Polite Dissent

I don’t think you could pay me enough to be the warden at the prison holding Saturn Queen, and this panel is good example why (and is one of the less unpleasant things to befall him in this issue, actually).

Image from Legion of Super-Villains #1 by Paul Levitz and Francis Portela

All previous Psychic Nosebleed Zen posts.

Tags: comics medicine nosebleed saturn queen legion of super-villains

You want a guarantee? Well, how about this: I guarantee this is the best black-and-white comic book public service ad about a ghost written Pulitzer Prize winning book that you’ll read today!

Click on the image for the full ad

Okay, so it’s not just about Profiles in Courage, but about the legacy of JFK — or at least his legacy among school children a year and a half after his death.

This PSA was published in DC comics in January 1965. Jack Schiff wrote the script — no word on whether Ted Sorenson helped — and Sheldon Moldoff provided the art.

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Tags: comics psa jfk kennedy jack schiff sheldon moldoff

I’ve heard patients say this dozens of times, and they’ve only been right once. We never did find his one leg.

Batman and Robin #18 “The Sum of Her Parts, part 2 of 3″
Paul Cornell, writer
Scott McDaniel and Christopher Jones, pencilers

Despite what you may think, I don’t always demand medical verisimilitude in my comics. In stories that are trying to be realistic– or at least as realistic as a comic book universe can be — I would like to see the medicine depicted as accurately as possible. On the other hand, if the story is purposefully over-the-top, then I’m fine with the medicine being over-the-top as well. Paul Cornell’s storyline from Batman and Robin #17 through #19 is one of these larger than life scenarios — with a nice little grain of medical fact at the base of it.

Una Nemo is a beautiful, brilliant, and rich ex-girlfriend of Bruce Wayne. During an attempted robbery, she takes a gunshot wound to the skull that opens a large hole right through her brain – but she survives. And not only survives, but thrives, becoming the villainess known as Absence.

Dandy-Walker Syndrome is a real condition, or actually a collection of several related conditions that share certain characteristics: 1) an abnormally developed cerebellum, and 2) an enlarged fourth ventricle. The cerebellum is the portion of the brain located behind and under the hemispheres of the brain. It is very important for motor control, coordination, and balance. The ventricles are pockets of cerebrospinal fluid found within the brain. There are two large lateral ventricles — together they make up the butterfly-shaped area in the center of the brain you always see the images of the brain hanging in the background in medical scenes. The third ventricle is a small vertical fluid pocket, and the fourth ventricle is also vertical and found in front of the cerebellum.

It’s true that mild cases of Dandy-Walker Syndrome may never be noticed. However, as the anatomy becomes more abnormal, the symptoms become more severe. Poor motor control and unsteadiness are common. Nerve problems and abnormal breathing can also be seen. Dandy-Walker can also present with an enlarged skull, particularly in young children (unlike adults, their skulls still have the potential to expand). Mental retardation can also be seen in severe cases.

Now, If this were real life…

Judging by the CT scans, Nemo has an extremely severe case of Dandy-Walker Syndrome. By all rights, she should have an abnormally large head and be severely mentally deficient, not the beautiful billionaire media genius she is.
If she only has a thin layer of grey matter, then two large holes are going to make a huge difference since each hole removed a significant chunk of her remaining brain.
Those holes would be constantly leaking cerebrospinal fluid. She would be sloshing as she walked.

Increased oxygen to the brain is reported as a benefit by believers in voluntary trepanation (drilling holes in the skull). Like Nemo, they claim that it can heighten intelligence. To call this a fringe idea would be giving it more credit than it’s worth. Nothing resembling a legitimate study has ever supported this. The brain is only set up to utilize oxygen delivered via the blood – it cannot utilize oxygen in the air, no matter how many holes there are in the skull.

A few people scored high this week, a few scored low, and most didn’t score at all. For episode 18, Laura wins with 13 points, followed closely by Crystal and Fred13, both with 12 points.

Overall the top standings, and points, remain completely unchanged: Jamie Ptremains in the lead with 64 points. Gary and Tippi are tied for second with 58 points. Corien is fourth with 53 points, and Fran and atg are in fifth with 52 points. If your score is 43 points or higher, you are in the top 10%.

Click here to see the full scoreboard.

Thirteen’s back, at least for now. While she and House play with potato guns in New York, the rest of the team encounters a patient — make that patients — ready for their own A&E show. Overall, one of the better episode of the season.

While House is off picking up Thirteen from jail — where she has been for the past six months — and whisking her away to a chili cook-off and potato gun contest in Schenectady, the rest of the team remains at the hospital. The guys are looking forward to a few days of vacation, but M³ manages to dredge up a case for them.

A thirty-six year old male science teacher who has been coughing up blood, and also suffering headache, chills, and chest pain, is admitted to House’s service. The ER has already ruled out pneumonia, bronchitis, and lung cancer. The initial diagnosis is epistaxis — nose bleeds (the blood drips down the back of the nose into the throat and then is coughed back up) — but while the patient has had nosebleeds in the past, he hasn’t had any recently. Chase then suggests that he may have a Serratia infection, which can produce a red pigment which may be mistaken for blood, but the patient is clearly coughing up blood. Toxic exposure was also suggested as a diagnosis and a search of the patient’s house turns up a home straight out of Hoarders. Taub suggests the hoarding may be a symptom of a brain injury or Alzheimer’s, but Foreman thinks the patient may have caught the fungal infection Aspergillosis from the moldy food in the house. Blood cultures, as well as a psychiatric consult, are ordered, but everything turns up normal.

Despite being in the hospital, the patient’s condition worsens. His chest pain is worse and his blood oxygenation is dropping. Carbon monoxide poisoning is suggested, and this time Chase and M³ head out to the patient’s house. They find no carbon monoxide, but they do find his wife hiding under a blanket. It turns out she is the hoarder, and he just goes along with it. They also find some raccoon droppings and become suspicious of Q fever (a bacterial infection carried by certain animals). Both the patient and his wife are started on the antibiotic doxycycline.

The patient improved markedly, but his wife does not and actually suffers a heart attack. When the team discusses possible diagnoses, there is debate about whether or not her hoarding is symptom of some other underlying condition. An MRI is ordered to get a good look at her brain, and Chase and M³ head back to the house to look for a potential hydrogen sulfide exposure. There are only normal amounts of hydrogen sulfide, but hidden in the back of the bedroom closet, M³ finds an old set of baby clothes. The team now adds infertility to the list of symptoms and rush to check hormone studies et al on both patients. Thirteen jumps in and points out in her oblique way that hidden baby clothes may represent something other than infertility. Making the logical jump, M³ deduces that the wife has suffered miscarriages, and this and the other symptoms leads her to a diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (an inherited disorder affecting collagen, which can lead to all kinds of problems). To sum up: Ehlers-Danlos led to her miscarriages, and the hoarding was a psychological response to that. The hoarding led to the exposure to raccoon droppings which led to the Q fever.

Not too many medical issues tonight (as is usually the case when the patient only makes up half the episode). As usual, major complaints are in red, modest complaints are in blue, and nit-picking ones in green:

The carbon monoxide diagnosis doesn’t make sense. They said the carbon monoxide exposure was improving his lung function (and it explained why he got worse in the hospital: no more CO) – but improving it from what? Even if they were right, there would still be some underlying condition causing his symptoms.

Aspergillosis would have shown up on a chest CT or x-ray — studies the ER would have performed to “rule out” pneumonia, bronchitis, and lung cancer.

Ehlers-Danlos is associated with multiple heart and blood vessel diseases, mostly valve defects and aneurysms, but a heart attack isn’t a common symptom. There have only been a handful of cases studied, and even in those cases there’s debate over whether the Ehlers-Danlos played a part or not.

Q fever can be carried by raccoons, but they aren’t a common carrier. Admittedly, it does fit the symptoms a little better than most of their other transmissible diseases.

Infertility? I agree with Thirteen that miscarriage was much more likely. People buy baby clothes when they’re pregnant, not when they’re trying to get pregnant.

M³ is being misleading when she suggests the symptoms of Ehlers-Danlos can be controlled. It’s true, but only in a limited way. A successful pregnancy is still highly unlikely.

Admittedly I’m not up on my hoarding, but why wouldn’t they have had power, water, and gas? He had a job and could presumably pay bills.

This week’s medical mystery started off rather routine: coughing up blood shows up in every other episode after all. It deserves no more than a solidly average C. The final solutions fit the symptoms surprisingly well, so I give them an A-. The medicine was brief, but reasonable: B. The soap opera was good in all three aspects: House/Thirteen, Taub/Wife, M³/the rest of the team. I give it an A.

The review of the previous episode of House
A list of all prior House reviews

This week’s House Challenge scores have been posted.

Another of Charlton’s American history public service ads. This one comes from Teen Age Love #34 and features Kit Carson.

This PSA has it all: bear wrestling, Indian fighting, aggressive use of exclamation points, and horribly stilted language (I suspect there was a required word count for this feature, and the writer padded it out). So enjoy…the Legend of Kit Carson!

Previous Charlton American history PSAs I’ve covered include: American Pioneer, Strength of a Nation, Lest We Forget: John Paul Jones, and Your Role in the Cold War.

Click on the image for the full ad

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Tags: comics psa charlton kit carson american history

I wouldn’t have any money.

Walter and William Bell, with the help of Peter and Astrid, decide it’s finally time to separate Olivia and William Bell’s souls. To do this, they need to enter her — frequently rotoscoped — mind.

The Plot: Walter and company try to move William Bell’s soul out of Olivia and into a brain dead body “borrowed” from the medical school, but their experiment is a failure. A short time later, Bellivia suffers a a significant seizure that requires emergency medical treatment. At this point, Bell and Walter realize that the situation with Olivia is becoming worse and they only have twenty-four hours to get Bell into a new body or Olivia’s soul will disappear. They decide to take massive doses of hallucinogens (hence the episode’s title) and enter Olivia’s mind to bring her real personality to the forefront. As for Bell’s soul, they propose to move it into a specially constructed computer.

Entering Olivia’s mind, Peter and Walter find themselves on a crowded New York City street. The World Trade Center towers can be seen, and a flash of light from an upper floor tells them that Olivia is there. About this time, the crowd turns ugly and starts to chase Peter and Walter. They arrive at the tower and are met by Nina Sharp, who tries to throw them down an elevator shaft. They throw her down instead and make it up to the office where they expect to find Olivia but instead find William Bell – and now becomes animated, reminiscent of those rotoscoped Charles Schwab broker ads. Looking out the window, angry crowds have arrived at the tower. The trio rush to the roof and are attacked by zombies in lab coats (just go with the flow here). Luckily, there is a zeppelin moored to the roof and Peter, Walter, and Bell escape in the airship.

Peter tells them to head to Jacksonville because that is where Olivia must be hiding. Along the way, someone sabotages the zeppelin’s fuel lines. Peter heads to the engine room, finding it locked and chained. He opens it and is attacked by the man who had been locked inside. The man fires a flare gun through the wall of the airship, grabs a parachute and jumps out. Unfortunately, Walter is too near the opening and is sucked out, falling to his death – only he awakens back in the real world, kicked out of Olivia’s mind.

Bell and Peter arrive in Jacksonville and head not to the child care center, but to the local military base (no, not Army base, it is clearly labeled “military base”). They manage to find the house Olivia is taking refuge in – the house she was living it just before the Cortexiphan experiments. Peter finds Olivia, but quickly realizes it isn’t the real Olivia because there is something wrong with her eyes. Instead, it is the six year-old Olivia in the background who is the real Olivia. Bell, Peter, and young Olivia run out of the house because the angry crowd has arrived. Peter saves Olivia from being hit by a car, but is struck himself, and like Walter, ends up back in the real world. Now only Olivia and Bell remain. Just as the mob advances on them, Olivia finally takes control and tells the crowd – which is made up of her lifetime of fears – to stop. Bell congratulates her and gives her a message to pass on to Walter, then disappears.

Back in our world, Olivia wakes up, in complete control of her body again. Walter and Astrid try to download Bell’s soul into a computer but fail. Olivia passes on Bell’s message to Walter, letting him know that Bell never expected the computer-download trick to work – he expected to die – and he was never good at good-byes. When Peter shows her a sketch of the man locked in the zeppelin, Olivia matter-of-factly informs him that he’s the man who’s going to kill her.

I’m just going to focus my attention on the real world aspects of this episode, so I can avoid the inevitable “it’s all a dream” argument.

1. Status
25 minutes of seizure activity puts Olivia right at the cusp of status epilepticus, and also puts her into the likely brain damage category.
Lorazepam (brand name: Ativan) is a good first-line agent for treatment of a prolonged seizure. 4mg is the correct dose.
Phenytoin (brand name: Dilantin) is a reasonable second agent (another dose of Lorazepam would be another option), but not as a drip, at least initially. A loading dose needs to be given before the drip is started or the medication will take too long to have any effect. As an aside, Phenytoin can cause some anemia, but this is a chronic problem and in no way should affect emergency treatment.

2. Zapped
It looked like Olivia was having some sort of ventricular tachycardia on the monitor, and if the patient is unstable, then defibrillation (shocking) is the recommended treatment.
However, 360 joules is not the recommended starting level. 200J is first, then 300J, then finally 360J.

3. Don’t Worry, It’s a Loaner
The medical school’s not just going to loan out a brain-dead body (a corpse slated for anatomy class, perhaps, but they were clear this was a brain dead patient), and why would a medical school have posession of such a patient anyway? A hospital would — and they’re not going to loan him out either.
Apparently it’s important that just the lower half of his body is chilled.

4. The Candyman Can
Walter’s 2000 grams of LSD is enough to make between 4 million and 20 million standard doses of the hallucinogen (depending on what you consider a standard dose), or about 29,000 lethal doses (and that’s probably an underestimation).
► UPDATE: Oops, I misheard. Walter said 2000 milligrams, not 2000 grams — so that means he made only 4,000 to 20,000 doses of LSD.

5. Now I Feel Old
I dealt with the “synch the brains’ electrical activities” way back in my review of the very first episode of Fringe.

6. Just Wondering
What OS does a soul-containing computer run?

A decent episode of Fringe, but nothing extraordinary. I found the animated sequences rather offputting (if you’re going to use them, use them for the entire in-the-mind sequence). At the end I also wondered, story-wise, what this several week diversion with Walter’s soul actually accomplished. The Fringe Doomsday Clock remains unchanged.

Tags: television fringe lsd brain seizure

Though there weren’t any super-high scores, thanks to some common diagnoses, a good number of players scored points this week. For episode 19, JenJen had the high score with 9 points. Mac was second with 6 points, and Adriana, Akshay, Bhetti, Joe, and Karl Withakay tied for third with 5 points.

Overall the top standings remain mostly unchanged: Jamie Ptremains in the lead with 65 points. Gary and Tippi are tied for second with 59 points. Corien is fourth with 54 points, and atg and Gleb are in fifth with 53 points. If your score is 45 points or higher, you are in the top 10%.

Click here to see the full scoreboard.

Master’s swan song. It’s a pity this episode couldn’t have worked up better medicine for her to go out on.

Kendall is a sixteen year-old sailing prodigy who is just a few days away from leaving on a record breaking around-the-world sail when she collapses on deck. She is admitted to House’s team for evaluation. The initial differential diagnosis consists of dehydration, a seizure, or back trauma that injured her adrenal glands causing an adrenal crisis. House likes the adrenal idea so orders cortisol levels checked on Kendall every fifteen minutes for four hours. M³ and Thirteen decide to speed up the process by putting Kendall on a treadmill. While being stressed on the treadmill, her hand turned blue, requiring vasodilators to correct. This leads to a new differential diagnosis of cardiomyopathy due to mercury poisoning, Raynaud’s disease, or a cereberal vasospasm. The team decides to test the latter by infusing Kendall’s basilar artery with a calcium channel blocker. The test is (apparently) negative, but Foreman incidentally notices a calcified pineal gland. Thirteen declares that this solves the diagnosis and she is started on hormone therapy and scheduled for discharge.

When next we see Kendall, she is in an OR receiving a sympathectomy. Apparently she collapsed in the hospital parking lot and was readmitted. Her symptoms were thought to be a hypertensive crisis caused by overstimulation of the kidneys. Thus a surgery is being performed to remove that stimulation. Unfortunately, Kendall develops severe hypotension (low blood pressure) during surgery, suggesting the current diagnosis is wrong. The latest differential diagnosis consists of Wegener’s granulomatosis, dehydration, or sarcoidosis. House favors the Wegener’s idea and the patient is started on immune suppressants. Several hours later, watching House and Wilson’s latest escapades, M³ has her own Eureka! moments and deduces that Kendall must have caught Salmonella enteritis from some bad poultry and the infection is now hiding in the bone. She finds a tender area in the left upper arm that seems to support her decision. However, an MRI scan reveals no infection, but a bone tumor — a lymphoid sarcoma. Amputation is recommended as definitive treatment, but Kendall refuses to go through with it until after her sail around the world. When her parents acquiesce to her desires, M³ becomes extremely frustrated. Hearing some of the history of House’s injury from Wilson, she decides to take a play out of Stacy’s book. M³ gives Kendall a medication that causes a cardiac event, when she is rushed to the OR, incapacitated, M³ has Kendall’s parents sign a consent for the amputation. When all is said and done, Kendall’s arm is removed and her life is saved, but at the cost of her dream.

As usual, major complaints are in red, modest complaints are in blue, and nit-picking ones in green:

I have to admit that I am very puzzled by two aspects of the medicine this episode. So puzzled I’m not sure if they’re right and I missed it, or they are utterly wrong:
First, the calcified pineal gland. I’m not aware that this finding means anything significant, other than possibly a poor sense of direction. It’s not a rare finding and can be seen in 10% of adolescents. There’s nothing about it that requires any hormone therapy. I suspect they meant pituitary gland.
Second, I’m unfamiliar with lymphoid sarcoma. Searches only reveal a few hits, and nothing that remotely matches this case. Could they have meant lymphosarcoma, a cancer of the lymphoid tissues? While this can, rarely, occur in bone it doesn’t fit the history or treatment. Frankly, osteosarcoma seems the best fit.

This is another episode where the dots don’t connect well at all. So Kendall has a bone tumor of her arm — how did that cause her collapse on the boat? Did this tumor somehow cause the calcification of the pineal (cough cough) gland, which itself somehow led to the collapse (and the pericarditis, and the blue hand)?

You can have a seizure without head trauma. Most people with seizures have never suffered a head trauma.

Why would they diagnose a hypertensive crisis when they made a big deal of Kendall having normal blood pressure and pulse earlier in the episode when they discounted dehydration.

Scott’s Second Law of House: When the writers are vague about the treatment (“hormones,” “immune suppressants”) instead of giving the actual name of the medication, the medicine is almost always fishy.

I’m confused about the medical school timeline. M³ finishes medical school on one day, and starts internship the next (presumably July 1st, the traditional starting day). No graduation? What if she didn’t turn in her procedure book, was there enough time to stop her from starting her internship? And why is she choosing an internship the last day of school — it should have been decided in March during Match Day, where very hard-to-break contracts are signed.

It would be exceedingly rare for Salmonella to cause a bone infection in a healthy adolescent with a normal immune system.

This week’s medical mystery was rather dull — someone fainting. Nothing particularly special there. At best, this earns a C-. The final solution, while full of drama, didn’t answer the underlying mystery. It earns a meager D. The medicine was sloppy, confusing, and probably plain wrong. I’ll give it a D, just because I’m not entirely certain enough about what’s actually going on to give it the F it likely deserves (even with the Violet Beauregarde reference). The soap opera was good, and it was nice to see a fun Wilson/House feud (and seeing Wilson win). I give it an A.

The review of the previous episode of House
A list of all prior House reviews

This week’s House Challenge scores have been posted

Spring’s here, and before too long school will be out for the year. This public service ad was written to address the safety concerns of children during summer vacation. Yes, it’s exactly exciting as it sounds.

Click on the image for the full ad

I think it’s safe to say that no one wants to be a wedgie.

The flag behind the podium lets us know this was written — or at least drawn — prior to 1959. That’s the forty-eight star pattern we can see (six horizontal rows of eight stars).
The coonskin cap dates the PSA to the ’50s as well.

Sure enough, this PSA was published in DC comics in July 1956. It was written by Jack Schiff with art by Ruben Moreira.

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Tags: comics psa safety vacation jack schiff ruben moreira

Scene from the Tommy Tomorrow story in Action Comics #218

Of course, since Tommy graduated from Spaceport West Point in the futuristic year of 1988, that means this story technically takes place in the past.

My first exposure to Tommy Tomorrow was not his original back-up stories in Action Comics, but instead his rather unflattering villainous role in Howard Chaykin’s Twilight mini-series, so I’ve always had a jaundiced view of the character.

Gotham City Sirens #22 “Hell Hath No Fury, part 2″
Peter Calloway, writer
Andres Guinaldo, penciler

In Gotham City Sirens #21, we learn that Arkham Asylum guard Aaron Cash had a son who died from tetanus as an infant, and that he was deliberately infected in one of the Joker’s schemes.

Clearly tetanus was chosen because of the risus sardonicus, the Joker-like grin almost all tetanus patients display. Other than that — and even with that — the symptoms and presentation don’t really match tetanus much at all.

Concern #1:The wound.
Clostridium tetani, the bacteria that causes tetanus, is an anaerobic bacteria. That means it can only grow in an environment without oxygen. This is why puncture wounds are classic for tetanus — once the puncture is healed over, the bacteria is left deep in the muscle where it is tough for oxygen to reach, a perfect environment for it to thrive. However, in this case the baby received a superficial scratch — not the kind of wound C.tetani is likely to grow in. (Yes, there have been cases of tetanus associated with shallow wounds, but they are in patients with compromised blood flow like diabetics.)

Concern #2: The baby’s age.
How old is the baby? If he is truly focusing on the balloon, like his mom says, then he has to be at least 4 months old, which means he should have received two tetanus vaccinations. Not perfect protection to be sure, but it should be enough, especially for a shallow wound.

Not a concern:
The fever and fussiness. Frequently seen in tetanus.

Concern #3: Neuromuscular symptoms.
Tetanus is a neuromuscular disease, yet the baby is showing no neuromuscular symptoms, particularly those associated with tetanus (a spastic paralysis). The patient shows no muscle spasms or paralysis. There is no mention of facial spasms or lockjaw, some of the earliest signs of the disease.

Concern #4: Cardiac arrest.
The baby ultimately dies of cardiac arrest. Tetanus patients generally die of respiratory failure due to paralysis of the chest muscles. Now, the baby may have developed cardiac arrest because of the respiratory arrest, but bringing out the paddles and shocking him is not going to do any good unless the underlying respiratory problem is corrected. (You can sometimes see an abnormal heart rhythm with tetanus, but that’s not the situation being shown here.)

Concern #5: Tetanospasmin levels.

There is no blood test for tetanus, it is diagnosed based on symptoms. Despite what the doctor says, you can’t measure the level of tetanospasmin in the blood.

Concern #6: The Smile.

The risus sardonicus, the Joker-like grin associated with tetanus, is not a “side effect when a patient dies of tetanus.” In reality, it is one of the early signs of tetanus so Aaron would have seen it long before his son died.

The traditional Polite Dissent Easter peeps picture?
I posted it thirty-five minutes ago.

Previous years have featured the Peep Titans, Justice League Peeps, the Peeps Avengers, the Legion of Super-Peeps, the Uncanny X-Peeps, and the Peep Lantern Corps.

yes, that is supposed to be Bubastis

Tags: comics peeps easter watchmen

Not a showy or spectacular episode of Fringe, but a solidly entertaining one that significantly advances the über-plot and sends the two universes into crisis.

The Plot: Over in the alternate universe, Walternate and evilBrandon have devised a method of turning on “the machine” using DNA extracted from Fauxlivia’s child. There plan has not gone unnoticed, however, as the machine is emitting enough abnormal signals to set off the highest alert for the Fringe Team. They arrive on site at Liberty Island, but are sent home by Walternate. It’s enough for Fauxlivia to realize that Walternate has turned on his doomsday device and she confronts him about it. He lectures her about ethics, and then sends her on her way. Fauxlivia decides that Peter is the only one who can stop Walternate’s plan (or maybe she just wants him with her in the surviving universe), so she sneaks onto Liberty Island. She confronts evilBrandon and has him show her how to cross over into our universe (because apparently she forgot how she did it last time). He gives her a canister to use — but it doesn’t work (faulty? Or was evilBrandon lying?) — and she is captured and locked up in one of the cells used earlier in the season to house the real Olivia.

In our world, Nina frantically calls Agent Broyles to inform him that our version of “the machine” has turned on all by itself. Walter realizes that this means that Walternate must have turned on his machine, which caused the one in our universe to switch because of “quantum entanglement”. Peter decides that because the machine is keyed to him, he has the best chance of switching if off. Unfortunately, as he tries to touch the machine, it sends him crashing across the room, unconscious. As the episode ends, he remains comatose.

Because of the activation of the machine (or machines), strange things have been happening in our universe. A dimensional vortex appears and destroys a large swath of farmland, including two ranchers and large herd of sheep. There’s radio interference and swarms of locusts. A strange aurora appears in the skies at night.

Sam, the strange bowling alley proprietor who has some connection to the First People, realizes something bad is going on. He disappears and Olivia spends most of the episode trying to track him down, only to have him show up on her doorstep at the end telling her he needs to see “the machine”.

1. Cat’s Cradle
Henry may have received half his chromosomes from his father, but they’re not the identical chromosomes. Crossovers and recombination occur during meiosis resulting in unique chromosomes.
And if 23 chromosomes were all that mattered, Walternate and Peter should have 23 similar ones as well.

2. Use Your Head
Closed head injury with unconsciousness and it’s a “possible concussion?” No, that’s definitely a concussion, though there may be some other injuries as well. It’s no surprise the MRI didn’t show anything, and concussion-related imaging studies are usually negative. Now, Peter may have been unconscious before he hit the ground, but he still would have had a concussion, just on top of whatever machine-related injury he suffered.
What does an echocardiogram have to do with electrical injury to the heart. An EKG would be a better choice since it detects the changing electrical fields within the heart.

3. Alternotes
The Dodgers are still in Brooklyn and still play at Ebbets Field, and the Expos are still a team.

A solid episode. Nothing showy, but it really felt like the overall plot was advancing. For another week, the Fringe Doomsday Clock stays where it is.

Tags: television fringe machine concussion fauxlivia

An ex-con masquerading as a TV show host sprays Lana Lang with some scopolamine hoping she’ll spill the beans about Superman’s secret identity.

scene from Action Comics #288 (May, 1962)

Scopolamine, originally derived from plants in the deadly nightshade family, is a potent anticholinergic drug. It is not used much today because nasty side effects are very common, but it can still be found in treatments for abdominal cramping and motion sickness (that patch for motion sickness your mom gets from the doctor before her cruise? That’s scopolamine).

Can scopolamine be used as a “truth serum?” Yes. The CIA experimented with it during their MK Ultra experiments and there are well documented reports of the Czech secret police using scopolamine during interrogations.

Despite the truth serum, Lana doesn’t divulge Superman’s secret identity — because she didn’t know it in the first place. We’ll never know if the scopolamine would have actually worked on her had she known the truth, though I’m suspicious it would take more than a few vaporized squirts to get a strong enough dose.

Tags: comics medicine lana lang truth serum superman scopolamine

I’ve featured a Smokey the Bear PSA comic book before, but here’s Smokey showing up just in the nick of time to save Peter Porkchops from the cooking pot.

Click on the image for the full ad

This is one of the earliest of DC’s PSA series. A dead giveaway: the lengthy title — and no exclamation point.

Smokey actually had his own comic series published by Gold Key in the ’70s, but this is 20+ years before that.

Technically, when this PSA was published, he was known as “Smokey Bear.” The “the” didn’t get added to his name until 1952.

This PSA can be found in DC comics published in September 1949. Even this early PSA was written by Jack Schiff. Art is by Otto Feuer.

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Tags: comics psa peter porkchops smokey the bear jack schiff otto feuer

One of the goofier drugs to appear in comics in the past few years appeared in 52 #34: the truth serum Gaeamytal. “As close as modern chemistry can come to synthesizing the atomic structure of Wonder Woman’s lasso.”

This raises a couple of key questions:

How exactly does one synthesize the “atomic structure” of magic, or magically-derived metal? (And wouldn’t molecular structure be a better choice of words, unless the lasso and Gaeamytal are made of new elements?)
How did they even get a piece of Wonder Woman’s indestructible lasso to learn its structure?

Given that Gaeamytal has never been mentioned again, I suspect we’ll never learn the answer to these questions.

Last thought: I will give the writer credit for a clever — if nearly unpronounceable — name, combining Gaea (as in the Girdle of Gaea, from which Wonder Woman’s lasso was created) and Amytal (i.e. amobarbital, a drug with a long history of use as a truth serum)

Way back in the Silver Age, Action Comics #291 (August 1962) to be exact, Mr. Mxyzptlk shows up to bedevil Supergirl. After playing a few tricks on her, he decides that he’s in love with her and that she must marry him. To convince her of his love, he uses his magic to resurrect her dead parents¹. Supergirl knows that if she doesn’t go through with the wedding, Mxyzptlk will let her parents die again.

While Supergirl reluctantly agrees to the marriage, she is surprised that her parents seem to wholeheartedly support Mxyzptlk as a potential son-in-law. In fact, her father proposes a special toast to their future together just before the ceremony.

Supergirl should have had more faith in her father as he has succeeded in putting on over on Mxyzptlk. He added Kryptonian Truth Serum^2,3 to the punch and now Mxyzptlk must do whatever he says. He forces Mxyzptlk to say his name backwards – sending him back to the 5th Dimension. Unfortunately, with Mxyzptlk’s disappearance his magic also fades and Zor-El and Alura head back to whatever Kryptonian afterlife⁴ they came from⁵.

Notes:
1. Actually, her parents weren’t actually dead but hiding in the “Survival Zone.” You’d think they could have mentioned this little fact to Supergirl.

2. Apparently brewing Truth Serum is an important skill for Kryptonian climatologists — or maybe Zor-El is an über-doctor.

3. Zor-El and Alura were able to mix up their Kryptonian Truth Serum in a lab in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude – and it seems all the ingredients can all be found on Earth.

4. Or the Survival Zone.

5. You’d think they would have left some of their Turth Serum around for Supergirl or Superman to use the next time Mxyzptlk showed up.

Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #80
Lois pretends to injected herself with Sodium Pentothal so she that can persuade Superman she doesn’t love him any more. [LINK]

New Warriors #25
Sodium Pentothal again (though referred to by its alternate name Sodium Thiopental here). Silhouette injects her villainous grandmother with a dose of the drug that would likely prove lethal in the real world. [LINK]

And for a change of pace, how about the opposite of the Truth Serum — the Lie Serum — from Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #16 [LINK]