I Donated My DNA to Help Stop the Coronavirus
By Ronnie S. Stangler,
Medium
| 04. 19. 2020
My personal calculus is that today, collective good trumps individual autonomy.
Last night, I entered intimate personal health information into a database that can be accessed by anyone. This is not a decision that I made lightly. I shared my information with the Personal Genome Project(PGP) at Harvard Medical School. Founded in 2005 by Dr. George Church, the PGP represents an ideal, a vision of effecting ultimate progress in DNA science through the generosity of participants willing to expose personal data for a greater good. Before Covid-19, the PGP used this data for open-source research projects to further our understanding of human genetics, biology, and health. The PGP will now singularly focus on Covid-19, studying both those who have the disease and those who don’t.
Their strategy is uniquely advantaged, as the PGP has already collected its participants’ DNA. Ideally, all subjects who have agreed to participate in this open-source project have already entered all varieties of medical information, from static measures of height, weight, and blood type to information collected over years through contacts with physicians and medical systems.
The grand scheme is to connect genotypes (obtained through...
Related Articles
By Rob Stein, NPR | 09.30.2025
Scientists have created human eggs containing genes from adult skin cells, a step that someday could help women who are infertile or gay couples have babies with their own genes but would also raise difficult ethical, social and legal issues...
By Jessica Mouzo, El País | 10.03.2025
DNA is the molecule of life: this double-helix structure, present in every cell in the body and organized into fragments called genes, stores the instructions for making organisms function. It is a highly precise biological machine, but sometimes it breaks...
GeneWatch UK has prepared a briefing on the genetic modification of nature for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Congress in October 2025
The upcoming Congress claims to be “where the world comes together to set priorities and drive conservation and sustainable development action.” A major concern for those on the outside is that the Congress may advance plans to develop and encourage the use of synthetic biology in nature conservation. This could at first glance sound like...
By Aaron Ginn, The Washington Post | 09.12.2025
Earlier this year, I had dinner in D.C. with Jensen Huang, the president and chief executive of Nvidia. At one point, he said something that struck me: “Why is everyone here so negative?”
He wasn’t referring to the economy...