Determining precise role of ethnicity in disease will be difficult

Editor—Bhopal's article debates whether research into ethnicity and health is racist, unsound, or important science.1 This is particularly challenging to us, working in South Africa, which has several interethnic populations.

Apart from in the classical deficiency diseases, much of the causation of most chronic diseases of lifestyle remains unexplained and hence presumably lies in the “black box” that the authors mention. For example, despite huge sums being spent on research on coronary heart …