Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Medical genetics task force/Article advice

The following suggestions are in addition to the guidelines for medical articles at Manual of Style (medicine-related articles), as well as the general guidelines at Guide to writing better articles and Article development. They may give editors a more specific focus on the aspects of medical genetics. They are merely intended as a guide, not as a preset way of writing. All are open to debate, if you wish to add or edit these advice, please do so or discuss your suggestions here.

The scope of the project
The project works on:
 * congenital disorders
 * monogenic disorder (single gene)
 * polygenic disorders

Mainly every medical genetics related articles.

Sensitivity
Articles should respect the feelings of readers who may have a genetic condition: some may not like the use of the word disease or disorder. Use words such as mutation carefully.

A good article on which phrases are preferred can be found at http://www.apastyle.org/disabilities.html.

Source material
It is important that information about causes, detection, treatment, and so forth reference high-quality medical textbooks and peer-reviewed studies, especially review articles, rather than low-quality sources like human-interest stories in newspapers, fundraising materials, or personal blogs. At the same time, external links should help families and individuals find outside sources that are up-to-date and accurate, yet accessible to non-technical readers.

Chromosome links
If an article relates to a particular chromosome the specific chromosome number should be linked to, and also consider whether the chromosome page would benefit from mentioning the article.

Categories
The genetic disorders category may be used for some articles worked on by this project, but also look for other categories and subcategories such as:
 * Category:Chromosome instability syndromes
 * Category:Congenital disorders
 * Category:Inborn errors of metabolism

Stubs
Stubs relating to medical genetics can be tagged with the   template. Remember to add the WPMED template by inserting this into the article's talk page.



Images
The recessive inheritance of genetic disorders can be depicted with an explanatory diagram on each page, for example:

The dominant inheritance of genetic disorders can be depicted with an equivalent diagram on each page:

There are also images for X-linked (including dominant and recessive) and co-dominant.

Some images used to depict genetic inheritance are in the Medical genetics images category. Others are on Wikimedia commons genetics category.

Reliable sources, references

 * geneclinics.org
 * MedlinePlus - Medical Encyclopedia on Medlineplus
 * Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy website: The Merck Manual (the template MerckHome can be used in articles).
 * Source of molecule images that seems to be public domain http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/home.