Comments on: House – Episode 5 (Season 2): “Daddy’s Boy”

By: Alexandra

Alexandra — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 22:25:01 +0000

I just think it’s funny that the actor playing Cornell, who was described in dialogue as being 22, was 34 at the time this episode was shot. He’s now 40, and is probably _still_ getting roles as 20-somethings.

By: Billy Trouson

Billy Trouson — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 18:49:41 +0000

Is radiation sickness really that uncommon that it would be difficult to diagnose?

I mean I get that most of us are only rarely, if ever exposed to radiations except for the occasional Xray or something like that and the kid wasn’t a secret agent or a worker in a nuclear power plant or anything so it’s not surprisiing that it wouldn’t be the first thing they thought of.

I guess the movies and tv always make radiation poisoning seem like it’s pretty obvious and distinctive when it happens… although I guess usually in movies and tv we’re talking about secret agents and nuclear power plant workers where the exposure is obvious.

I guess my question is- is it really likely that House wouldn’t have figured this out more quickly? Or does radiation poisoning mimic other illnesses and its only obvious if you know you’ve been exposed.

By: FunnyPunch

FunnyPunch — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:41:44 +0000

It’s a great episode. And they probably meant 0.2% which could also be 2 promils (don’t know the right english word – were I cam from we use the promil instead of percent to quantify alcohol amount in the blood). 0,4-0,5 is considered lethal, although it depends on age, sex, tollerance to alcohol and ethnical descent. I live in Poland, and in our Medical Books on toxycology it is written that “0.5% is lethal dose (except for Polish and Russian)” There were records of people who had 1.3% alcohol in blood (dead), 1.15% (severe liver failure and brain damage) and even 1.08% (died in a motorcycle accident – he was driving!). And when i was 17 (and very, very stupid) police found me barely able to stand, and transported me to a “sobering facility” (I don’t know ho it is called in english – you stay for night, until you’re sober. If you’re agressive they strap you to the bed). 2 hours after i stopped drinking i had alcohol level of 0.52%. They had to do a blood test, because most alcomats (ones that you breath into) have max at 0.4%. From this day I radically changed my drinking habits so it all ended in a good way :) .

Does anyone know for what kind of radiation they are screening in the airports and such? I’m not a terrorist I just don’t remember my nuclear physics lessons very well. They probably screen for alpha and beta radiations – because both Plutonium and Uranium are emitting them. But alpha radiation can be stopped by a paper, and beta needs a little more. So in house it had to be neutron or gamma radiation (alpha isn’t lethal unless ingested or pointed directly at damaged skin as i recall).

Cheers to all of you, and sorry for quality of my english.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:53:25 +0000

House’s father, ex-military pilot was played by R.Lee Ermey… RLE once played a helicopter pilot in “Apocalypse Now”.

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 08:23:36 +0000

Just caught this episode, and I have to say that the whole business of the father being surprised about the radioactive material is a bit of a stretch. I used to work for a foundry, and the state would routinely send inspectors in to check our metal to make sure we weren’t handling radioactive materials.

By: Matthew R

Matthew R — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:29:51 +0000

They said the radiation source was used in a device for checking welds. That makes it a gamma emitter, possibly Co-60 (which also emit betas). The father said it looked like a fishing weight, though, so it might not have been the source itself, but some contaminated shielding material.

By: Ellen

Ellen — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:13:27 +0000

I work in a research reactor, but I’m not an expert by any means – just watched this last night with an eye to the radiation side of things. They said the patient got a dose equivalent to about 70,000 chest xrays. A chest xray gives you about 25 millirem, or .25 millisV. (source: tour guide cheat sheet, not sure where that info came from). Multiplying this out, he received a dose of 1750 Rem = 17.5 sV. Assuming he got it around spring break (April 1) and it’s now graduation (May 15), the item would have a field of about 1.6R/hr, or .016 sV/hr. That’s a pretty damn big field. If my math is right, you’d have to be standing about 8 meters away for you to *not* be breaking the law (members of the public are not allowed to stand in fields greater than .02msV).

The item was probably hotter, as it wasn’t next to the patient all the time and it was in a wooden dresser for parts of the time. If the item only emitted beta particles, the wooden dresser would have significantly reduced the field it created. On a side note, House’s meter shouldn’t have been able to find the thing without some help – as it was clicking to background radiation, it would have been on a low range, and as soon as it entered the field it would have become useless, pegging out at the top of its range. That behavior was, however, very consistent with someone slipping an old lantern mantle or other check source into the dresser :P

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 06:52:06 +0000

@Ryan I suppose they mean a 0.2 promillage which somehow ended up being displayed as 2.0% , 0.55 will indeed kill you.

By: Aurora

Aurora — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 00:19:33 +0000

Aidy (re: eye color)–
Actually, there gene for blue eyes is not recessive. In fact, there is no gene for blue eyes or any specific eye color. Eye, hair, and skin color are all determined by the amount of melanin present. These traits are called polygenic because they use information from more than one gene.
There are several genes with information about melanin amounts. Each of these is either dominant (more melanin) or recessive (less melanin), and in combination they determine pigmentation.
If I remember correctly, there are ten genes responsible for eye color. So if 7-10 are dominant, the person will have brown eyes; 5-6, green; 1-4, blue. Brown and blue have a higher probability than green, which is why more people have those eye colors. Numbers very close to the next color (7 and 4) would likely be the reason for hazel and blue-green. As for such anomalies as violet, we can probably chalk that up to a mutation, hence the rarity.
Note: the numbers are approximate. I’ve seen them listed differently, but this is how we learned it in biology, so these are the numbers I remember.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:43:04 +0000

This was a very good episode. I myself have one nitpick. While looking at Cornell’s chart Chase remarks that his blood Alcohol was 2.0.

Shouldn’t that have killed him, since .55 is high enough to kill you.