History
In the late 1990s deCODE proposed to create the world's first population-wide genomic biobank by collecting data from the entire population of Iceland, which numbered 270,000 at the time. The plan had these three major components: creating a genealogical database, collecting biobank specimens by means of which genotyping could be done, and creating a national electronic health record system to connect genetic data to each individual's phenotype.
In December 1998 with lobbying from deCODE, the Icelandic Parliament passed the Act on Health Sector Database which permitted public bidding for the right of a company to create this health database and use it for various purposes. The parliament shortly thereafter granted deCODE the right to create this database after the company made a successful bid to do so.
Read more about this topic: DeCODE Genetics
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“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“They are a sort of post-house,where the Fates
Change horses, making history change its tune,
Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)