Talk:Human germline engineering

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): JakeGajdzik. Peer reviewers: Cglidden.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:39, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2018 and 7 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Hjo2d, Mward20. Peer reviewers: Dalinchan.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:39, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 September 2019 and 4 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Bstevens5.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:39, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Student work
Hello I will be reviewing your article! Madelinekowalski (talk) 19:20, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi Jake,

Here are my comments are your article!

First paragraph: You describe the attempts to edit the human germline as “rather unsuccessful”, but could you elaborate on this? It seems like you’re making a judgement on their research, rather then stating the outcomes. You could also find a source that talks about the results of their resource so it’s not just coming from you.

Conceivable Uses: I’d say “In the first study published regarding human germline engineering, the researchers attempted to edit the HBB gene which codes for the human β-globin protein” (minor grammatical edit)

State of Research: You start two sentences with currently, so I’d try to change one of those (I believe you also need a comma after "currently"). The sentence “the current state of germline engineering in the United States is not as severe as having it illegal.” This was a bit unclear to me when reading, so maybe you could rephrase to avoid a double negative? (i.e. There is no current legislation in the United States that explicitly prohibits germline engineering).

Other comments: Have you considered linking this to the “Germinal choice technology” page? There seems to be some overlap between these two pages. Otherwise, great job! Madelinekowalski (talk) 13:33, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Hello I will be reviewing your article! cglidden (talk) 12:33, 6 May 2017 (UTC) Hi Jake,

This is a very well written with a neutral point of view and good secondary sources. Just a few quick points:

In your first sentence, I might say "Human Germline Engineering is the process BY which the genome..."

In your third sentence, "The first attempt to edit the human germline was reported in 2015, WHEN a group of Chinese scientists USED the gene..."

Under conceivable uses, I might say "Currently, there are no successfully engineered humans, but there are many prospective uses, such as attempts at curing genetic diseases".

Under state of research, you start two sentences with currently, so maybe you could try to switch up your sentence structure a little. Instead of your third sentence, I might say "The United States government is not as severe, as germline engineering is not illegal, but the Consolidated Appropriation Act..."

Overall, great content, just a few small stylistic points!

Thanks! JakeGajdzik (talk) 18:21, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

cglidden (talk) 12:33, 6 May 2017 (UTC) Hey, looks great overall, just a few quick comments. I would say human gremlin engineering "were" to be, not was to be. Also, I would put 'perfect' and 'desirable' in quotes since they're subjective qualities. Also I was say the clash BETWEEN religion and science. Otherwise, looks great!

Great work Jake - rest of peer review done in person! — Preceding unsigned comment added by KendallChristian (talk • contribs) 22:10, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Merger discussion
I think Designer baby should be merged with Human Germline Engineering. It concerns a subset or application of that technology and the subject matter of each page is basically identical (Designer babies are created through genetic engineering). ART was clearly the wrong place for it but HGE looks like a better fit. FOARP (talk) 13:10, 5 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Where would you merge the Preimplantation genetic diagnosis information? AIRcorn (talk) 21:47, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think it needs to be merged anywhere. It's just a summary of the main so-named article. If it had to be included at the target, it could just be rolled into Human_germline_engineering in terms why engineering might be considered while being significantly parsed down. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:48, 9 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I don't know. A lot of sources talk up pre selecting embryos as designer babies (the Guardian has this and this which focus on PGD). There are some scholarly sources out there too . It seems the term "Designer Baby" is not just used for genetic engineering, which makes this not an ideal target. At this stage I am thinking there is probably enough out there to warrant its own article. AIRcorn (talk) 23:08, 9 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Support. The entire article is pretty much just summaries of other main articles and nothing really unique for its own article. Germline engineering is really where the designer baby redirect should go where the other articles can get in-text wikilinks, etc. but likely don't need that much exposition, especially since the content is covered in general there anyways in many cases. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:48, 9 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi, I've just done a huge overhaul of the Designer baby page, I proposed the edits I wanted to perform last week which can be found at the top of that Talk page. I've now performed all these edits, so wonder whether the merge is still necessary. I agree that a lot of the information for Designer baby can be found on the respective pages for different techniques (PGD, Human germline engineering etc), however, I believe that the general public might be more likely to search for Designer baby and the page now encompasses lots of different aspects - techniques as well as an expanded ethics section, discussion of Lulu/Nana etc. Please let me know your thoughts Bananapancake212 (talk) 14:25, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree with the proposed merge. "Designer baby" is a pejorative term; I don't think it generally refers to preimplantation genetic diagnosis, though that should be linked from human germline engineering. I suppose the Guardian piece is bending the term so it includes both; maybe designer baby can just be a disambiguation page that says it's a pejorative term that is used to refer to one or other other of those techniques, each of which should have a section on ethics anyway. -- Beland (talk) 03:05, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi, I think this should be merged both the articles relate to the roughly the same thing which is human gene editing. I support this idea.


 * KingnunandRhysandfan:*:* 19:10, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose Any duplicate information could be removed. "Designer baby" gets 239 results on Google news, and "about 3,150,000 results" on regular Google.   D r e a m Focus  02:23, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I note that on the 5th December 2019, with this edit, there seems to have been a partial merge (without attribution) and the removal of one of the merge templates by Bstevens5; perhaps some justification could be added here and attribution; otherwise complete or rollback? Klbrain (talk) 06:29, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks like we're too late for a rollback, with both pages now diverging and the template being taken off one of the pages back in December with the edit I mentioned above. Perhaps its best for now to close this merge and start a new proposal should anyone be in the mood. Klbrain (talk) 11:03, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Ethical and moral debates
There are some technical questions the article doesn't explain and the article seems to revolve on both the issue of "genetic traits being inheritable" and the focus on modifying embryos.

Don't gene therapies exist that are "non-somatic" (meaning gene therapies that introduces changes that are in fact heritable). If there aren't, then if a person that has a genetic disease may only have children that have that same genetic defect. Some techniques like PGD, IVF, ... exist but I doubt that it always allows to avoid the disease of reappearing in the child or in children of that child, ...

If so, then the ethical and moral debates section is incomplete as gene therapies can be applied when the patient is older then 18 years (adult). The whole section becomes an entirely different discussion even.

If not, (and if PGD, IVF, ... don't work in some situations) then it seems unethical that those with (serious) genetic diseases are legally allowed to have children of their own, as it would cause (preventable) suffering on their children. --Genetics4good (talk) 11:05, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: ENGW3307 Adv Writing for the Sciences 14214
— Assignment last updated by Bella2021gg (talk) 14:30, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Edit summaries
@RadioactiveBoulevardier I added some new (different) edits, hopefully these edit summaries work. When I say "copy-edit", I'm merging and removing redundancies in a lot of it; 3 students did assignments on this and they didn't really check to see if somebody had already done stuff, is what it looks like. So that's why it has "-300" symbols next to it. Don't delete them because of that. Mrfoogles (talk) 07:11, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Merge into "Human genetic enhancement"?
One concern I could think of, would be that there is conscious "disenhancement", e.g. in potential applications of HGE to conceive a deaf child. But then, this is also really just "enhancement" as viewed from a different angle, isn't it?

There was already a discussion to move it into "Designer baby". I think this merger is much less controversial. Biohistorian15 (talk) 15:06, 16 July 2024 (UTC)