This article, The Buddy System: How Medical Data Revealed Secret to Health and Happiness, was published in Wired magazine in September 2009. Two researchers began to pour over decades of health information found about the population of Framingham, MA. The study began in 1948 and has tracked the subjects’ weight for decades. A decision by the original researchers to record the names of the family and friends of each subject, done only to help track down subjects if they moved, proved to provide a wealth of information about human relationships and social networks. An amazing two-thirds of the 1948 population participated in the study, and now their children and grandchildren have as well. What they found was astonishing.
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