Ethnic or Racial Genome Mapping

China has now announced that it has successfully completed the first sequence map of the diploid genome of a Han Chinese man. While I don’t know much about this field but some comments made me a bit curious and faintly worried

Wang Jun, the leader of the project and vice-director of BIG's Shenzhen branch, said that all people share the vast majority of genetic information that
makes us human beings.

However, small differences, corresponding to just a fraction of the whole genome, determine traits such as skin colour, height, susceptibility to diseases and responses to therapies and environments.

"We can never change our genes, but we can understand our genetic structure better by creating a fine map of our genome sequence. This is very helpful in preventing or controlling diseases, such as cancers," Wang said.

We need to be careful that we don’t ascribe differences such as this to racial or ethnic dimensions. Our world can do without rot like this.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!