The All of Us program joins a wave of similar efforts to construct gigantic “biobanks” by, among others, the Department of Veterans Affairs, a British collaboration and private companies like Geisinger Health Systems and Kaiser Permanente. But All of Us is the only one that attempts to capture a huge sample that is representative of the United States population. “It will be transformative,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. It will also be expensive. In 2017 alone, the budget for All of Us was $230 million, of which $40 million came from the 21st Century Cures Act. Congress has authorized an astounding $1.455 billion over 10 years for the project.

While supporters say the results will be well worth the money and effort, others have begun to question whether All of Us is just too ambitious, too loaded with cumbersome bureaucracy — and too duplicative of smaller programs that are moving much more quickly. In the three years since the All of Us program was announced, not a single person’s DNA has been sequenced. Instead, project leaders have signed up more than 17,000 volunteers as “beta testers” in a pilot phase of the program. They supplied blood and urine samples, had measurements taken, and filled out surveys.