but inevitable, question to be made. That’s exactly why Juliano supports more research about the topic, with the participation of multiple actors such as universities, startups, medical professionals and biohacker spaces.
The admonition though is to remember that there are biohackers producing their own insulin for survival in face of healthcare inefficiency. But with these same efforts, it is also possible to produce the substance 98% cheaper. Biohacking is therefore not (only) a survival strategy, but a space for experimentation that goes beyond the establishment.
While these “underground” or even “illegal” practices could lead to positive achievements to society, they can also be used as a subterfuge for the responsibilities originally held by the State towards citizens. In a broader sense, biohacking is another means to disseminate scientific knowledge to people, so that they can make informed decisions about their own health. On the other hand, it is also important that people understand that common habits such as drinking tea or coffee is already a means to “hack” your body with substances, such as caffeine, to inhibit sleepiness.
There are several “degrees” in biohacking and this is where we reach the point of enhancing something that is already functional, that is, proposing something that is not therapeutic but rather an “enhancement”, thus falling prey to risky eugenic discourses. For Juliano, this is something to be discussed from the perspective of bioethics, hacker ethics, neuroethics and the use of technologies in an unauthorized way. To solve this problem, it is necessary that all societies join the conversation, thus the importance of making biohacking a more accessible and popular practice.
Disclaimer: This is the translation of an article originally published at Tilt UOL.
Did you enjoy the post? Would you like to Buy me a coffee? :)
