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He says he'd would like to see Gaza making its own medications — effectively biohacking its way to independence — and developing systems to provide medical training to many without sending future doctors away to be educated under foreign systems, in many cases under the same governments that paid for the bombs dropped on Gaza.

Biohacking covers a range of activities, from performing gene-editing in garages to synthesizing the ingredients of certain medicines or technologies and publishing DIY instructions on how to make them at home to reverse engineering vaccines.

In a 2010 conference, computer scientist Meredith Patterson delivered a “Biopunk Manifesto” and described her stance on biohacking: “We reject the popular perception that science is only done in million-dollar university, government or corporate labs; we assert that the right of freedom of inquiry, to do research and pursue understanding under one’s own direction, is as fundamental a right as that of free speech or freedom of religion.”

Others see biohacking as a way to restore autonomy to patients and provide an option that cuts costs for them.

Nevertheless, the concern is that some individuals could appropriate the biohacking space with bad intentions, said Lisa Rasmussen, a philosophy professor at University of North Carolina, Charlotte who is writing a book about DIY science.