Comments on: Amazing Spider-Man #543: A Medical Review

By: Christopher J. Arndt

Christopher J. Arndt — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 03:18:33 +0000

I saw the “origin” line in an issue of Damage Control, as well.

By: Jon Hendry

Jon Hendry — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 01:59:08 +0000

The ‘labs’ vs. ‘blood report’ strikes me as being a fairly reasonable authorial accomodation. ‘Labs’ would be more realistic, but doesn’t tell the layman much about what was actually done.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 10:41:55 +0000

Thaniks, but note that line is actually derived from _Cerebus_, about Moon Roach – “It felt… like he was having an origin.”

By: Kerlyssa

Kerlyssa — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 08:01:51 +0000

“For all they know, she might be having an origin.”

You made my day, Seth.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 20:50:41 +0000

Remember, this is the Marvel Universe, where radioactive people are quite common, and dangerous. They probably have simple radiation detectors as standard medical equipment. For all they know, she might be having an origin.

The sensible sequence would be this:

They check her when she comes in, she’s radiation negative (radiation-positive patients need special care and maybe isolation).

Later, for some reason, they get a radiation-positive from some routine detector – not a complicated test, just a passive detector that’s part of their common equipment.

When the simple detector pings, they do more specific tests, find it’s the blood.

Now they know something is up. They aren’t thinking “received illict blood transfusion”. They think “been injected with *something* dangerous”

So they start running toxicology screens, trying to figure out what it is. They get the complete blood data. They probably think someone is trying to poison her or experiment on her. So they’re not going to look for foreign blood cells, but various toxins.

By: mike.

mike. — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 14:46:19 +0000

Of course, you’re talking about a universe where superheroes, mutations, alien hybrids, etc. etc. are just the walking-around norm. It makes sense to me that hospitals in this world would have regularly test patients not only for radiation and spider venom, but also shark DNA, elfen magic, latent cyborgism, cross-dimensional parasites, or, you know, that time travelling disease.

By: Korvar The Fox

Korvar The Fox — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 10:00:45 +0000

There are times I would like these various hospitals to mention the bits of Stark Technologies gear they’ve got, that do all these wonder tests (in DC, they would presumably be LexCorp gadgets)…

By: John Bishop

John Bishop — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 07:04:23 +0000

Dr. House was pissed off at the unknown person who was raiding his personal stash of Twinkies. So he used a syringe to inject the creamy filling of his last Twinkie with a massive amount of radioactive dye, waited for it to disappear, then proceeded to go through the entire hospital with his Geiger counter looking for the thief. It was during this search that he certified Aunt May as being radiation-free. During his second sweep of the hospital, she set off the Geiger counter, launching him into action!

Tune in next week when the recently fired Dr. Robert Chase, now unpleasantly pudgy instead of adorably cherubic, checks into the hospital complaining of unexplained hair loss, fatigue and a third arm growing out of his back.