Several public and private entities across the country have been established and have begun collecting and storing tissue specimens for genetic testing to support and expand the program of study initiated by the HGP. According to reports authored by respected scientists in the field of genetics, in 1999 close to 300 million tissue samples—most of which were collected during routine clinical and surgical procedures—were stored in public health departments, blood banks, pathology archives, and researchers' laboratories within the United States [7–10]. It has been estimated that the number of tissue samples collected since that time has increased by more than 20 million a year [11].
