PC at its best, true gems, paper, post and comments. - pn

Post not so much, comments good IMO. A lot of people are attacking the term "race", but no-one ever comes up with an alternative way to describe human genetic diversity - that annoys me... - Nils Reinton

That's the epitome of PC thinking. - pn

Talking about races *disguises* most of the diversity because it's so focused on a single aspect of the diversity that people forget about the rest of it. - Deborah Fitchett

Nils - sorry, I'm not sure I get your comment. I immediately thought of this classic sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch... -- even if true, why, when criticising something that is wrong, do we need to replace it with an "alternative"? - Joe Dunckley

I don't think that using race as a shortcut to describe between group variation necessarily means you stop thinking about within group variation. This is just a polite way to begin to talk about the genetic differences in geographically, socially, and culturally separated groups. It's a step on the road to personalized medicine. - Mr. Gunn

@Deborah sure, but again, which terms would be acceptable to use then, sometimes seems like people think any diversity that isn't purely individual should not have a label at all, and that (@Joe) doesn't do any good in explaining genetic diversity - because we can be grouped, like it or not, based on genetic traits - and like @Mr. Gunn says such grouping is a (necessary) step towards truly personalized medicine. - Nils Reinton

I've put a longer reply in a blog post: http://biopinionated.com/2009... - Nils Reinton

The more precise term is "ancestry" which means the aggregate inherited character of a population. Race can technically mean ancestry, but it's colloquial use is so overloaded with scientifically irrelevant social and emotional connotations that it's no longer an effective term to describe the phenomenon. But yes, race is roughly based on the physical reality of biological ancestry. If it weren't, then race could be universally assigned independently of biological ancestry, and that's obviously not true. - Andrew Yates

Ok ancestry it is then, as long as there is a word that is acceptable and describes the fact that we are groups of individuals I'm happy. I should have linked to your post earlier Andrew, better late than never: http://www.thinkgene.com/there-i... , which is a lot more balanced than the post that started this discussion. - Nils Reinton

you still need to put a group label in front of “ancestry” though - Nils Reinton