The small science of Do-It-Yourself biology has enjoyed a partial resurgence of late, with one and two person basement and garage labs conducting cloning experiments and the like. Open source software is available at the click of a mouse. The question is – is this good or bad? Will these small science do-it-yourselfers produce benign results, like Thomas Edison, or malign, like Dr. Frankenstein?  

 

 

In basement labs throughout the world

Test tubes and Bunsen burners

Are boiling stuff both mixed and swirled

By fast and slower learners

There’s nothing here at least at first

But failure does not daunt them

They do not see for which they thirst

May come one day to haunt them

Who knows what evil substance lurks

In Petri dishes hidden

In basements or in attic works

Just waiting to be bidden

To spread disease and red raw death

To those quite unsuspecting

That drawing in with every breath

In trachea collecting

Are spores and horrid looking germs

Just grinning as they kill us

Let’s leave this stuff to bigger firms

Where Medicare can bill us