Iceland is a small democratic state of nearly 300,000 inhabitants that sits in the North Atlantic between the continents of Europe, America, and the Arctic. 1 Although it may seem an unlikely place for innovation of global significance, the small island nation of Iceland has assumed near iconic status in one field in particular: genomics. Aided by recent advances in genetic technologies and by a bold entrepreneurial vision, Iceland's genomic innovations have helped transform medical and genealogical information into a new type of global commodity. Furthermore, these innovations-or more precisely, the controversies they have spawned-have helped precipitate the development of global norms governing the relationship between citizens, medical information, markets, and the state.
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David E. Winickoff (2006) studied this question.
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