The Medical Thread

It'd have the similar effect as anemia, only way worse of course. Since one of the main things hemoglobin does is transport oxygen to your entire body, you'd suffer the effects of total oxygen deprivation.

So suddenly having your blood replaced with water would have a similar effect as drowning. Appropriate, I suppose.

Edited by M84 on Jul 14th 2019 at 10:26:12 PM

As with other supernatural ways to kill someone that act on the blood, it'd look like cyanide poisoning and the body would be extremely pale. Not like drowning, actually, the effects of water on the lungs are quite distinctive.

You know, I don't exactly know the precise effect of cyanide poisoning. This feels like a good opportunity for me to do some research on that.

Random thought.

I used to think that antiseptics and disinfectants were the same thing, but it turned out those are something that I don't want to mix up. Basically antiseptics is for living tissue, while disinfectant isn't.

Yikes.

A question for a story:

A character in my story is an ER surgeon who is such a workaholic that he practically never leaves hospital (and doesn't have a life outside of it) and considered the single best surgeon in the hospital.

Would it make sense for the moderately large hospital to more or less give a single patient room for him to sleep in?

Most hospitals with an ER have on-call rooms where doctors and surgeons on the night shift can sleep while on call (hence the name).

Most of those are dorm style (with multiple rather basics beds or even bunkbeds), but some have single rooms with some basic furniture beside a bed, like a table, desk with computer (or at least all the infrastructure to plug a laptop into) and some chairs, in case the doctor using it wants to write some reports or watch cat videos or something instead of just sleeping the whole time they're not needed.

Edited by Robrecht on Sep 16th 2019 at 2:51:21 PM

A question for a story again!

I got a character who gets stabbed in the abdomen and thigh, starting to bleed out. As he await for the medical help to arrive, first he starts to applying pressures to the wounds with clothings.

Then he tells himself to calm down, so that his heart will stop beating so fast and resulting in faster blood loss. Does this part make sense medically, mentally calming yourself to slow blood loss? Is the rate of heartbeat even related to the rate of blood loss?

Well... Arterial bleeding does get faster with the heartrate, though if the artery in the thigh is cut, gravity means you can bleed out within minutes unless you lay down. So it all depends on where in the chest or thigh we are speaking. Also... if they are left with the knife sticking in, better to leave it in till the meds arrive cos the blade means that much less space for blood to flow out.

The character in question had to pull out the knife out of his body to fight off the attackers.

And wow, I forgot how a severed leg artery can kill you pretty quickly. I better make the injuries smaller.

Suggestion: the knife is better left in the leg.

Fists, bottles and teeth are reusable; arterial blood on the floor? Less so.

Ars Technica: Lawsuit: Juul sold tainted e-liquids to users “drunk and vaping like mo-fo’s”

Adding to the recent controversy over contamination in vaping products, a former Juul executive has filed a lawsuit claiming retaliation for whistleblowing and wrongful termination, among other things. He claims that the company had a culture of profits over safety, viewing users of their products as too dumb to care about contamination and more interested in getting them addicted than in keeping them healthy.

In particular, Juul refused to recall its mint-flavored e-liquid even after being made aware of the contamination risk, according to the lawsuit. Contamination of vaping products is said to have been responsible for over 1600 injuries and 34 deaths.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 31st 2019 at 11:50:14 AM

A very silly question for a story!

The main character, quite drunk for the first time in his life, visits a girl to admit that he likes her back (she has been very affectionate towards her for a while).

But he couldn't get neither thoughts nor words straight so he asks her to slap him, which she obliges TOO eagerly. She slaps him twice and with such a strength his legs give out under him.

When he stands back up, with very red cheeks, he remarks how she "literally slapped the alcohol out of his system."

It's supposed to be more of a funny scene, but it did make me wonder: Is it possible to make someone recover from inebriation with blunt physical force?

Edited by dRoy on Nov 11th 2019 at 1:46:38 AM

The alcohol will still physically be there causing problems until it's metabolized. Reflex times will still be slowed, etc. As far as I know, adrenaline might momentarily counter it, enough for the coherent line you described, but definitely not long enough and not completely enough to be considered sober or safe to drive.

male anorgasmia

So far I've decided that his genetic engineers reduced the density of his nerve endings in certain areas of his skin, but I have yet to specify where exactly and by how much, because I don't have any information on how many missing nerve endings does it take to induce anorgasmia. (All of Them missing is the obvious way to cause it, but his genetic engineers didn't go that far because they need him to know what the literal fuck he's doing.)

Edited by Miss_Desperado on Nov 18th 2019 at 9:51:35 AM

Yet another story related stuff. This is a rambling, not a question this time.

So, I got a character who transitioned from slaughterhouse worker/butcher -> hunter/soldier -> enforcer/hitman for a mafia boss -> special police unit made of convicts, in a setting vaguely based on 1920s America but with so much stricter gun control.

The character has a lot of experience of cutting up both animals and people. Like, a whole LOT. So, he is practically an expert on stab wounds, showcasing borderline- pathologist level of knowledge in that particular field.

That made me look through several publicly available autopsy reports on stabbing victims. I'm not sure if I'm truly fascinated or regretting looking through all those.

Among the several things I learned, one of the terms is "hesitation marks," which apparently means a series of multiple, parallel, non-lethal, and shallow cuts, or something like that.

Edited by dRoy on Nov 18th 2019 at 2:12:50 AM

You know.... There's two entire forums in the Real-ish category dedicated entirely to asking questions for your writing that aren't OTC. OTC is, in fact, the only forum in the Real-ish category that isn't meant for asking questions for stuff you're writing.

So maybe move these questions to a dedicated thread on Writer's Block or Worldbuilding?

Well, I only ask questions when the thread is quiet for over 12 hours and got no conversations to interrupt. Also, the only rules (well, the major ones at least) that apply in OTC are keepings things on-topic, SFW, and civil. I'm not violating any of that.

Also, there's a major question thread in the Writer's Block titled Random Questions Thread, in which I linked various OTC, Yack Fest, and Troper Coven threads for specific topics, including this thread, which was approved by moderators.

The only prohibition in OTC regarding writing questions are not asking for space combat questions in The Space Thread. If there were additional restrictions I've been not complying in regards to the issue you raised, let me know.

New report implicates several international companies for indirectly and directly profiting over China's organ harvesting through the import/export of immunosuppressive drugs, medical equipment for operations, and devices to preserve organs; also accuses companies of using prisoners for unethical drug testing; also accuses several countries of transplant tourism.

Can modern gene therapy affect only somatic cells, thereby leaving the organism's germline unmodified and thus preventing the changes from being inherited by their offspring?

Yes. There’s an entire field of gene therapy called “somatic gene therapy”.

It is possible, also, germline modification isn't legal in some places.

Edited by SeptimusHeap on Jan 15th 2020 at 9:25:48 PM

What controls what substances do and do not get absorbed by the digestive tract? Is it possible for the digestive tract to accidentally absorb molecules that the body cannot make use of and thus will have to excrete it as waste?

Fat-loving substances and very simple chemicals like water are simply absorbed across the mucosa. Some chemicals such as glucose, calcium or vitamins have specific transporters, and there are peptide transporters which take up certain organic compounds rather indiscriminately.

Okay, so one wanted to make a form of Bio-Augmentation that would make the human body absorb substances that it normally doesn't absorb (let's ignore why such absorption is wanted for the time being), what would be the bare minimum required? Assume that the one doing this can implant purpose-built vat-grown organs without fear of rejection from the subject's body, and such organs can be designed to secrete specific chemicals to influence the body's functions and growth.

There's no need for extreme detail here, BTW; only the kind of detail that you'd expect from your average "Shown Their Work meets Minovsky Physics" example (the trope name for Minovsky Physics didn't try to explain the deep quantum mechanics behind the invented subatomic particles, after all).

Edited by MarqFJA on Jan 15th 2020 at 12:59:18 PM

The small intestine is where a lot of digestive absorbing happens. It has villi on top of bumps on top of wrinkles, the villi are what do the absorbing, and the bumps and wrinkles increase surface area. I'm betting that lots of little patches of, uh, skin(?)^note I don't know the word off the top of my head bearing altered villi positioned all up and down the small intestine would be more effective than one big organ planted at some point along the digestive tract. If the specific chemicals that the altered villi are absorbing are made by bacteria that can thrive in the human or metahuman gut, then whoever is installing the altered villi can go a step further and put colonies of those bacteria inside with whatever process is patching the small intestine (whatever the method may be: surgery? Uterine Replicator? Precise and deliberate Tele-Frag? I don't know).

male anorgasmia

What would happen to the bulbocavernosus reflex if the anus was physically farther away from the male reproductive system? If you're wondering how that would happen, the genetically engineered man is serpentine from the waist down and his genetic engineers disentangled his excretory system from his reproductive system.

^^I think you'll need to explain what it is supposed to absorb, first.

^I don't think that anal-genital distance is important for the nervous system, although I've read that it can be a proxy of hormonal status.