Iceland had the data sources required for this "population approach": a high-quality single-payer healthcare system; a relatively homogeneous population that would make finding disease variants less complex; an educated citizenry that was willing to contribute DNA and medical and health information for research; and most uniquely, comprehensive national genealogies. Mary Clare King, who had used family pedigrees to identify BRCA1 in breast cancer, was among the scientists who recognized the potential of these records. As she told the New Yorker, "to be able to trace the genealogy of an entire nation for a thousand years...and obtain samples of blood and tissue from healthy living people...could become one of the treasures of modern medicine."