Polite Dissent

With all their money, you’d think the Riches would at least be able to afford a decent x-ray machine instead of one that looks like it’s of a Cold War Era Soviet design. This machine can’t even generate enough power to penetrate Richie’s clothes — I think all we’re seeing is the tattoo he got to impress Gloria.

Though all the radiation from that ancient machine may very well explain Richie’s macrocephaly and stunted growth.

Tags: comics medicine richie rich x-ray

As usual, what problem cannot be solved by a liberal application of the undead?

Tags: comics medicine malpractice surgery undead

The first Picture Quiz of the new year, this scene comes from New X-Men #44 (“Messiah Complex, chapter 4″) with script by Craig Kyle/Christ Yost and pencils by Humberto Ramos.

The answer is fairly straight forward; I’d give it a difficulty rating of 2 (out of 5).

Need a hint? Just highlight the following hidden word: redundancy

Previous picture quizzes

Tags: comics new x-men madrox picture quiz

Both of today’s examples of the psychic nosebleed occur “off camera” but there’s really no doubt as to what they’re discussing. First, in this scene from X-Men #205 (Mike Carey/Chris Bachalo), one of the Sentinel pilots is complaining that whenever he tries to spy on the girl’s dormitory, the “white lady” (Emma Frost, that is), gives him “a stress headache and a nosebleed.” Psychic Nosebleeds are mentioned in an off hand way in Mass Effect (an X-Box 360 science-fiction RPG) when one of the Biotic (i.e. telekinetic) characters is describing his experiences in training. Discussing a fellow trainee, who got in trouble one night at dinner for reaching for a dish instead of using her powers, he remarks that sometimes it’s easier just to use your hands rather than get a nosebleed. All previous Psychic Nosebleed Zen posts Tags: comics medicine nosebleed x-men sentinel mass effect biotic

Ultimate Fantastic Four #48
Mike Carey, writer
Mark Brooks, penciler

Sue Storm has been kidnapped and drugged by Doctor Kragoff and his assistant Rutskaya. Kragoff plans to send both Sue Storm and the body of late wife into the N-Zone where they will merge and Sue’s DNA will be re-written with Julia Kragoff’s. This will kill Sue, but bring Julia back to life.

Of course, he doesn’t tell Sue this. He lies to her and informs her that her brother has been injured in a plane crash and an N-Zone merge is the only way to save him. He also needs her advice on the finer points of the science:

Sue: No, it can’t work.
Kragoff: Why not?
Sue: Rejection. Host body will reject.
Kragoff: Yes, rejection has been the problem. How do we solve it?
Sue: Telomere splice. Telomeres from healthy genes. Stop DNA transcription before immune response’s triggered.
Rutskaya: How do we control the insertion points, Miss Storm? Donor transaminase or physical insertion?
Sue: Transaminase’s good.

NOTE: I’ve cleaned up Sue’s drug addled slurring, but I left intact her Tarzan-like phrasing.

What she’s saying is pure tecnhobabble, and as technobabble goes (particularly biological technobabble), it’s not bad — but there’s a couple of basic errors:

• First off, telomeres aren’t part of genes, they are parts of chromosomes. The ends of human chromosomes are composed of specialized sections of DNA known as telomeres. These telomeres are composed of a short DNA sequence repeated thousands of times. Telomeres serve several important functions: they stop the ends of the chromosomes from unraveling, they prevent chromosomes from fusing together, and they seem to have a role in programmed cell death and aging. As Susan suggests, they also play a role in DNA transcription — basically, they stop it when it reaches the end of the chromosome. Telomeres don’t stop all DNA replication, so you couldn’t use it like Susan suggests. It’s probably also a bad idea to place telomeres — which have evolved specifically to function as chromosomal “end caps” — in the middle of a DNA strand. That’s just asking for trouble.
• Transaminases are enzymes that transfer an amino group from an amino acid to an α-keto acid. They have nothing to do with DNA transcription. I’d also love to know how the doctor plans on going about physically inserting DNA strands — a very small pair of tweezers perhaps?

Finally, as a general rule, I would suggest that it is a very bad idea letting a drugged-out teenager provide the technical details of a science project, no matter how smart she may be.

Tags: comics medicine fantastic four sue storm technobabble telomere dna transaminase

If the embedded video doesn’t appear, check it out here.

A change of pace today: a super-hero video PSA. From 1972, here is Yvonne Craig as Batgirl in a public service announcement for equal pay for women. It should come as no surprise that the U.S. Department of Labor (Wage & Hour Division) sponsored this ad. What may come as a surprise is that this PSA was produced 4 years after the Batman television show ended.

There is a slightly different, shorter version of the PSA also available on YouTube (thankfully, the picture quality is much better in this one).

In addition to Yvonne Craig as Batgirl, Burt Ward reprises his role as Robin and William Dozier narrates. Batman is played not by Adam West but by Dick Gautier (probably best known for playing Hymie the Robot on Get Smart, and — for all my Transformers loving readers — the voice of Rodimus Prime from the third season of Transformers).

More PSAs

Tags: comics psa batgirl batman robin yvonne craig burt ward dick gautier adam west

How, exactly, does one hear dollar signs? Maybe Richie left his iPod on and it happens to playing the beginning of “Money” from The Dark Side of the Moon. Of course, this comic was published well before MP3 players, Walkmen, and even Pink Floyd.

Maybe it’s a not-so-subtle indictment of the medical profession by the folks at Harvey Comics: the doctor is hearing “dollar signs” when he should be listening to his patient. But then again, the doctor is using a horribly out of date stethoscope — even for 1964, when the comic was published — so he probably needs all the money he can get, plus he seems to listening to the xiphoid process and not the heart, so he’s not a very good doctor.

Or it’s just another vaguely humorous money-related visual gag the Richie Rich comics are famous for, take your pick.

Tags: comics medicine richie rich stethoscope

Fallen Angel #21
Peter David, writer
J.K. Woodward, artist

The Scene (spoiler warning): A scorned wife sneaks up behind her husband while he in flagrante delicto and injects him in the neck with a syringe. She explains to him that she injected air into his veins which will “cause a thrombosis. This will go to your heart and kill you.” Right on cue, he grabs his chest and collapses, dead.

While it is possible to kill someone by injecting air in their veins, it is nowhere near as easy nor as convenient as suggested by this issue of Fallen Angel (and before that, Manhunter #11, and popular fiction in general).

First, let’s get the terminology out of the way. Air in the blood vessels causes an embolus, not a thrombus. An embolus is a mass that circulates through the blood system and eventually lodges in and obstructs a blood vessel. Emboli can be from many different sources including blood clots, bacterial clumps, tissue fragments, or air bubbles. A thrombus, on the other hand, is a clot that forms in and obstructs a blood vessel (thrombosis is a related word which refers to a blood clot in a blood vessel).

Now, let’s look at the medicine. When air enters the venous system, it is pushed to the heart and then into the lungs where it becomes trapped. Small amounts of air don’t cause symptoms because they are broken up and absorbed by the lungs. Air emboli of around 50ml are enough to cause symptoms such as pulmonary edema, pulmonary hypertension, systemic hypotension, arrythmias, and in extreme cases, cardiac failure or arrest. A very large embolus can block the entire right atrium and ventricle leading to sudden cardiac arrest and death. This requires around 300ml of air.

If the victim happens to have an open foramen ovale (a small hole between the right and left atria, it occurs in about 20% of the population) and the blood pressure builds up enough in the lungs to cause a right to left shunt, the air bubble may get into the arterial circulation and end up blocking some smaller artery somewhere in the body. Usually, this will result in ischemic damage to some tissue or organ, which may or may not cause symptoms. However, if the embolus happens to block a coronary artery then it would cause a heart attack; similarly, a blockage of the cerebral arteries would cause a stroke. This isn’t instantaneous though, as after injection the embolus has to go to the lungs first, cause an increased pressure, and then move into the arterial circulation — that’s if the victim even has an open foramen ovale — and even then it isn’t likely to be fatal unless the air bubble ends up in a key artery¹.

Next, let’s look at the scene itself. The killer plunges the syringe in the victim’s neck while he is…otherwise engaged. It’s hard enough hitting a vein in a blind stick on an immobile patient; it’s much harder to hit a moving target. Plus you not only have to hit the vein, but you have to hit it in such a way to inject the air bubble into the vein and not the surrounding tissue. That’s impressive aim². Finally, you’ll notice she seems to be holding a 3cc syringe — which is only 1/100th of the amount actually required to reliably kill someone³.

NOTES:
¹ But on the other hand, it doesn’t take as large of an air embolus in the arterial system to cause severe damage, just 0.5ml was enough to block a main coronary artery in one study.
² If she had managed to hit the carotid artery, that might have been even worse. Air injected directly into the carotid can cause an impressive stroke.
³ I guess the victim might have had a patent foramen ovale, and being his wife, the killer might have known that fact, and even counted on it. If that were the case, the small amount of air she injected could have caused a heart problem, if it ended up in the correct artery, which is pretty much a crap shoot. And even then it would take significantly longer to have an effect than the 30 seconds or so it seems to take here.

Tags: comics medicine fallen angel air embolus cardiac arrest peter david

from The Amazing Spider-Man Giant Activity Pad
(not the Skrull part, I added that on my own)

I can’t decide if Tony Stark has an extremely healthy heart, or a very unhealthy one.
♥ First, he gets an irremovable piece of shrapnel embedded in it (scene on the left, from his first appearance in Tales of Suspense #39), which was one of the reasons he invented the Iron Man suit (and was the source of his trademarked Marvel Angst™ for his first hundred or so appearances).
♥ Then, he had a “serious acute myocardial infarction” — in other words, a major heart attack (scene on the right from The Mighty Avengers #6)
♥ Not to mention all that alcoholism puts a big strain on the heart.

So…does he have a bad heart from all the damage, or a good one because he survived all of it?

Tags: comics medicine iron man tony stark heart heart attack

Click on the image above for the full ad.

It turns out that Marvel wasn’t the only comic book company running the “Verb - It’s What You Do” public service campaign — DC had their own versions of the PSA, and — hard as it is to believe — they make the Marvel ads (starring Wolverine and Nightcrawler) look good by comparison. This ad is one of the lamest PSAs I’ve come across yet.

All they did was take a stock Justice League pose and add a few captions. And not a caption for every hero either, just a few. Apparently only Green Lantern, Batman, and Flash care if you get off your duff, the other four really couldn’t care less. Way to phone in the public service message, DC.

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Tags: comics psa justice league verb

How big a plot point was Tony Stark’s injured heart in the first few years of Iron Man’s adventures? It was rare to find an issue that didn’t mention his heart at least once, if not twice or three times. And not just “mention it” as much as pound home the plot point over and over and over again. That Stan Lee — not much for subtlety, was he?

From Iron Man’s first two years of solo adventures, Tales of Suspense #39 to Tales of Suspense #72, comes a little collage I like to call Tony’s Telltale Heart:

Tags: comics medicine iron man tony stark heart tales of suspense

So there’s a rumor going around that Tony Stark may be a Skrull. Original idea, right?

Not so much, it turns out. Here’s a page from Iron Man (Volume 2) #13:

Admittedly, this is from the horribly screwed up “Heroes Reborn” universe — and on top of that, it’s from the “let’s take a bad idea and make it even worse” issue where the Heroes Reborn universe is amalgamated with the Wildstorm universe (hence the Daemonite reference) — so it’s not a particularly well-remembered (or even well liked) storyline.

So if Tony Stark winds up being a Skrull, remember you heard it here second — and in Iron Man #13 first, ten years ago.

Of course, now that I look at the scene again in the light of day, I notice that the Skrull brags about how Iron Man’s armor protects him from detection from humans, but when he reverts back to Skrull form — his “armor” reverts as well — which means he wasn’t even wearing the armor he was bragging about in the first place.

Tags: comics iron man tony stark skrull heroes reborn skrull wildstorm

Is the Hulk’s blood different from Bruce Banner’s? (I have this vague memory of the Hulk having green blood, or I am just misremembering?)

The reason I ask is the She-Hulk.

When Jennifer Walters received the transfusion that originally made her the She-Hulk in the Savage She-Hulk #1, she received blood from Bruce Banner.

However, after losing her powers, she regained them by getting a second transfusion in the Sensational She-Hulk #57. Only this time, she received blood from the Hulk, not Bruce Banner.

I’m just wondering if the transfusion from the Hulk instead of Bruce Banner made any difference…

Tags: comics medicine hulk she-hulk blood transfusion

I wish I could say with 100% certainty what is happening in this scene, but I can’t. Basically, it seems that Number 5 is suddenly exposed to the horrific memories of the experiments which were performed upon super-intelligent chimp Pogo and — as he says — he “can’t take it.” What you see is the result. This image is from Umbrella Academy #5 by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá. All previous Psychic Nosebleed Zen posts Tags: comics medicine nosebleed umbrella academy super-intelligent chimp

another image from The Amazing Spider-Man Giant Activity Pad

Sure, there have been comic book PSAs featuring stars before, such as Bob Hope. But never has there been a PSA guest star as special as this one, Paulette Breen — Miss American Teenager, circa 1964, who apparently spent her teenage years stalking the streets in her tiara looking for smokers to berate and belittle.

Miss Breen went on to win Miss Illinois USA in 1971. This was followed by a role on All My Children, then spots on Happy Days, Quincy, and (comic book connection!) Wonder Woman. She also appears in at least one MST3K worthy movie, Parts: The Clonus Horror.

The Miss American Teenager pageant seems to have disappeared around the same time that Palisades Amusement Park closed. For a look at another Miss American Teenager appearance in DC Comics, check out this post from Lady That’s My Skull.

Click on the image for a larger version of the ad

This PSA is written by DC’s PSA guru, Jack Schiff, with art by frequent collaborator Sheldon Moldoff. It appeared on the inside front cover of DC comics from October 1964 including Adventure Comics #325, Brave and the Bold #56, Sugar and Spike #55, Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #52, and Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #80.

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Tags: comics psa smoking miss american teenager paulette breen jack schiff sheldon moldoff

Swamp Fever

• The #3 cause of death in Gotham City swamps (fig. 1).
• Initial Symptoms: Chills, mustard yellow skin color (fig. 2).
• Incubation Period: 1-7 days
• Diagnosis: Best performed by librarians with Princess Leia hairstyles (fig. 3).
• Later Symptoms: Weakness and fainting (fig. 4).
• Treatment: Bed rest, stylish pajamas, and Chinese Oranges (fig. 5).

Education courtesy of Detective Comics #369 (from Showcase Presents: Batgirl ). Script by Gardner Fox, pencils by Carmine Infantino.

Tags: comics medicine swamp fever batgirl batman

I like the idea of Extremis, but the more the Knaufs try to explain it, the more nonsensical technobabble we get. Technobabble always catches my eye, but since this is biologically-based technobabble (technobiobabble?), it’s gets special attention.

And then to top it off, our bad guy scientist throws in an outlandish metaphor to explain it all:

Scenes from Iron Man #24. Script by Daniel and Charles Knauf, pencils by Butch Guice.

Tags: comics technobabble extremis iron man

yet another image from The Amazing Spider-Man Giant Activity Pad

Normally I can just ignore the bizarre science and questionable medicine on Doctor Who and Torchwood, but it was so bad this time I can’t keep quiet.

Well, that was a lame and stupid science-saves-the-day ending.

A futuristic bomb has zeroed in on the genetic profile of John Hart and embedded itself in his skin. Not wanting to go down alone, he chains Gwen to him with “hypersteel” (like regular steel — only more so!) handcuffs.

Frantically, Owen and Jack take the tubes of blood they have of every Torchwood member (convenient, that). They spin it down in a centrifuge and then take the remaining blood cells and combine them into a single syringe. Arriving just in the nick of time, Jack plunges the syringe into John’s heart. This small amount of blood is enough to confuse the bomb so that it lets go of John, giving Jack enough time to hurl it through the rift*.

First of all, I’m a little creeped out by the fact that they’re got tubes of the team’s blood stored in the fridge at Torchwood — not surprised, really, just creeped out. Of course, blood has a short shelf life, so they’d have to keep drawing new blood every few weeks to keep it on hand “just in case.”

Blood doesn’t have a lot of DNA. Red blood cells don’t have a nucleus and thus are missing almost all their genetic material. There are other blood cells that do have a full complement of DNA but they are not as numerous as the red blood cells. (Yes, I know that forensic shows and even actual forensic scientists are able to get a DNA profile from a minuscule amount of blood, but that’s because they’re using a special technique known as PCR to amplify what little DNA there is.)

It would be hard to hit the heart with that small a needle (and aiming that high on the chest). And why specifically did he feel the need to target the heart?

Mostly, I just find it very hard to believe that a super-sophisticated future tech bomb is going to be fooled by that tiny amount of non-John DNA. Assuming Jack plunged a full 5cc syringe of foreign blood into John’s circulation, that still means that 99.9% of the blood in his body is his own. And that’s only counting the blood — all the other cells of the body have DNA too. In the end, that syringe of blood probably means that only 99.99999% of the DNA in his body is his own, and 0.00001% is foreign.

It’s likely it did set him up for a nice transfusion reaction though, as the antibodies in his blood target the foreign blood cells (unless the blood types are compatible or he’s type AB+).

*Watching the show, my wife and I had the same thought: Just cut off John’s arm (the one chained to Gwen with “hypersteel”) and hurl the rest of him into the rift, bomb still attached. No great loss. Seriously, did the character have a single redeeming quality?

Tags: television medicine torchwood john hart jack harkness blood bomb

Another of the “Verb — It’s What You Do” PSAs that are meant to encourage kids to become active. One of the least inspired PSA campaigns of recent memory, though both major comic companies did join in. Marvel Comics at least had new art for their Verb PSAs; DC, on the other hand, just took a stock image and slapped a few captions on it. At least this Teen Titans one is better than the Justice League one.

Click on the image above for the full ad.

I do wonder about the captions though. Robin, Cyborg, and Beast Boy all have captions that suggest they want to play with others. That’s good and fits the tone of the PSA campaign. Starfire’s caption is much more violent — she wants to destroy “opponents.” And I’m not sure how Raven’s “making new rules” is conducive to either good game play or friendship (”Raven, you can’t just skip over Boardwalk!” “Yes I can, I just mystically created a rule that says so!”)

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Tags: comics psa justice league verb

A fairly high scoring episode this week, but then having such common answers as lupus, sarcoidosis, and multiple sclerosis always helps. Correct final answers were given to people who answered either breast cancer or paraneoplastic syndrome.

High scores for this week go to Georgie and Justin, who both earned 19 points, and Chi, who earned 16.

Overall, after Episode 10, proudfoot retains the lead for another week. Chi moves up to second, and thanks to this week’s scores, Georgie and Justin tie for third overall.

Full standings and scores can be found here

House finally returns to television with new shows, with a sadly mediocre outing, though it started out promising.
An episode recap, medical discussion, and spoilers follow!

Maggie, a 34 year-old single mother develops sudden and complete paralysis of her hands. A series of workups by orthopedists, neurologists, and immunologists is negative so she is admitted to House’s team. At this time her symptoms consist of flaccid paralysis (paralysis with loss of muscle tone) of both hands and intermittent numbness of her arms. There is a known family history of breast cancer and Maggie is positive for the BRCA1 gene (one of the breast cancer genes), so she had a double mastectomy (both of her breasts surgically removed) several years before because she felt her risk for cancer was too high. It also turns out that Maggie, and her daughter, never lie to each other. Never, ever. This becomes a source of fascination and aggravation for House.

Taub suggests paraneoplastic syndrome from some remaining breast tissue that may have become cancerous, but an MRI of the chest is negative. Later, he and Foreman talk to her most recent sexual partner and trick him into admitting that he slipped her some Ecstasy. In light of this, Maggie is started on dialysis, but she shows no sign of improvement — in fact, she gets dramatically worse and goes completely blind. The differential now includes problems with the dialysis solution, Kearns-Sayers Syndrome (a rare genetic disorder that includes abnormal heart conduction, paralysis of the eye muscles, and degeneration of the retinas), Multiple Sclerosis, or a vascular (blood vessel) problem. A variety of tests are run including an MRI and a fluoroscein angiogram of the eyes but both are normal. There is no evidence of any pathology including macular degeneration or optic neuritis. Her house is also searched and her computers brought in for House to examine. To him, her e-mails suggest increasing joint pain and fatigue, but nothing ever comes of this.

The differential diagnosis is now conversion disorder — a psychiatric condition where mental concerns are “converted” into physical problems — so the team lies to her and tells her that she has “infectious parapheresis” (a fictitious condition) and they have a medicine that will cure it right away. They believe they can trick her out of the conversion disorder. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work (because she doesn’t have conversion disorder, and even if she did, you can’t cure it that way), and once again, she gets worse with swollen lymph nodes closing off her throat. She is intubated initially but Taub is able to reduce the size of the lymph nodes so she can once again breathe on her own. A fungal cause is now suggested, as is sarcoidosis. It doesn’t really fit, but House orders a bronchoalveolar lavage (washing the lungs with sterile saline and then testing the fluid) just to be sure. As before, the test is negative, but as is usual for House’s patients, her symptoms dramatically worsen during the test. She is now bleeding into and out of her eyes. It turn out that her platelet count is extremely low so her blood cannot clot right. The differential diagnosis now consists of splenic sequestration (the spleen is trapping all the platelets), tuberculosis, gaucher disease (an inherited disease), TTP (thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, a blood disorder that leads to increased blood clots and then to low platelets), hemolytic uremic syndrome and lupus. House cuts off Kutner before he can finish suggesting more causes and orders a bone marrow aspiration (note the pictures at the bottom of the link — no drill is used). Chase attempts to perform the aspiration but runs into trouble when it turns out that her bones are as hard as rock — it seems that Maggie has osteopetrosis, a condition where the bones are harder than normal.

The team initially hopes the she has Carbonic Anhydrase Type II deficiency (CA2), because it is the only cause of osteopetrosis that is not fatal (not true, patient with adult osteopetrosis — also known as benign osteopetrosis — can have lives of normal length). The start to arrange a bone marrow transplant, but then tests reveal that Maggie does not have CA2, therefore they assume that she must have one of the fatal causes of osteopetrosis. (Along the way, House also determines that Maggie’s daughter is adopted, a fact Maggie never told her, meaning that she does lie to her daughter.) A causal conversation with Wilson convinces House that he missed something, so he injects Maggie with Risperidone. This antidepressant antispychotic drug can cause breast tissue enlargement, and House figures that Maggie has abnormal breast tissue somewhere in her body that has become cancerous and is using the Risperidone to find it. Sure enough, an area behind her knee swells up and House is even able to get breast milk from it. Maggie has osteopetrosis related to Breast Cancer and paraneoplastic syndrome. He tells her and her daughter that after surgical removal of the cancer and chemotherapy, she should recover.

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The medicine, particularly in the second half, was pretty shaky tonight.
First, there is a difference between osteopetrosis and osteosclerosis. Osteopetrosis is a type of osteosclerosis, but the terms are not interchangeable. All the causes of osteopetrosis are genetic, and if Maggie had one of these diseases, it would have shown up with other symptoms long before now.

Osteosclerotic (and osteosclerotic) bone is harder than normal, but so hard that it is actually brittle and fractures are common. Chase would have shattered the bone, not scorched it — plus I find it harder to believe that any bone, even hardened bone, would be stronger than surgical steel. And a drill for a bone marrow aspiration? No way, a special needle is used.

Breast cancer can cause osteosclerosis…in metastatic lesions (breast cancer that has spread to the bone). This means that individual spots on the bone will be sclerotic, not the entire skeleton. It is also only in metastatic disease, which has poor survival even with surgery and chemotherapy…so not quite the rosy recovery House suggests.

Risperidone may cause breast tissue enlargement and galactorrhea (milk production), but that doesn’t mean it will. It’s a very rare side effect. It certainly doesn’t occur that fast and after a single dose.

Conversion disorders are extremely difficult to treat and you can’t cure the patient with a placebo. If that were the case, then every cure would work because the patient believed it would.

You don’t use dialysis to treat an ectasy overdose, but then ecstasy is often cut with even worse drugs so who knows what was actually in the pills, and dialysis can be used for an unknown overdose (and that’s why they tested the pill itself).

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I give the medical mystery a B because it was genuinely interesting. The final solution, though clever, falls apart on close examination so scores a mere C-. The medicine started out good, but ended up bad, and that averages out to a C. The soap opera was good, both with the team and Secret Santa, and the “I never lie” family. I give the soap opera a solid A.

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For the record, Contagious Ecthyma is a viral infection of ruminants — usually sheep and goats — that can be passed to humans. The lesions heal on their own, no treatment is necessary. Contagious Ecthyma is also known as Orf — a disease I’ve been predicting would show up on House for several years (though I neglected to put it on my challenge list). As far as I can tell, it does not affect donkeys or mules.

The previous House review
A list of all prior House reviews

Challenge scores can be found at the post immediately beneath this one (or click here)

Tags: television medicine house paralysis blindness osteopetrosis breast cancer

Pappy posts a lot of great Golden Age stories, and he’s recently posted a classic evil scientist (or at least “misguided scientist”)/monster story from Chamber of Chills Magazine #5.

In this comic we learn:

1. If you touch the wrong part of the brain, you can turn your patient into a monster. Not just figuratively, but literally, with sharp fangs, pointed ears, and green skin (well do I remember that first day of my surgical rotation, when the Chief Resident sat us down as a class and taught us the four basic lessons of the rotation: “Eat when you can”, “Sleep when you can”, “Pee when you can”, and “Don’t touch the wrong part of the brain or your patient will turn into a monster”.)
2. For God’s sake, let the nurse carry the syringe and give the injection. She’s better at giving shots than a doctor anyway.
3. On the other hand, that same nurse will abandon her patient to the monster without batting an eye.
4. It is never a good idea to store a large bottle of acid on the top shelf. If you do decide to store a large bottle of acid on the top shelf, at least put a lid on it.
5. If said acid just happens to fall and splash on someone’s face, they too will gain an instant monster-like visage, including blue skin and fangs.

(For once, I will not complain about the surgical team’s lack of eyewear because eye protection was not required back when the story was written.)

Head over to Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine and check out “Operation Monster”.

Disguised as hippies, Batman and Robin discover that their informant has been shot. So what is the first thing that Batman does?
1. Enters the room and notices that his informant has been shot and is slumped over the table.
2. Looks around the room to find any clues left by the victim.
3. Discovers clues conveniently held in the victim’s hands.
4. Discusses these clues at length with Robin, including “theorizing” what might have gotten your informant shot.
5. Finally, checks out the victim to see if he’s alive — then calls an ambulance.

I think Batman may need to re-evaluate his priorities.

(I’ve talked about the ABCs of trauma repeatedly — Airway, Breathing, and Circulation — but apparently Batman has his own ABCs: ANALYZE the crime scene, BANTER with partner, and then CHECK-OUT the victim.)

Click on the image to the right to see a full sized image

Scene from Detective Comics #371 (“Batgirl’s Costume Cut-Ups”), script by Gardner Fox, pencils by Gil Kane.

Tags: comics batman robin trauma

Daredevil: Father #4
writer, Joe Quesada
penciler, Joe Quesada

I finally got around to reading Daredevil: Father the other night, and I never should have bothered. It was the epitome of padding out a story to “write for the trade.” In the six issues of the mini-series, there is at best one-and-a-half issues of plot. Daredevil’s origin is retold in detail on at least three separate occasions, but don’t think this is a comic for new readers as Quesada throws in without explanation characters you wouldn’t recognize unless you follow the Daredevil mythos pretty closely (Jessica Jone, Melvin Potter). The “mystery” of the series requires Daredevil to miss a clue so blatantly obvious that no competent super-hero, let alone one who’s a top flight lawyer by day, could possibly overlook it. The story might have worked as an issue or two of the regular series, but not as a stand alone six issue mini-series.

In issue #4, the villain of the series, a serial killer, is shown playing with two prescription bottles: one marked Ketamine, one marked Rohypnol. The implication is pretty clear: these are both infamous date rape drugs, and this is how the killer incapacitates their victims. Unfortunately, Quesada gets every detail of the prescriptions wrong.

Ketamine is a potent dissociative drug and is not available in neighborhood pharmacies. It is only available directly to physicians, medical facilities, researchers, and veterinarians. Furthermore, it only comes in liquid and powder forms; no pills. The “160/25 MG” label makes no sense. That notation is used for medications that contain 2 drugs, most commonly pain medications such as Vicodin (5/500, for 5MG Oxycodone Hydrocodone + 500MG acetaminophen) or blood pressure medications such as Diovan-HCT (160/12.5, 160MG Diovan + 12.5MG hydrochlorothiazide) — it would not apply to a single drug such as Ketamine.

While there is a bizarre warning label on the bottle, there is no quantity of pills dispensed or directions of how to take the pills, two key parts of an actual prescription.

Rohypnol is powerful benzodiazepine, the class of sedative drugs that also contains Valium and Xanax. It is illegal to prescribe Rohypnol in the United States, so there’s no way to get a prescription. This bottle also shows the 160/25 MG notation, but once again that would not apply to Rohypnol, which only comes in strengths of 1, 2, and 5MG (but again, is not legally available in the U.S.) As before, the prescription is missing the quantity and the directions but contains a bizarre and redundant warning (all prescriptions should be taken under the supervision of a doctor — that’s why they’re called prescription drugs, not over the counter drugs).

Both drugs are listed on the label as tablets, yet the killer is shown emptying capsules into the victim’s drinks. Normally I’d complain about lack of communication between the artist and writer, but there’s nothing I can really say about that this time as they’re both the same person.

Tags: comics medicine daredevil ketamine rohypnol joe quesada