Justice League of America #13: A Medical Review
Justice League of America #13 “Unlimited Chapter 2”
Dwayne McDuffie, writer
Joe Benitez, penciller
Poison Ivy: It’s the flora in your digestive tract. Mycobacterium paratuberculosis to be precise. They’ve octupled in population by now.
Poison Ivy: That’s not going to get rid of them, dear heart. They’re quite a bit deeper than your stomach.
Poison Ivy: If I hadn’t just called them off, you’d be well on your way to a bad case of colitis. But I didn’t want to be around for the explosive diarrhea.
Mycobacterium paratuberculosis* is an interesting choice of bacteria for Poison Ivy to use. As the name suggests, it is a member of Mycobacteriaceae, the Mycobacterium family. This is the family of bacteria that contains the germs responsible for both tuberculosis and leprosy. While most bacterial infections take place outside of the actual cells of the body, in the surrounding tissues and fluids, Mycobacteria are one of the few types of bacteria that manage to infect and live inside the cells of the human body. This makes them difficult to detect and hard to treat, usually requiring long courses of multiple antibiotics.
There is controversy regarding how infectious M. paratuberculosis is in humans, or whether it is infectious to us at all. It does not cause the acute gastroenteritis John demonstrates, with abdominal pain and vomiting (but maybe Poison Ivy just souped up virulence of the germ). he bacteria may cause the diarrhea she threatens him with later: there is a suspicion that M. paratuberculosis may somehow cause or be related to Crohn’s Disease — an inflammatory disease of the bowel — because it is known to cause a similar condition in cattle (Johne’s Disease) and it has been found in patients with Crohn’s. However, curing the infection appears to have no effect at all on the Crohn’’s, so there is debate about how much the germ is actually involved in the condition. That’s pretty much it in terms of what we know about M. paratuberculosis and human infections.
Also, since when have Poison Ivy’s powers been able to affect bacteria? As far as I know, they’re only effective against plants, and that’s a separate kingdom entirely. Of course, this is only an initial chapter of the story, so maybe Ivy’s expanded powers will be explained later (I blame Luthor. That’s almost always a safe bet).
*also known as “Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis” or “Map.”
October 25th, 2007 at 7:23 am
Dwayne is a former scientist (physicist) himself. I suspect he knows that bacteria are not plants.
October 25th, 2007 at 8:01 am
Official Comment
That’s my supposition as well. That’s why I suspect Luthor.
October 25th, 2007 at 9:50 am
The whole thing can be blamed, perhaps, on Alan Moore. In Moore’s Swam Thing #53, he has Swampy threatening Gotham with his vast control over plants. Among the threats he makes but doesn’t act upon — as opposed to the mass chaos and destruction that he causes anyway — is his claim that he can control and cause catastrophic, rapid growth of the flora in the human digestive tract.
And since Neil Gaiman distantly tied Ivy’s origins in to the Green by dragging Jason Woodrue into the mix, and James Robinson recently boosted Ivy to Swamp Thing levels in the “?Face the Face” storyline….
October 25th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Thanks for the information, wish I’d talked to someone like you first, rather than winging it from some dimly-remembered stuff I read once a long time ago. As someone already posted, my training was in Physics, not Biology. I do know that bacteria aren’t plants, I was just having fun with the “flora” pun. I *was* referencing the Crohn’s disease theory, by the way, it was even called that in the first draft. I assumed John’s gastrointestinal discomfort was caused by the gas created by the rapid bacterial reproduction, too big a stretch? Finally, the vomiting wasn’t a symptom, it was John’s attempt to get rid of the bacteria, that’s why Ivy tells him it won’t work.
Anyway, cool blog. As much as I love House MD, it’s pretty clear I’ll never write for it.
October 25th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Official Comment
Questionable medicine — and sometimes even bad medicine — can be overlooked if the characters and situations are compelling. House can pull that off; Private Practice, not so much.
October 25th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
As much as I hate the fact that the multiple color version of Kryptonite have been brought back, it occurs to me that Poison Ivy could be very effectively countered through the use of White Kryptonite. You could destroy all of her plant-based weapons and likely cause her considerable cellular damage, given that she is, apparently, part plant.
The Luthor supposition is a good one – on an episode of JLU (not sure if it was written by McDuffie), Luthor enhanced the abilities of many villains, such as Killer Frost, who proceeded to demonstrate a previously unseen ability to not just generate exteme cold but actually telekinetically manipulate ice.
October 25th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Hmm, just noticed Mr. McDuffie’s comment.
I’ve often thought – since stumbling across this blog – that it would be cool if more comic book and TV writers used you as a resource. Barring that, it’s cool that this blog exists to evaluate the accuracy of medical information, as most of us don’t have the wherewithal to do so ourselves.
October 25th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Yellow vomit! It’s got to be Sinestro in disguise.
October 26th, 2007 at 9:09 am
What is with John’s neck! Did Ivy make that grow as well?
October 28th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Quoting Carl, “Dwayne is a former scientist (physicist) himself.”
For some reason, this statement strikes me as funny… “I’m a former scientist. I used to believe in the principles of cause-and-effect, but it just seems so hollow now. That’s why I became a Happenist. Things… just happen, that’s all.”
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