Operation Fuzzball

Hello,

I am a member of the furry fandom with a particular interest in the research and creation of an open-source method to quickly biologically and physically via a genetic medium, transform an adult human into a hybrid of human and animal, with an 'anthropomorphic animal' appearance (or zoomorphic human, or 'furry' or 'anthro') for the benefit of the ability of all people to achieve Freedom Of Form (the idea being that such research would have other Freedom Of Form applications). Once I have researched enough into this and developed the method in a way which works flawlessly in simulations, I intend to use it on myself and for many of my interested friends to be able to use it on themselves too (all therefore self-experimentation). I intend to ensure the method in question is completely opened up to be available to all on the internet. However, due to the likely contentions surrounding the issue, I will be keeping the development stages under wraps if possible. However, at the moment I am in a call centre job and have very limited funds.

I would therefore like to know if there is anyone here who can point me to someone willing to sponsor such an undertaking who is not connected to a governmental or military organisation? With such sponsorship I would be able to cover living costs whilst at college and university, and set up peripheral community efforts for diybio, folding@home and such which will help further the core efforts.

I would also like to know if this community itself would be willing to get involved in this.

Thanks!
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Comments

  • edited August 2012
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  • Shall I take that as a 'delete this post now before it induces multiple facepalm related injuries', or is SixEcho's response not necessarily typical of this place?
  • You're talking about big, hard to solve, squishy problems.  We have no evidence that you are equipped to work on them, and yet you ask us to help you source money.  If you can show a little evidence that you have worked on this problem already, or are at least prepared to deal with them, well, I'm willing to bet this board would jump to support you.  But until you can show that you aren't a crackpot looking for a cheap payday, we're going to facepalm you.
  • i'll focus on the "why this is a bad idea - from a technical point of view".

    1.) what you want to do, requires you to inject new/modified dna into every cell of your body. the only real way to do so is by using a virus that infects all cells.

    2.) the new dna you would have to produce will have to redefine each cell's function. so it would be incredibly complex.

    3) synthesysing such a complex dna is expensive.

    4) you need to make sure that your immune system doesn't attack your modified cells.

    5) you need to make sure that your new dna is 100% working and safe and not causing uncontrolled mutations which is nearly impossible to do.

    if all that is no argument to stop you. chances are you'll getting some form of supercancer due to the gene-nuking and you'll die soon after the experiment.

    aside from that, this thing has a complexity level not even nature was able to pull off within millions of years of evolution.

    so.. yeah. the idea is pretty much horrible and out of question as it is unrealistic to reach within your lifetime.
    developing some new hardware , like an electromechanical bone-attached tail or something like that would be a lot more realistic. still a lot of work risk and pain , but at least there is a chance to make it work.
  • edited August 2012
    Ah, I think I may have forgotten to throw in the weblink to the forum you have to register to in order to be able to see anything related to the subject, but around which there is at least built a visible shell of a somewhat vague company. Yes, that old chestnut.
    [redacted - PM me for link] . If you register I can give permissions to see the sections of the forum dealing with Operation Fuzzball - but be sure to say on here who you are so I don't just let anybody through who happens to try registering from elsewhere at the same time.

    Perhaps the levels of security I have built around this will do my cause more harm than good...
    Perhaps talking about it this much on here already has. Or perhaps it's the best thing I've ever done.

    Just picture hypothetically for a moment, if you don't believe me yet, what it would be like to be in my position and with the assumption for a moment that I'm telling the truth. What would you do if you were me?

    Do you think I'd be better off just using PMs on this forum or opening my forum up more? I already have over a dozen people signed up to the forum and a few who actually contribute. It's a start. It's an effort I am willing to make and have already started making in some ways, but with limited time and resources I don't have a whole lot to show for it yet.
  • to Thomas, I didn't see your post until after I posted that.
    I have actually considered each of the above factors somewhat and think that with the progression of technology and scientific knowledge, these hurdles, although still difficult, will be lessened by the time I am actually able to pull such a project together. We're talking about something I don't expect to have ready for 20+ years.
  • so you are asking us to find you a sponsor for 20+ years worth of living expenses, education and lab costs? and in the end you _may_ have something that morphes a living creature into something different, partly synthetic?(with a realistic success rate of 0). like i could morph myself into the incredible hulk or a dinosaur, or some friggin bloody ultimate ninja-worrier and take over the world with that.

    so your choices are:

    0) fail
    1) get ultimate-cancer
    2) get on the list of every intelligence service and military institution on this planet for creating a technology as powerful as that.
  • edited August 2012
    In addition to all those points, it's worth pointing out that genes don't really work like that. Gene interactions can work like instructions to build something, sure (although we barely know how), but they do that mostly during development. You've already developed. If you pulled this off, realistically, you could give it to embyros and get some furry children, but new genes wouldn't change your bone structure. To reshape a developed person completely is more like molecular nanotech than genetics.

    Also, yeah, you probably get a free tour of Guantanamo Bay. You can't even research stem cells without kicking up shit, let alone transform human beings.

    Bone-attached tail and ears are a good starting point though. There would be quite a lot of money in high-quality furry prostheses, and we can actually help you with it.
  • edited August 2012
    Thomas, when you put it like THAT of course it sounds bad XD
    I am asking for funds through college and university, so more like 8 years. I am not even asking for all of the funds, I am asking for whatever anyone would be willing to contribute or for pointers towards those with grants or loans for this kind of research. Consider that the very research I do might lead to peripheral discoveries in medicine and cancer treatment anyway. I can't guarantee that, but I would think it's likely given the emphasis there will have to be on avoiding genetic problems like that.
    I'll be honest: I posted my intentions on here because it's a forum where I could easily test the reactions of non-furry h+ and grinder types. I thank you for your comments so far, and understand the risk of military/government related issues already. I figured they'd see me as something of a weirdo among less weird people who has the least realistic of any of the ideas here.
    As for the list of choices you have put there, those are the choices presented with today's knowledge and technology. Who's to say it will be like that in 20 years? Moore's Law and other similar exponential or near-exponential rules dictate that we will have the ability to process things like this much more cheaply and safely than you would think. 10 years ago people would not have believed anyone who said it would be possible today to test DNA for certain things using a pocket-sized kit. But it is.

    SixEcho, the bone reconstruction thing is something which has already been brought to my attention and I do not intend to research with embryos first - rather I hope to find some way to simulate the genetic interactions accurately on a distributed computing system that'll make Folding@Home look 'like SO 20 years ago'.
    I'd no sooner go to Guantanamo Bay than have to live the rest of my life out as a bog standard human, a sentiment I'm sure some of you here agree with. Not only that, I'd do a Julian Assange and use every bit of the system to avoid extradition if I could. But if I ended up there someone else would pick up where I left off. That's the great thing about the internet. It has no individual person or website whose removal will cause the death of an idea. The government, if they are that worried about this kind of thing, probably already know who I am and where I live (and probably file me under 'nutcase'). And if they are reading this, I hope they can see the positives of the idea as much as I can. Will I help them directly to do something of their own like this? No. I will make my work open-source, then the government will probably adapt it anyway.
    As for the prosthetic and animatronic side of it, I have some friends over in America who are pursuing that route and will need all the help they can get research-wise. I'll try sending you a bit more info on them privately.

    Do you reckon I should edit my posts on this thread to redact anything or shall I leave it all as is now?
  • Leave it. Let your freak flag fly! I always do. Were-form might not be my aesthetic, but I can respect it. The how is more interesting to me than the why. 

    Really, this is better broken into smaller chunks.

    Body hair can be done several ways. Acquired hypertrichosis? Wikipedia suggests that can be accomplished by drugs possibly. Hair transplants are another option. Seems like that could be done by someone with enough patience.

    Ears would be badass. The right scaffolding and some skin cultures could make any ear shape you want. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/big-idea/organ-regeneration-text


    A different leg structure would kick ass. Sign me up for that one. I saw some links on that once....I'll try to find them.
  • Digitigrade was the word I was looking for on the legs. Feet actually. Coilhouse had a cool gadget on some mechanical legs: 
    http://coilhouse.net/2010/04/inventorsculptor-kim-grahams-weta-legs/


    Am I to imagine the final product looking like a were-beast, or is it more like Chewbacca? Do you have a pic of what the final product should look like?
  • Just the entire furry fandom - www.furaffinity.net contains at least copies of most of it.

    I am not keen on mechanical, cybernetic, implanted, animatronic or prosthetic solutions myself (though I know some who are). My interest lies in the entirely or almost entirely genetic route, with the delivery method being one of the more debatable variables.

    My book, An Atom Of Freedom, gives some idea of what I think might happen if this sort of thing is rushed into too quickly.
  • Yeeeah. I'm entirely in favour of you being able to look like whatever you want to look like, but
    a) there's so much "genes don't work like that" I don't even know where to begin. SixEcho wasn't saying you would, should, or could experiment on embryos: they were saying that if everything went right and your descolada-power recombinant virus works without causing a massive immune reaction and you dying of your own body eating itself, all you would gain is that your children would have what you want.

    b) you only want other people to pay for you to go to college for 8 years? On the back of vague "I can let you into this forum and you can see what we've got so far" statements? Have you heard of the First Law of Doing Science, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"? You've demonstrated a grasp of genetics - and the amount of research you're going to need - most often seen in sci-fi B-movies. Which is not a good start. Seriously, when SixEcho says you're talking about nanotech, they're not kidding: you're going to need Engines Of Creation-style utility fogs capable of disassembling the current you, reassembling the new you, and keeping you alive in the meantime. I'd put my money on uploading and having the computer display you as your furry self as a more likely solution - and I'm very, very sceptical on uploading...

    Sorry to be shitting on your dreams, but seriously: I've come across actual con artist scams I'd be more likely to give money to.
  • edited August 2012
    I'm taking everything you say, no matter how scathing the wording, on board. I admit I'm a relative newb. But I am not laying claims here, I'm saying this is what I aim to do and I'll be researching how to get there. If I should have the misfortune of dying of old age before I achieve my dream, I shan't think myself any the worse off for trying. I will learn more about how genes DO work over time, and then see how I can apply how they DO work to what I want to do. That is to say, if they only grow according to their instructions during development, for example, I might as one hypothesis try to research ways in which a state of development can be imposed remotely on certain cells after the cells themselves have been modified without triggering cancer. No doubt that hypothesis sounds full of holes to your learned brains. It is, I know. It's just a thought, an idea. Something I'll work on as I learn more.

    The 'upload' comment is sort-of true to what I intend to do anyway; I think it would be far more sensible to have a simulation of what all these genetic changes will do and how they will affect the body and each other before letting them anywhere near a real living being.

    Your 'scam' comment is valid too, on account of the fact that I'm able to come up with ideas but not exactly an expert at communicating them convincingly or constructing a community to assist in achieving them. I accept these are my flaws and wish there was something I could constructively do about them, but I'm not expecting you folks here to help me with that anyway, or even to believe me. I'm expecting you to be honest about your opinions on my unsolicited post here, and on that count nobody here has let me down.

    Nor do I realistically expect funding, for college or otherwise, from you folks. I was just throwing that possibility (tiny though it is) out there in case some seriously nice investors were a-lurking.

    All this uncertainty from me about the details of how I would do such things no doubt rings tiresome in your minds. But if this forum and more generally the grinder and DIYBio realm is not for the exchange of wild new ideas aimed at challenging, however ridiculously, the current frontiers of science and the abilities of the building blocks of body and mind, what the hell is it for?

    They said Lego was a child's toy, but now it is used to create massive, detailed works of art ( http://www.brickish.org and http://brickartist.com for example).
    They said DNA could only do things a certain way because that's what currently works in the tiny bit of genetic science and biology we currently understand. But what can the building blocks of life really do when creatively arranged? Ladies and Gentlemen and all those with other gender identities, I ask you only to keep your minds open on this one. I might be proven wrong. Does it look like I care if I am? I'd rather be proven wrong aiming for my dream than to never try.
  • science != wishful thinking
    lego != dna
    and simulating the entire human organism is totaly out of question.

    i mean nature and live has many ways it works. but i am not aware of any living creature that undergoes dna-modification and shape-shifting as consequence and surviving the whole thing.

    i'd say it would be a lot easier to simply create a new species from scratch rather than modifying a living organism on-the-fly. and even a from-scratch approach with the complexity of a human body would be totaly out of anyone's league. afaik mankind is currently able to create simple one-cell organism from scratch that can survive in a clean lab-environment.

    really. dna modification is not the way to reach your goals. cultivating muscle or skin, printing organs or body parts.. stuff like that will probably get you a lot closer to your goal, with some luck, even within your lifetime.
  • what do you study at college??
    if you dont study biotechnology and aim for getting a phd, then its incredibly unlikely that you will ever be able to use genetic modification to give yourself fur. and fur is the only thing that seems possible to me going down that route, which even then would be incredibly hard. i suggest the surgical route if you really want it done, if thats unacceptable then i think youll have to stick to a fur suit.
  • Why don't give zoophilia a try first ? I can send you some free pets for experiments.

    Just kidding, your field of research is awesome (improvment of human with animal dna) and, even more interesting in our greedy world, could be applied in a large commercial way !

    Who never dreamed of stylish lynx's ears, a bush in real pussie fur on his girlfriend or tiger teeth to bite evil cop taking away your licence ??? Kind of stuff people would kill for I'm sure :D
  • edited August 2012
    @Thomas Science != sticking to what we already know. Science = hypothesising, finding evidence, making a theory and testing that theory with simulations and/or experimentally.
    Lego != anything other than moulded ABS. Try telling any child that. The imagination is a powerfuil gift, you should use it some time.

    DNA has a similar construction to a Lego model - it is built of proteins. Many possible arrangements of those proteins result in an ugly mess, just like when a toddler stacks the Lego blocks unthinkingly. But you bet your bottom dollar there are combinations of those proteins that will work to achieve far more than evolution has yet built. Evolution and natural species are like the official Lego sets with the instruction books missing. That doesn't stop us coming up with our own beautiful models, some may be more complex than the originals but still contain the same bricks. And sometimes if you want to change a model into a similar one, you don't have to deconstruct the whole thing. Sometimes you just need to pull the bricks slightly apart, squeeze another brick into the gap and push them together again. The rest of the model is momentarily weakened, but is then put back just as strong as it was with the new pieces.

    The simulation may be more do-able than you'd expect, with the vast capabilities of cloud computing and the fact I wouldn't be ready for the simulation stage for several years yet, technology will have advanced if not at Moore's Law's rate, then at least enough for some partial simulations to be made which can each be fed into each other bit by bit. The calculations may take a long time, but it won't need to be on the scale of Folding@Home because most of the positions of most of the variables will be known.

    Now let's hypothetically assume you're right for a moment that there's no way I'd be able to do DNA modification like that. Would you rather see me give up or spend my life chasing the dream and doing some great research along the way that could be useful for other things too - such as gene-mods you folks here might like? I don't even mind if I don't get there, I just want to see how far I can get. If I do achieve what I want, even better. If I don't I'll keep trying until there is literally no way forward in which case I'll go off on a tangent of trying to solve whatever is stopping that happening or I'll have died.

    @Squeegy As a matter of fact I will be studying genetics, biology and other related subjects in college (in the UK the genetic or biotechnology route isn't so available until Uni level but more generalistic biology stuff with genetics included can be part of an Access to Higher Education or similar Level 3 course) then going to Uni to do Cellular & Molecular Biology and/or Genetics depending on which course is available with the most relevant units. At Uni I will be aiming not only for PhD but if possible, for Professorship and research scientist work in the field.

    @Ezekiel I'd prefer not to think it will only be useful for such commercial or  crass sounding applications, although I'm sure once it's open-source and available to all, that and more will happen anyway. Variety is what it's partly about. Spice of life etc.
  • If this is what fandom does to people, I can't even wait until the MLP or Homestuck otherkin get ahold of this.
  • LOL. Let them, it'll be hilarious.

    Believe me this isn't representative of the fandom at large, nor is it only my want. I'm just among a group in its own Venn diagram circle which largely overlaps the furry fandom but does have a small section outside the furry circle too. Within this circle dwell all those who can see benefits to combining human with animal DNA including everything from Neko-style ears and tails to giving a 'standard' animal a voice and improved cognition and everything in between. What I want lies slap bang in the middle of that spectrum and is also the hardest to do: anthro animals or furry people. Just to make it extra difficult my eventual hope is for adult transformation, and to seriously avoid the creation of embryos or birth of children on the quest for this whose species will be new and artificial and whose position in life will therefore not have been of their own choosing. Yes, the chances are currently slim to nil. But I'm not starting by diving straight into the research itself, I'm starting by trying to weigh the odds a little more in my favour by going through college and university, promoting preliminary, complimentary and holistically related research and making contacts with people and groups who could help - so hello!
  • edited August 2012
    danfoxdavies  don't you think a money-making project is the only way to achieve what seems to be your dream ?

    Let's say you start to focus on the nightvision abilities of some predators, then plan to apply it to human eyes. Many armies and government would find this very interesting and support you.

    Selling your soul might not be part of the program but if you wish to achieve real DNA modifications in your lifetime, you should really dig in this direction.
  • If finances are your concern, I do have plans for making money from other things that will act as secondary projects to feed money into the core research area. So far this has been sort-of-successful, and I'm still learning what works and what doesn't.

    Also, like open source software companies (eg. Canonical), although the product itself will be free and open source, somebody will need to be an expert developer-provider to give training and tech support services at a reasonable price...
  • edited September 2012
    Heh, being a therian at heart I can't facepalm enough at that. But I never understood the idea of fursuits and such things either, considering them to simply look funny/silly. Especially ones trying to look like proud felines.

    Anyway, if you want to modify yourself to be more animal-like, you probably should rather look in direction of tissue engineering and extensive surgery, not DNA modification. As already has been pointed out, DNA doesn't work like that. It could. Like a tail growing back on a lizard. But it doesn't for humans and you would need to actually research, isolate and apply not one modification but many simultaneously. We're not even close to think about modifying one trait at a time, or actually making our cells regenerate when they got used up (yeah, biological immortality). You want to modify a bunch of traits while adding possibility of continuous rebuilding of organism out of growth phase. And getting it to not reject the mutated cells.
    Simply too much.
    Go one step at the time if you are really going to try, but don't expect funding.
    Go to proper medical or other biological studies, finish them and get good enough to be hired in a place where they could want to study such stuff - without studies you won't get hired in such place, and I highly doubt you would be able to get proper lab equipment for studying genetics on your own. It's not software or hardware engineering. Wetware engineering is WAY more expensive. Especially at such base level. Then when you work well enough you could get funding.

    The tissue engineering on the other hand is a field that is rapidly developing, being able to regenerate more and more tissue types from single cells. That means that quite soon - in a few years there may be a possibility to reconstruct whole organs or limbs by growing tissues on a petri dish ( ;) ) and assembling later, or maybe even by growing the whole limb 'in a jar' on a premade tissue scaffold with specific hormones and other compounds promoting specific cells differentiation/growth attached to it...

    Then I'm pretty sure that surgery will be improved to connect grown limbs to stumps left after amputating of 'original' limbs of the patient... When they'll be able to connect both nerves and vessels well and make the limb work, with the nerves getting regrown, the room will open for the possibility of actually creating limbs we don't originally have and surgically implanting them and either connecting to spinal cord or promoting nerve growth to the limb by hormones...

    That's the direction you probably should look at...
    P.S. Yes, I did give it quite a bit of thought, being therian at heart... Even if I probably never would mod myself in such a way... I actually prefer hardware. Wetware is too squishy ;P
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