The notion that Singapore’s multi-ethnic population provides a unique and quintessentially ‘Asian’ assetfor its biomedical sciences initiative has been part of the discourse in local and international mediacoverage of that sector. It has also been highlighted by scholars as a feature of Singapore’s politicaleconomy. This article discusses how ‘racial/ethnic difference’ was initially central but then becameperipheral to one high-profile research programme: the Singapore Epidemiology of Eye Disease (SEED)Study Programme. The case study is offered as an example of the flexible deployment and situationalenactment of racial/ethnic difference in biomedical science, by demonstrating how it gets entangledwith and disentangled from the creation of scientific capital and legitimacy, as well as complicates thenotion of ‘Asian’ science.