THE GENETIC BASIS OF RACE: Are there genetic differences between the races? As you’d expect of any subgroup breeding mostly within the group, the answer is of course there is. Scientists seem to be converging on the view that there is more genetic basis than one side of the argument had hoped, although less than the other side had averred. But the really good news is that as we get better data, it won’t really matter:

“We don’t have to use race as a surrogate for the biology when we can identify the underlying biology,” said Dr. Georgia M. Dunston, founding director of the Howard genome center. “By removing the barriers implied by the racial classifications we can more effectively study population differences in disease distribution.”

In the short term, though, race may make a good proxy for analysing things like disease distribution until genomic sequencing becomes widespread, as I think it eventually will.