Genomes for Everyone!
Published in "The Best of the New: People & Ideas" (2009), Boston Globe Sunday Magazine
In October, George Church, a professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, led nine other volunteers in baring it all, genetically speaking, by going public – online – with their medical records and the DNA sequences of some of their genes.
Under the Personal Genome Project, Church and his lab will eventually post similar data from some 100,000 volunteers who agree to full disclosure. Their goal? To help medical researchers better understand the genetic basis of disease and other traits – and help the public make better informed decisions about their health.