Is it ethical to invade the human body? There are people who do not ask such questions, but joyfully take every opportunity to become the best version of themselves.
Explorers of their own body
In the 21st century, a person knows almost everything about himself. And, as has been known since biblical times, "many knowledge - many sorrows." Understanding how limited the human body is, how weak it is under the influence of the environment, makes people try all kinds of ways to improve their own body. Actually, the biohacker movement just grew out of the desire to defeat "one's own biology".
Biohacking means completely different things: from experimenting with diets to implanting chips under the skin. But all these approaches are driven by one goal - to find the limits of the body's abilities and try to go beyond these limits. Well, or push them aside, as you like.
However, for zealous biohackers, it is often important not only the benefits for the body, but also the adherence to a certain idea. It consists in the fact that the human body and everything that makes it up is not something indestructible and sacred. On the contrary, nature has played a funny joke with us, imprisoning the human mind in a kind of bioconstructor, with which you can and should be amused. By implanting implants, editing their own genes, biohackers probably feel about the same as programmers playing with code or chemists testing a newly discovered substance. And their most likely reaction to mistakes is: "Wow, how interesting it turned out!"
Is it reasonable? In conditions when there are no white spots left on the Earth, and humanity has not yet reached other planets (except for the Moon), our body remains a large space for various discoveries. Taking into account the latest trends in the development of world science, biohackers can either turn out to be visionaries who began to modify their own bodies even before it became common practice, or become the object of persecution by those who do not like the "brave new world". In any case, they are trying to keep on the crest of science.
Punks from biology
When exactly the biohacker movement was born, no one can say for sure. In the 1990s, those who tried to "indulge" in the implantation of chips or work with genes could rather be called biopunks (from English the word punk is also translated as "renegade"). Their activities did not cause much resonance, and they had nowhere to take special achievements: nevertheless, biotechnology is an expensive and resource-intensive industry, so only people who were behind large corporations could do something cool.
Actually, in all industries and spheres of activity where big money is spinning, biohacking is firmly rooted. Take, for example, professional sports, where - and this is Openel's secret - doping is widely used. And this is exactly what allows, by interfering with the biochemical processes of the body, to expand the limits of its capabilities, forcing a person to run faster, jump higher and hit harder.
But the use of such drugs has many side effects that hit the body well. Athletes actually pay with their health for professional achievements. Their goal is not so much to get better as to get ahead of the competition, and in the world of professional sports, all means are good. Do-it-yourself biology, as biohacking is also called, is not really about that.
If taking drugs is not cheap, what about making changes in your own DNA? But just here everything has noticeably changed for the better. For example, 20 years ago, the cost of sequencing the human genome was in the tens of millions of dollars. Today, this procedure can be done for $ 1000, and the test for the most basic mutations is even cheaper. Therefore, in the 21st century, being a biohacker is no longer as expensive as it used to be.
Forgetfulness as a path to chipping
At the same time, it is no longer fashionable to change the properties of the body. A new trend is to integrate electronic devices into your body. Yes, yes, we are talking about the very chipping that scares everyone and which supposedly should happen along with the universal vaccination against coronavirus. While the townsfolk tremble in fear of the upcoming digital concentration camp, some have been chipped for several years now and feel great.
One of the pioneers of chipping was Amal Graafstra, the founder of the company with the self-explanatory name Dangerous Things. Graafstra began to "trade" in dangerous things back in 2005, when he worked in a company engaged in IT-consulting of medical institutions. And the reason for such interference in his own body was Amal's forgetfulness. He constantly left the electronic office key at home, which is why he could not be at work for the longest time.
What does it take to never forget the key? Constantly carry it with you, or rather, in yourself. Graafstra ordered parts for the chip on the Internet, which were not supposed to cause rejection in the human body, assembled the device at home and injected it under his skin using a veterinary needle. He focused on the NFC wireless data transmission technology, which is now built into most smartphones: “I immediately understood that it was the future. At that time, no one had yet mass-produced NFC chips, much less implanted them into themselves,”said Amal.
Graafstra's experiments with an unusual way of opening doors were noticed by his colleagues and spread the news about him on the web. A chipped man of such fame was only happy, giving advice to all DIY biohackers and gathering around him those who wanted to become "cyborgs at minimum salaries." And in 2013, Amal created his own company to monetize his personal experience.
Amal began to work in accordance with the precepts of biopanks: he created a company in a garage with a small authorized capital (only 12 thousand dollars). But already in the next year, his revenue amounted to 100 thousand at once! To implant the chips, the founder of Dangerous Things recommends contacting piercers - they say, who, if not them, ate the dog on subcutaneous implants.
By the way, an important note: it is tacitly accepted in biohacker communities to despise people who undergo electronic implantation procedures in specialized clinics. Everything should be hardcore: the chip is implanted either independently or with the help of a friend, neighbor, or non-core specialist; and going to a medical facility for such is bad taste.
Cheap and futuristic
By the way, an implantable chip is not such an expensive purchase. The cost of goods on the Dangerous Things website starts from hundreds of dollars. A Cyborg Transformation Kit consisting of several chips can be purchased at a discounted price for only 49 dollars (less than 3,500 rubles). There you can also buy everything for surgical interventions (needles, scalpels, pain relievers) and various devices for configuring and programming chips.
The shelf life of devices offered by Graafstra is 30 years. That is, if you decide to implant a chip in your middle age, then this is, consider, for life. The most popular locations for devices on the body are between the thumb and forefinger, or on the arm, just above the wrist.
Why is all this needed? As Amal himself says, the main purpose of chipping is to hide encrypted data where attackers cannot get it. Technically, of course, you can attack a person with a chip and cut out the device from under his skin - but, you must admit, a much smaller number of people will go to this than to the banal theft of a card from their pocket.
But there's no doubt that the majority of Dangerous Things customers are driven by healthy (or not so) curiosity and some degree of disillusionment with the 21st century. The very future that drew cult sci-fi films - "Blade Runner", "Minority Report", "The Matrix" - never happened. Implanting a chip under your skin is an attempt to at least partially make it a reality.
Who are grinders
Biohacking is a rather variegated field, and there is even a classification system for biohackers to distinguish among them those who are engaged in radically different things. Those who are not afraid and do not hesitate to conduct experiments on themselves are called grinders.
One of the most famous grinders is Gabriel Lisina. He is known primarily for a high-profile project to create a "pirated copy" of one of the most expensive officially approved drugs in the world - Glybera. This drug is used to treat a rare genetic dysfunction called protein lipase deficiency. One injection costs a million dollars. And Lisina and several colleagues in the biohacking workshop created an analogue that is more than 100 times cheaper and costs only seven thousand dollars.
But in the context of this article, Lisina's other exploits are much more interesting. For example, an attempt by a biohacker to turn his eyes into thermal imagers. Together with the physician Jeffrey Tibbets, Lisina instilled a mixture of chlorin E-6 with insulin, dimethyl sulfoxide and saline into his pupils. The main active ingredient of this mix, the same chlorin E-6, is an analogue of the photosynthetic plant pigment chlorophyll, which is used to treat nyctalopia, a violation of the ability to see in the dark.
Two hours after the injection of chlorin, Lisin was able to read signs (letters, numbers, figures) in the dark that were not seen by people invited to participate in the experiment. Also, the biohacker could determine with absolute accuracy in the dark among the trees the location of other people, while the rest of the subjects succeeded only in a third of the cases. The next morning, Lisina's vision returned to normal, and for 20 days after the experiment, he did not notice any side effects.
It would seem that the experiment is not as "hardcore" as most experiments with implantation of chips - but just look at his eyes! Not to mention the fact that a full guarantee of the return of vision to a normal state was not given. This experiment perfectly illustrates the attitude of biohackers to their own body: for them, it is primarily a field for experiments.
One of the most famous grinders is the British Kevin Warwick, the man who officially became the first cyborg on Earth. Back in 1998, Warwick implanted a simple RFID chip under his skin, with the help of which he was able to implement individual elements of the “smart home” concept: open and close doors, and remotely turn on the lights.
And in 2002, Warwick decided on a more complex experiment on himself: a rather complex implant was implanted into his left arm, connected to the median nerve of the left arm. The implant was supposed to transmit signals from the nervous system to the computer and store them there. To make the experiment more spectacular, the Briton created a special mechanical arm that worked synchronously with his real hand. When Warwick wiggled his fingers, neural impulses went from his brain to the implant, which were then converted into electrical signals and transmitted to the computer, and the mechanical hand, depending on the type of signals, moved each time just like a real one.
A similar device was implanted under the skin of his wife Irina: Kevin planned to establish cyber communication with his wife, transmitting his thoughts to her through a computer. Nothing worked, but Warwick got his dose of interest from the media and was able to tell all of humanity why he decided on such experiments on himself. According to the scientist, very soon artificial intelligence and robots will become so smart that they will push people into secondary roles: "Ordinary people will become absolutely uncompetitive in comparison with cyborgs, who will survive them from their offices." To compete with their own creations, a person will have to digitalize to the maximum.
Biohacking for medical reasons
Someone turns themselves into a cyborg out of pure interest, and someone is forced to do this by life itself: for example, 47-year-old Canadian Rob Spence. As a schoolboy, Spence played with his grandfather's gun - and lost one eye due to the strong recoil. On the one hand, it is a very sad story, on the other - who knows, if the guy were not disabled, he would be known all over the world now?
Spence walked with a bandage on one eye for a long time, and in his mid-40s he decided to have an operation, but the usual implant quickly bored the Canadian. He decided to equip himself with something more interesting - for example, a cyber eye. Conceived - done: Spence, who had trained as a director by that time, implanted a camera in his eyeball and turned into "Glasborg" (this is how you can translate into Russian the term Eyeborg, which the man calls his project: he combined the English words eye and cyborg). By the way, he found inspiration in the 1970s sci-fi series "The Six Million Dollar Man": there the hero also had a bionic eye instead of the usual one.
The new eyeball for Spence was designed by eye prosthetics specialist Phil Bowen. And former MIT and SpaceX employee Costa Grammatis created a miniature device that would fit into the void in Rob's skull. To understand the scale of the problem: the dimensions of the chamber should not exceed nine millimeters in thickness, 30 millimeters in length and 28 millimeters in height. Grammatis solved it wonderfully, fitting not only a camera, but also a battery with a signal transmitter to third-party devices, as well as a software board for image processing in place of the eyeball.
Martin Ling of the University of Edinburgh helped design the architecture of the entire system. Ling designed a special receiver that receives the signal from the implant and transmits it to a laptop, tablet, smartphone, or even directly to a projector. But the red LED-lamp, signaling that the camera is on and referring to the hero of the movie "The Terminator", was invented all together. The thing is simple, and the effect is amazing. “Once I ran into a cyclist on the street, who immediately attacked me with abuse for having prevented him from passing. I got angry and started yelling back, but I forgot that the camera was on and I looked like an angry cyborg. In general, the enemy fled in horror, the victory of "Skynet" - says Spence.
Rob and his associates barely met the project budget. But the authoritative edition of Time immediately included Eyeborg in the list of the main inventions of the year, and a number of large Internet portals and magazines published their articles about a man with a camera instead of an eye. Also, a line of clients lined up for Spence: using his camera, the cyber director shot films and videos for Ford and a number of computer game developers.
Brain prosthesis as an unattainable dream
Of course, Spence's experience is very interesting, but eye prosthetics itself is not a new technology. Is it possible to make a brain prosthesis - or at least part of it? Some experts are completely sure that nothing will work in this area. “The brain is perhaps the only organ of the body for which there is no theoretical or experimental basis for complete prosthetics,” says Professor Alexander Kaplan, head of one of the laboratories at the Faculty of Biology of Lomonosov Moscow State University. “However, this does not close the prospect of creating prostheses, because the brain is, albeit an extremely complex, but rather structured information and analytical device.”As an analogy to illustrate his words, Kaplan cites a computer: a new central processor from scrap materials is unlikely to be assembled for him, but a USB port is quite possible.
Perhaps the first known attempt to create a prosthesis for some part of the brain was the work of the American neurologist Theodore Berger, carried out in 2003. Using dozens of electrodes, Berger created a mid-hippocampus prosthesis for rats. Using these electrodes, electrical activity was removed from the rodents, and the corresponding part of the nervous system was also stimulated. Damage to the hippocampus led to the fact that the animal forgot the previously learned information about which of the feeders the delicacy was in. However, electrical stimulation restored these memories.
They started with rats, continued with humans: the very next year, 25-year-old Matthew Neigl, a former football player, became the first person in the world with a brain implant. In 2001, Matthew got involved in a street fight and, having received a spinal cord injury in the process, remained hopelessly paralyzed. The ex-athlete had nothing to lose, so Nagle agreed to participate in the experiment. The paralyzed man was implanted in the brain with BrainGate chips developed by Cyberkinetics Technology.
After such an operation, Nagle was able to control the cursor on the computer screen, simply imagining how he moved his hands. He read mail, played simple video games, wiggled an electromechanical hand, and even drew a few things. Of course, the full functionality of Nagle's body was not returned, but a lot was achieved.
How did Brain Gate work? The signals that form in the brain are transmitted through a sensor - a four-by-four millimeter square plate with hundreds of tiny electrodes. They are small millimeter metal needles that penetrate directly into the cerebral cortex.
This sensor contacts the motor cortex responsible for movement of the left hand and connects to a connector attached to a hole in the skull. When you try to make some kind of movement, an electrical impulse arises in the motor zone, which is transmitted through the implanted electrodes to the computer.
When you need to start an experiment and use some kind of external device, the technician plugs in the cable leading to the computer. If, during the connection, Matt tries to imagine the movement of his own hand, then the sensor "overhears" the signals of motor neurons that are activated at that moment, and transmitted them to the connected device, such as a monitor or a robotic prosthesis.
We would like to write that everything was fine with Nagle and he gradually regained more and more skills, but the reality is cruel. After some time, the experiment with BrainGate had to be stopped. A few months after the implantation of the neuroimplant, for some reason, he became worse at recognizing signals. What exactly was the matter - the scientists could not understand. In addition, the device operated through a wire that passed into the subject's skull, increasing the risk of infection. Already in 2006, all neuroimplants from Nagle's head were removed, and a year later he died. From infection.
Down and Out trouble started
Nevertheless, the experiment with Nagle was not the last for Cyberkinetics Technology. In 2012, the next generation of BrainGate2 chips was tested on two patients with stem stroke. A woman named Katie and a man named Bob were unable to move any limbs and also lost their ability to speak.
Devices with hundreds of ultra-thin electrodes were implanted into the brains of the subjects, which read the activity of the brain and recognized the activity of neurons in its individual regions. Thanks to this, Bob and Katie were able to use their thoughts to control mechanical arm prostheses. So, the woman was even able to bring a glass of coffee with a straw to her lips and sip a little.
A later experiment with BrainGate2 involved three people completely paralyzed from the neck down. The implantation of electrodes into the area of the motor cortex of the brain allowed them to work on a tablet: to type text, search for data on the Internet, and play the digital piano. Unfortunately, like the first version of the chips, BrainGate2 is a very cumbersome system and requires a wire connection: but it is compatible with ordinary tablets and computers.
Here, of course, the question arises: can such experiments be classified as biohacking? Still, we are talking about people with serious problems who cannot fully control their own bodies, and therefore are not able to "hack" it. And the implantation of chips does not take place in a "do it yourself" mode, but in research institutes or clinics, under the guidance of specialists.
Nevertheless, we would venture to say that such scientific works are undoubtedly important for biohacking. New discoveries enable biohackers to understand where to go next and create new "miracles in garages".
The person who hears colors
Talking about people with implants in the brain, one cannot fail to mention the most striking example of a person with an implant - Nile Harbisson. This man was born with congenital achromatopsia: he could only distinguish shades of gray. Nevertheless, even with such a defect, Harbisson managed to graduate from the Institute of Fine Arts and become an artist (although he had to seek permission not to use different colors in his works).
Until the age of 19, Harbisson saw the world like in black and white cinema, but then he met with the American Adam Montadon. It was at the Dartington College of Art in Britain, where Montadon lectured on cybernetics and mentioned, in particular, his experiments in translating the frequencies of light into the frequencies of sound. Harbisson, who was studying the basics of composition at Dartington at the time, realized that this was a chance.
After the lecture, Harbisson met Montadon and offered himself to him as an object for experiments. Four holes were drilled in Harbisson's skull, where four implant chips were inserted. They perceive color fluctuations, process and translate them into sound, and can also receive data via the Internet. A special antenna protrudes from the back of Neal's head, immediately distinguishing him from the crowd.
Antenna sensor sends a signal to the chip. He, in turn, converts vibration into sound, which the Nile hears inside himself. Each of the primary colors has its own note. Fa is red, salt is yellow, la is green, si is turquoise, do is blue, re is purple, mi is pink. Thanks to this, Harbisson, although he did not begin to see colors in the sense of the word in which we see them, can hear them.
Of course, things didn't go so smoothly. What Neil cannot imagine his life without today, at first was simply a torment for the guy. For two months after the operation, he suffered from headaches, melodies sounded in his head all day long, which it was no longer possible to turn off. Harbisson now distinguished thousands of different shades and could see things that an ordinary person cannot perceive with the naked eye, for example, infrared and ultraviolet spectra.
“At the very beginning, it was a huge structure, I carried a five-kilogram computer on my back, from it a cable and headphones. I had to charge myself for five to six hours a day from the outlet,”says the guy with the antenna. Of course, since then everything has changed for the better: for example, Harbisson no longer needs to charge, he just uses batteries, which last for several days.
The world now for Nile is not at all what it was before: each face for him is a small piece of music, and a trip to the museum is a whole symphony. Steve Wozniak's eyes make a very clear sound, Pamela Anderson's face sounds predominantly in B major, and Robert De Niro has many shades of red on his lips - this is how Harbisson talks about his acquaintances with various popular personalities. Try to imagine this!
Chipped against
If overseas the term "biohacking" has taken root for itself, in Russia this still looks exotic. Nevertheless, we already have those who readily and of their own free will chipped. For example, Evgeny Chereshnev, who, being an employee of Kaspersky Lab, implanted an NFC chip under his skin.
“I am very worried about the synergy between a living organism and a computer that is almost inevitable in the future - bionics as a direction has enormous potential. The problem is that many modern technologies, unfortunately, are being developed with a very mediocre study of security issues, - said Chereshnev in an interview. - By my personal example, I want to understand not only the delights of technology, but also its pitfalls, vulnerabilities, to figure out how and what attackers might want to steal or damage. I need this in order to foresee protection options in advance and help develop it. I would not want my children to be victims of bionic cybercriminals."
By the way, if you remember, we said above that science fiction films are a source of inspiration for many biohackers. In the case of Chereshnev, literature played a role. First of all, Eugene downloaded onto his chip the book of one of the patriarchs of science fiction Philip Dick - "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
In addition to books, Chereshnev copied various encrypted information into his hand. For example, an electronic key to a hotel or bank account numbers. The main goal of the biohacker was to understand how convenient it is in the modern world to live for a person with a chip implanted under his skin. “So far, everything, to put it mildly, is far from ideal,” Eugene summed up in 2015.
Subsequently, Chereshnev's opinion about chipping changed a lot. In 2017, he spoke out sharply against the chipping procedure, arguing that it would lead humanity to digital slavery: “Understand, it’s not the chip. I am against chipping - precisely because I managed not only to assume, but to prove that the technology is unsafe at this stage - user data can be easily stolen, and the person himself can be profiled and manipulated by his behavior on the Web - purchasing, consumer, content, etc. Further".
The main problem of the chip, according to Chereshnev, lies precisely in the fact that all data and human actions will be tied to the same device. The lack of encryption and normal protection will make it absolutely defenseless both against cybercriminals and against the state, which will be able to dispose of information at any time and at its discretion.
In fact, Chereshnev does not completely reject the idea of the chip and even suggests that someday he will be able to recommend the implantation of the chip to one of his closest relatives. But this is definitely not going to happen as long as giant corporations like Google and Apple are in control of the manufacture and distribution of chips.
Digital immortality
Until chipping has become commonplace, many biohacking fans are already thinking about the next stage of evolution - digital immortality. Here we are already talking about things on a larger scale than miniature chips: correcting genes, replaceable organs and, ultimately, recording a person's personality on digital media. We are still far from the latter, although some visionaries are already making plans for the future.
For example, Russian businessman Dmitry Itskov promises digital immortality to potential clients of his company Immortal.me by 2045. By that time, the human mind can be transferred into a robot avatar. Itskov himself intends to create an "Electronic Corporation of Immortality", in which volunteers will work for e-currency and a chance for eternal digital life.
To tell the truth, it all looks a little like a new "MMM", but Itskov approached the matter seriously. The businessman attracted a number of scientists to his social movement called "Russia-2045" (in particular, Doctor of Biological Sciences Alexander Frolov and Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Vitaly Dunin-Barkovsky).
Members of the movement have already developed a generalized plan to create an artificial body for the "implantation" of the mind. There are four concepts of avatars at once: a remotely controlled anthropomorphic robot, an artificial body for a human brain transplant, a body made of nanorobots and a hologram body. Well, the first step has already been taken - there are only 25 years left to live to see the implementation of these plans.
The main question that arises here is very similar to what Yevgeny Chereshnev voiced in his later interviews. If large corporations own the rights to record digital avatars and store personal information, will they manage it ethically? It is quite possible that an army of digital clones will be created on the basis of the personal characteristics of some person at the whim of some rich man. Or images of deceased people are used in personalized ads.
It may turn out that the human brain is ultimately too complicated to copy and transfer to digital media, which means that the question of the ethics of handling such information will never arise. But, as the history of mankind shows, many tasks that were considered impossible were eventually solved. Consequently, the phrase "digital dictatorship" can take on a new meaning, more sinister than ever.
The bright goal of biohackers
What is the general goal of biohackers? They can be considered as one of the branches of the concept of transhumanism. This is a philosophical trend, which is based on the improvement of the physical, mental and moral qualities of a person through technological progress. Transhumanists believe that technical developments and innovations will save humanity from disease and most problems, turning it into a community of some kind of superhumans.
Transhumanists include not only those who implant chips in themselves. The people developing the Covid-19 vaccine are also a kind of transhumanists - after all, what is an effective vaccine if not a victory over biology? Some are trying to change the work of their own genome by introducing viral vectors into the body with activators of certain genes. The latter was seen as a way to prolong a healthy and fulfilling human life. Yes, what the hell is not joking - maybe immortality can be achieved!
“No matter how diverse the ideas of transhumanism are, they can be divided into two streams,” explains Alexander Kaplan. - The first direction implies that technologies and scientific achievements can and should be used to restore, adjust and maintain the natural resources of the body up to replacing worn-out organs with artificial ones. The second direction, which arose already in the era of scientific and technological progress, is based on the belief in the possibility of changing the very biological nature of man - up to the transfer of his mental world to silicon carriers and directed changes in the genome. As conceived by the authors of this movement, in this way it is possible to provide a person with immortality."
Is “digital immortality” feasible for a representative of the human race? Kaplan himself believes that this is nothing more than a genre of science fiction. However, what do biohackers do in their lives? Yes, they embody what they once saw in a movie or read in a book into reality. And it doesn't matter that those who today only write down their bank card details will never see the transformation of a person into a cyborg. Let progress move in small steps: the main thing is to walk, and not to argue about why after a few steps we will run into a dead end.
The opinion of psychologists
Of course, most biohackers pursue quite good goals. At least, they declare. To live longer, to do more, to suffer less - as they say, "for all the good and against all the bad." But is such a desire to improve oneself adequate from the point of view of psychology?
Yes, someone improves himself out of interest in knowing all aspects of life - someone, but obviously not all. Biohacking often grows out of neurosis, which in turn stems from the cult of productivity. It is not for nothing that most biohackers live and work in Silicon Valley, where startups appear and die every month. If you want to live, be competitive, know how to spin, work 25 hours a day!
“We live in a culture where optimality is highly valued,” says clinical psychologist Niketa Kumar. Most of Niketa's clients are young businessmen and programmers from Silicon Valley, so she knows what she is talking about: "Biohacking [in this culture] is positioned as a way to gain a competitive advantage, and performance as an object of worship." Based on this, biohacking can be viewed as a kind of neurosis, a manifestation of rejection of one's own body and one's own physiology.
“The striving for constant and non-stop self-improvement, immortality, omnipotence, invulnerability and ideality, which is so possible today thanks to new information, medical and biotechnologies, is as attractive as it is insidious,” psychotherapist Ekaterina Shapovalova comments on biohackers' aspirations. - Behind the ideal I always hides in the depths of the soul a felt insignificant I. This is the whole essence of narcissism: total unhappiness from the perceived own insignificance and worthlessness, ordinariness leads in a protective way to a total striving for ideality."
Shapovalova's words were not spoken about cyborg people, but about a biohacker of a different "sort" - Sergei Fage, who spent 200 thousand dollars on improving himself, optimizing his diet, daily routine and consuming many dietary supplements and pills. However, what the psychotherapist said can be extrapolated to other self-enhancers. What, if not the desire to escape from one's own “insignificant self,” motivates biohackers?