Biohacking Wellness: The Wild, Wild West of Biohacking

By Marc Cohen, MD

Here is a brief summary of the Wellness Trend Report I’ve just written on the Wild Wild West of Biohacking for the Global Wellness Summit Future Trends Report 2023

Biohacking is the attempt to hack biology, in order to defy entropy, and become superhuman.

Biohacking lies at an interface where science meets science fiction, and medicine meets media-hype, and biohacking is now moving from a Do-It-Yourself, home-hobbyist pursuit, to the cutting-edge of healthcare and big tech.

However, just as computer hackers bypass security systems, biohackers act without oversight from established authorities. Biohacking is therefore controversial and raises legal, ethical, and existential issues that are far from being resolved.

Now, biohacking is not new. Our ancestors were masterful biohackers and ancient biohacks such as yoga, martial arts, acupuncture, and plant medicines have been passed down through the ages through cultural, religious and medical traditions.

While there are many no-tech or low-tech hacks, advanced technologies are now expanding our ability to hack biology and we’re racing towards a merging of human and machines.

Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Brain Computer Interfaces, wearable sensors, and sensor-less sensing, can seamlessly hack our information, while technologies such as CRISPR, Next Generation Sequencing, probiotics, nanobots and ‘xenobots’, enable ‘deep biohacks’ that manipulate the molecular and cellular building blocks of life.

Biohackers can also use cloud-computing, the blockchain and sharing platforms to seamlessly record, share and compare their data.

The technology that is coming is simply staggering and biohacking is indeed giving us superhuman powers. We are heading into an exciting world where:

AI-enabled Apps, can instantly and invisibly assess our mental and physical state and provide up-to-date medical information at virtually no cost.

Where AI-powered real-time biofeedback can manipulate all our sensory inputs and personalise experiences that heal our mind and body and expand our mental and physical capacity.

Where nanobots, xenobots and probiotics patrol our inner world, repair damaged tissue, and remove toxic debris, as well as cleanse our outer world and detoxify our air, soil and oceans.

Where we can appear younger, regenerate tissues, organs or limbs, and even sprout new appendages such as feathers, fur, scales or wings.

Where everyone has access to the world’s healing traditions including adaptogens that build resilience, nootropics that enhance cognition, and entheogens that expand spiritual awareness; and

A world where we can link our minds with AI to co-create a global consciousness or ‘meta-intelligence’.

This is all coming within the next decade. We are hacking biology to the point where we can do and be almost anything, and there are people alive today who may approach immortality.

In such a world, we need to ask ourselves what do we want to do and be?  

And perhaps more importantly, we need to ask if we can hack our moral and ethical nature along with our physical capacities, and steer technology towards a world of wellness.

It sure beats the alternatives  . . .

Click below to access the full Global Wellness Summit Future Trends Report, which includes my report on the Wild Wild West of Biohacking along with 11 other future wellness trends.