We created an online survey that contained 10 short films to describe the ethical issues raised by sequencing technologies. The survey went viral and we had just under 7,000 responses from 75 different countries. It has since been translated into Danish and Spanish by other research groups to be used with different populations. The response we received from the public, health professionals and scientists round the world was clear: most thought that important health implications discovered accidentally in the process of answering a research question should be reported to the participant.