"And very, very stupid," she adds.
"I did not know what I was doing. So I cut a hole in my finger with a scalpel, which is silly. You're not supposed to use a scalpel; you're supposed to use a needle. The scalpel I used hurt incredibly; it was excruciatingly painful. And then I had to hold the wound open - which I did with a sterilized potato peeler - to insert the magnet. That should have been an absolute septic disaster, but for some reason, it turned out to be fine," says Anonym.
She started her journey with RFID sensors, considered a transdermal temperature sensor (which was a disaster), began experimenting with homebred sensors, and now has a temperature sensor, which she says is the latest addition to her body.
Anonym is trying to work on North Paw, an anklet made by the biohacking group Sensebridgethat gives wearers the ability to navigate their surroundings. The anklet holds eight cellphone vibrator motors around your ankle.
A control unit in the haptic compass senses magnetic north and turns on and off the motors. A few years ago, she detailed plans to have the first South Paw created and implanted in her left leg. "I had a prototype in my ankle for a while, but not anymore. And that had to come out because I was concerned about corrosion," says Anonym.
The biggest questions raised would revolve around ethics and safety measures when it comes to implanting devices oneself.
DIY biohacking falls in a grey zone. With grinders moving into unforeseen territories, regulators are yet to keep up the pace. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration had issued a warning that biohacking procedures involving gene-editing products for self-administration were illegal.
In the United Kingdom, there are no regulationsaround self-implanted microchips as they do not fall under the purview of medical devices, as per theMedicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
However, Professor Tom Joyce, a biomedical engineer at Newcastle University, told Medical Device Networkthat biohacking raises questionsabout liability and responsibility in situations that go wrong.
For example, while a user might be held responsible for modifying an implant counter to the manufacturers instructions, the possibility of hacking the implant might be attributed to a security vulnerability for which the manufacturer might be liable, she says.
As for safety, researchers have notedthat modern body modifications can lead to complications that shouldn't be underestimated.
To Anonym, the ethics of biohacking lie in "a principle called bodily autonomy, wherein, in my opinion, everyone should have the right to alter their own body as they see fit, as long as that doesn't involve anyone else. And what I would find very unethical would be to alter anyone else's body, or to tell anyone else that you can or can't have this done," she says.
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A transhuman biohacker implanted over 50 chips and magnets in her body - Interesting Engineering
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