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Television Biohackers: A chilling series exploring the downside to genome experimentation

Dennis Broe recommends a drama on the pursuit of profit at the expense of human life

THERE seems to be no questioning technological imperatives such as 5G. It will greatly increase download speeds, allowing increased leisure time and will further global connectivity.

Likewise, in genetics, the cracking of the DNA and RNA codes — which may enable current Covid-19 stimulators to allow the body to suppress the virus without a dangerous ingestion of the virus itself — may eventually lead to promoting a generalised immunity from many diseases.

What could possibly go wrong? Well, for a start, 5G may lead to increased corporate surveillance and monitoring of connected devices, widespread unemployment and as yet unknown safety issues.

And in the realm of genetic algorithms, the German series Biohackers on Netflix sounds the alarm and questions how technological prowess is being implemented and controlled in the area of genomes and the human body.

The simplicity of Biohackers, which begins with a highly dramatic bio attack on a train and then flashes back to explain how the young female student Mia got there and why she is not susceptible to the attack, works in its favour.

The action shifts to the Bavarian campus of the University of Freiburg, the German centre of all manner of genetic engineering experimentation.

Similar to the early rough-and-tumble cyberpunks of the internet, students there are a band of renegades working on their own socially uplifting mutations. They’re part of a do-it-yourself biology known as the biotechnological social movement, aka bio or wetware hacking.

Mia’s roommates — botanist Chen Lu, monied beauty queen Lotta and nerd seed experimenter Ole — form an international group of scientific Scooby Doos who come to her rescue as she is first taken under the wing of the university’s star biologist Dr Tanya Lorenz and then threatened by her, after she and her friends expose the ruthlessness of their professor’s experiments to perfect a subject immune to disease.

Mia’s futon and her rumpled student quarters are contrasted to the corporate-funded Dr. Lorenz’s elaborate multistoried, impeccably furnished and ordered home in the Bavarian forest, complete with lab in the basement.

As with 5G, Dr Lorenz issues a warning that Germany — which has lost out and is behind in mastery of the digital sphere — must conquer the realm of biotechnology to compensate.

A salient reference, given that the German car industry, the heart of European manufacturing, is now under attack by the tech wizards of Silicon Valley who see the smart, and eventually driverless, car as replacing traditional ones.

Elon Musk this year invaded Germany and opened a plant attempting to take advantage of native German modes of working to construct his Tesla electric car.

In Biohackers, Dr Lorenz is revealed to be experimenting on human subjects. A latter-day Dr Mengele, she leaves a murderous trail behind her and her actions recall earlier experiments by the Nazis, who also claimed to be benefiting humanity. Lorenz, as Mia points out, marks her subjects with a bar code, just as the Nazis burnt prison numbers into their subjects’ flesh.

It’s a reminder that the Bavarian countryside and its dark forests hatched Hitler in his first coup attempt and that Freiburg University was where philosopher Martin Heidegger, in his moment of embracing national socialism, accepted an appointment as head of the university until his gradual disgust with the movement resulted in his resignation.

In Biohackers’ second season, the conspiracy to hide the experimentation reaches a national level and it does not shy away from the subject of chemical and biological warfare. Yet instead of the usual hackneyed usual and insane “terrorist,” the terror here is far better organised.

It’s financed not by rogue fanatics but by a corporate-medical ethos which values profit above human life.

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