You are right in saying that "blacks are dis-proportionally present in the prison population" does not prove that, if all factors were equal, people who happen

You are right in saying that "blacks are dis-proportionally present in the prison population" does not prove that, if all factors were equal, people who happen to have darker skin are somehow predisposed to end up in prison. That statement on its own doesn't tell us much and endlessly repeating it is prone to lead to racist beliefs among many people. However, research that shows a group of people with a common ancestry share a genetic trait that is known to make them more or less susceptible to a certain disease or more or less responsive to certain treatments IS showing a causal link. It is most certainly worth mentioning because it will lead to better medical treatment. This is not an uninformed judgement call based on a naive interpretation of complex social issues. This isn't social science. This is natural science. I'm hopeful that this research will be done with as little mention of "race" as possible. Race is a social construct, this research is related to shared ancestry. It should be "we'll do a genetic test, and if you have this genetic marker, we'll do X, otherwise, we'll do Y." So many people in the US are of mixed ancestry that it is unlikely that any social definition of race is going to be useful for making medical decisions without a genetic test.