I’M NOT SURE how many tubes of blood I donated in the end—not being fond of needles, I fixed my gaze over the nurse’s left shoulder throughout the proceedings. But it felt like a lot. And yet it also felt like it was the least I could do to give back.
I’m now one year into a five-year clinical trial studying my emotional response to the results of genomic sequencing, a relatively new type of test that digs into nearly every letter of your DNA code (unlike traditional genetic testing, which looks at only a few genes at a time).
One of the goals of the trial is to determine how useful genomic sequencing is for both doctors and patients. In addition to the bloodletting, all that’s required of me are periodic 30- to 60-minute Zoom interviews with the researchers for the first year and a half, after which the team
