I want to create a coronavirus vaccine in my kitchen
because I can.
Because it's beautiful and cool,
but, like, you can't say that shit.
- Tell me about that.
- Alright, but,
just get ready to have your YouTube channel
receive a strike against it.
Hey, what's up?
It's nice to fucking meet you.
I'm Josiah.
I'm a biohacker,
and I'm a heretic because,
I believe everybody should have the right
to do to their body what they wish.
- Take one. Mark.
- Radicals, dissidents, rebels and misfits.
You can call them whatever you like.
But, what if they're right?
- My name is Mad Dog. No.
My name is Josiah Zayner.
I'm a former NASA scientist,
and I have a PhD in biophysics
from the University of Chicago.
I'm founder and CEO of The ODIN, a biotech company.
We're talking about bodily autonomy.
That people who are suffering and dying of diseases
that are untreatable should have the right
to inject themselves or test whatever drug they want.
People who want to genetically modify themselves
to grow another arm or tail,
should have the right to be able to do that.
I don't want to be a heretic.
I don't want to be controversial.
I don't want to be interrogated by government organizations.
I want people to just accept what I do.
That people have the right to body autonomy.
People have the right to experiment
with science and genetic engineering.
I've experimented on myself in countless ways,
which has got me tracked down and harassed
by governments and tech companies.
To have a government, like
the German government come after you,
I was so fucking scared.
Then I had the FDA come after me,
'cause I genetically engineered some yeast against some FDA regulation.
against some FDA regulation.
Blah, blah, blah.
Even had run-ins with the FBI.
- Tell me about creating a coronavirus vaccination.
- Yeah. I mean,
you better be ready to have this video taken down, though.
You know.
It was, like, May 2020.
We're talking pretty early pandemic, right?
There was a paper that came out
that the researchers used a DNA-based coronavirus
vaccine in macaques, which are a non-human primate.
And they saw really amazing results.
And I thought, 'Well, fuck it,
I want to see if it works.
I'm going to have it manufactured
and test it on myself.'
So me and two of my friends,
we decided to do a little clinical trial.
We went through it step-by-step,
showing everybody, like,
if you wanted to create and test a vaccine,
this is how you do it.
After that happened,
we just got totally deplatformed.
And it was kind of crazy, because like,
I wasn't telling anybody
to take this vaccine or like, I wasn't selling the vaccine.
I was just showing people
what was possible with genetic engineering
and biomedical technology right now.
These things are crazy, like, technology,
especially biotechnology is moving forward fast.
You know, if I can create a fucking coronavirus vaccine
in my kitchen,
the things that we're capable of are immense.
- What are the questions you wish people asked you?
- Why do you care so much?
- It's a good question.
- I just thought of it right now.
- In my life,
I have experienced
a lot of situations when
I felt like everybody had given up on me.
I had nobody to help me.
And that's what happens so much.
Everybody always says, you know,
'giving people access
to technology and information like this,
people are just going to do dumb shit
and end up hurting themselves.’
And I don't, I don't disagree with that.
But people are also going to do fucking beautiful things.
I think it'll be a beautiful world.
- I think it's an easy sell
when you talk about terminal illnesses.
- You think it would be an easy sell when I talk about
terminal illnesses to people
and tell them, you know,
like, 'this person's dying and they need help.
They should be able to do
whatever they want to try and cure or treat their illness.'
That seems like anybody would agree with that.
Right?
The problem is, is that people don't.
If you ever sat there
across from somebody
and had to look them in the eyes and hold their hands
while they told you that they have six months to live
and they're looking for anything, anything.
But the fact that you can't even try,
if you're not moved by that, what else is there?
- What are some of the arguments you encounter?
- They could end up hurt.
They could end up suffering more
than they're currently suffering.
Nobody's asking these people whether it matters to them.
I think that's the problem.
I worked with a lot of people who had lung cancer,
and lung cancer's brutal.
Nobody expects to live long.
We developed this DIY guide on how somebody
with a specific type of lung cancer,
with a specific mutation
could use this peptide that was used
in this published scientific paper.
How they can order it themselves.
A step-by-step guide.
I had this friend.
She had this type of lung cancer,
and she had the peptide.
She never injected it.
Maybe it wouldn't have worked.
It probably wouldn't have worked.
But like, why didn't you at least fucking try?
And I think, like, people aren't ready for everything.
And, like, society's not ready for everything sometimes.
The data is there, the information's there,
and it's all legit.
And that's sometimes hard to get over.