David Ewing Duncan

25 years ago, I was one of the first humans to have my DNA sequenced for a story for Wired magazine.

And we almost didn't do the story.

It seemed a bit gimmicky, but we did it, and it really resonated with people.

And so I was kind of off and running.

And I've got about, I don't know, at last count, about 70 terabytes of data on myself, which is an extraordinary amount of data.

A lot of that is I got a lot of MRI scans, so that eats up a lot of bites.

Yes.

But in all these terabytes of data... Maybe 98% was not useful.

But the 2%, this man, John Sang, is largely responsible for.

I've had long-haul COVID twice.

I've had a couple of surgeries.

Like, what is my immune system health?

It's probably the most important system in our bodies.

It literally decides if we're going to be able to heal ourselves when we get an infection or a disease.

It's health.

Our lack of health is different than our actual biological age.

So my score was 0.35.

I honestly didn't know what to make of it.

It's just a random number.

And I had to get a lot of explanation before I really understood what that score meant.