Language emerged as an overriding theme at the Human Genome Haplotype Map meeting this July in Washington, DC. The meeting, sponsored by NHGRI, brought together about 150 scientists, ethicists, and industry executives to discuss the proposal to create a public haplotype map.

While method and marker density questions were debated, a major point of contention was how many populations and which ones to genotype, with arguments made for multiple- and single-population mapping approaches.