Robert Porter
Senior Master Sergeant
What always made me laugh about West Virginia, the whole reason it even exists is that it was created when that portion of Virginia decided NOT to side with the confederacy. But if you drive through it today, which I have done many times, there are more confederate flags flying in West Virginia than Virginia.
When I worked for Glaxo years back, they, and many other pharmaceutical companies maintained research clinics in rural areas of West Virginia due to the low level of genetic diversity. (A polite way of saying inbreeding). Glaxo was running over a dozen research programs on genetic diseases and their responses to various medicines and treatment regimes.
My role was collecting patient data and then anonymizing it before its use by various research programs at dozens of universities. Because of the sensitive nature of that data the servers were not connected to the internet and we had to drive to each site to collect the data physically. While we did remove identifying information we maintained familial relationships via codes. In one particular town of note, there were exactly 14 families represented in a population of close to 11,000 people in the county and town.
Literally everyone in that area was related to everyone else. It was one of the more interesting studies I participated in to say the least.
When I worked for Glaxo years back, they, and many other pharmaceutical companies maintained research clinics in rural areas of West Virginia due to the low level of genetic diversity. (A polite way of saying inbreeding). Glaxo was running over a dozen research programs on genetic diseases and their responses to various medicines and treatment regimes.
My role was collecting patient data and then anonymizing it before its use by various research programs at dozens of universities. Because of the sensitive nature of that data the servers were not connected to the internet and we had to drive to each site to collect the data physically. While we did remove identifying information we maintained familial relationships via codes. In one particular town of note, there were exactly 14 families represented in a population of close to 11,000 people in the county and town.
Literally everyone in that area was related to everyone else. It was one of the more interesting studies I participated in to say the least.