Wednesday, September 02, 2020

Broad Testing Thank You

 I have a loose association with the Broad Institute, an institute created so that "complementary expertise of the genomic scientists and the chemical biologists across MIT and Harvard be brought together in one place to drive the transformation of medicine with molecular knowledge."  (See https://www.broadinstitute.org/history )

They recently passed an amazing milestone, having performed over 1 million Covid tests.  They weren't set up to be a Covid testing lab, but the converted their institute space to respond to the Covid crisis.  (See https://covid19-testing.broadinstitute.org/ )  

In short, they stepped up.  They certainly didn't have to, but they did.  Maybe it will help them do good science, now and in the future.  But my understanding is that they saw a clear societal need (lots of outbreak specialists there ) and they realized they had the expertise and equipment to do good that went beyond science.  I just wanted to give a shout out to the Broad for their good works, scientific and societal.