A Million Volunteers

One of the most difficult things to procure when you need running experiments on human beings is actual volunteers. The need for a larger sample pack can just about cripple an experiment even before it takes off. So when the US Government comes up with a genetic and lifestyle study which will need a million volunteers, you can imagine the state of affairs.

President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative led the National Institutes of Health to lead the study which currently involves collection of more statistical data before any medicines can be actually manufactured. The laboratory work includes collection of medical histories as well as actual blood samples from which DNA will later be extracted for study.

The sheer logistics of the science project are admirable. Imagine trying to convince a million volunteers to give up information about themselves for a 10 year project. Things like age, race, income, education, sexual orientation, and gender identity are just the tip of the iceberg that is being studied.

Lifestyle information of the study subject will delve into information such as a person’s regular diet, exercise habits, sleep patterns, drinking and smoking addictions and a whole lot more. Needless to say signing up a million people before the end of the year when the project is due to begin, is going to be a major exercise in itself.