Polite Dissent

Aquaman #30 “Kiss of Death, part 1: The Nine”
Marc Guggenheim, writer
Andy Clarke, penciler

This comic has so much that is scientifically and medically suspect that I’m going to take two days to discuss it so as not to drown everyone in a sea of science. For the first post, I’m just going to focus on the autopsy.

The scene: Eight people have apparently been murdered in Sub Diego. Aquaman brings the victims to the surface for examination and autopsy at the County Coroner’s Office. He really shouldn’t have bothered as the autopsies are substandard and the pathologist doesn’t seem to understand basic physiology.

To start with, the incision is wrong. Pathologists use a Y-incision, not the straight stern-to-stem incision seen here. (As an aside, what happened to the her skeleton? You know, the ribcage that protects the lungs. It seems to have disappeared.) Second, the pathologist is passing judgment on the condition of the lungs and it doesn’t look like he’s removed them to take a close look.

Pathologist: “subject’s alveoli are swollen and lacking surface surfactant, suggesting hypoxia…in layman’s terms, all of these victims suffocated. Specifically they inhaled too much oxygen.”

There is so much that is wrong here. The lungs of the people of Sub Diego no longer function, so they can’t inhale any air — let alone oxygen. Next, the findings he mentions are not signs of hypoxia. If anything they are consistent with non-working water-logged lungs. Every resident of Sub Diego (except maybe Aquaman) would have lungs that looked exactly like that. Recall that hypoxia means “low levels of oxygen reaching the body’s tissues.” Thus the pathologist is suggesting that high levels of oxygen are causing low levels of oxygen. Admittedly, he’s talking about high levels of inspired oxygen leading to low levels of blood oxygen, but it still makes little sense.

He goes on to say:

“Oxygen’s as toxic to the Sub Diego survivors as carbon monoxide is to you and me.”

Wrong. Carbon monoxide is toxic because it binds to hemoglobin and displaces oxygen. This leads to reduced oxygen levels and ultimately death. Here, the pathologist is saying that the oxygen is toxic because it replaces…oxygen.

I’ll give the pathologist’s comments about premortem bruising the benefit of the doubt. His interpretation is certainly correct, given what we the reader already knows about the crime (though to me the bruising seems more consistent with someone holding the mouth shut, but I’m no pathologist). I’ll also admit that he is right in stating that surface air has a different composition than air in SCUBA tanks (or apparently the air “exhaled” by Sub Diegoans). Next time, Aquaman should just call Dr. Mid-Nite. He’s not the best pathologist, but at least he’s better than this guy.

In short, this autopsy was better than the infamous alien autopsy…but just barely.