Introduction to the Discussion of Race and Ethnicity in Nature Genetics

Abstract

Genetics for the human race was the title of a special supplement of Nature Genetics published in November 2004. This was based on a meeting held at Howard University on 15 May 2003, entitled ‘Human genome variation and “race”—the state of the science’. A month earlier, on 14 April 2003, announcing the release of the ‘essentially completed’ human genome sequence, Francis Collins, Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute had said, ‘All of this study of genotypes will have profound consequences on our understanding of race and ethnicity’ and told scientists they were obligated to translate what they learn about race, ethnicity and genetics into ‘information that will be usefully included as part of the often-contentious dialogue about race in our society’.At the heart of these concerns lay a crucial question—would the genomics of the twenty-first century resurrect,or finally lay to rest, the scientific racism that has played such a formative and bloody role in the history of our present?