Let’s celebrate human genetic diversity
By Bruce Lahn Department of Human Genetics, University of Chicago Lanny Ebenstein Department of Economics,University of California at Santa Barbara Nature 461, 726-728 (8 October 2009) | doi:10.1038/461726a; Published online 7 October 2009 http://www.gnxp.com/blog/Lahn.pdf Science is finding evidence of genetic diversity among groups of people as well as among individuals. This discovery should be embraced, not feared, say Bruce T. Lahn and Lanny Ebenstein. A growing body of data is revealing the nature of human genetic diversity at increasingly finer resolution. It is now recognized that despite the high degree of genetic similarities that bind humanity together as a species, considerable diversity exists at both individual and group levels (see box, page 728). The biological significance of these variations remains to be explored fully. But enough evidence has come to the fore to warrant the question: what if scientific data ultimately demonstrate that genetically ba...