There is a man who has the blood of almost everyone in his country stored under his office. Is Kári Stefánsson, a visionary 73-year-old Icelandic doctor who, a quarter of a century ago, had an ambitious idea: to use his unique native nation, a volcanic island attached to the Arctic Circle, as a gigantic laboratory to unravel the essence of the human being. More than half of the population, some 180,000 volunteers, have responded to Stefánsson's call during this time. The company he founded and runs, deCODE, has analyzed the DNA of all of them, revealing thousands of genetic variants linked to common diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer's. This is what the geneticist Francis Collins, former director of the United States National Institutes of Health, calls “the language of God”.
