Last night I watched the most recent episode on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I've been giving the show a lot of slack regarding basic things like their own internal consistency, because I really wanted it to get better. Last night, I decided that it won't.
Allow me to paraphrase the scene that did me in:
Set Up: Derek Reese, brother of the famous Kyle Reese and therefore uncle of John Connor, has been shot. He's coughing up blood and looking like he's done for.
Paramedic Guy: He's lost a lot of blood. He needs a transfusion. His blood type is AB and that's really rare.
River...errrr, I mean...the perky li'l Terminator: Sarah Connor is type O negative.
Paramedic Guy: That's no good. He needs at least three units of his own type!
Me, sitting on the couch: Ummm...why is that exactly?
John Connor: Ooo...oo! Test me! See if I'm a match!
Me, seeing where this is heading: no, No, NO!!!!
Wrap Up: Of course John is a match and Derek gets his transfusion. Everyone is happy...ish.
Here are my problems:
1. AB is the universal receiver, they can literally take blood from any blood group (minor exceptions exist, but do you really care?)
2. O neg is the universal donor, they can give blood to anyone (again, minor exceptions)
3. There are three possible flavors for the blood type gene: A, B and O. Everyone gets one gene from each parent. The only way for someone to be type AB is to get an A from one parent and a B from the other. Now, pay attention. Here comes the tricky part: both A and B are dominant to O. Since Sarah is type O, she only has Os to give to John. Therefore and ergo, John CANNOT be type AB.
Now I get the fact that not everyone has the qualifications to work in a blood bank, like I do. But I seem to remember learning the basics of the ABO system in high school. Even if that's too much to expect from today's public education, why in the name of all that is cute and fuzzy didn't the writers call in a science consultant when they were writing about something that they clearly didn't understand? I mean, this is basic real-world science, not something that is open to debate like the effects of time travel on a fluid time stream!
This ends my rant. Thank you for tuning in.
- Mood:
disappointed
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The really funny part is that both of my father's parents are type AB, so is my uncle, and that side of the family is so totally needle-phobic that they've never donated blood.
But yeah, bad science! One of the bookstores in Norman used to post bad-science reviews of books on their bulletin board; one reader wrote a letter to the publisher asking for a refund because the first 30-odd pages of a book contained so many stupid mistakes. (He got it, too.)
As our esteemed VP said, there are things that people don't know they don't know. I'm guessing said writers (are these scab writers or is the strike over or was this filmed before the strike?) didn't really know the details of the ABO system; they knew A, B, AB and O and didn't know the rest. So they wouldn't even consider hiring a science consultant because they had no clue they needed one. I doubt most people would even catch the "O can donate to AB" problem, let alone the "O cannot give birth to AB" one.
I am very sorry that this show sucked so much; despite my belief it would suck, I wanted it to be good.
Also, the pink-on-brown colour scheme is really hard to read
Also, the pink-on-brown colour scheme is really hard to read
Yeah, I'm gonna about to change that. Sorry all.
Usually, when talking about transfusions, the assumption is that it's only red blood cells being transfused, all of the antibody-containing plasma has been removed. In a rbc transfusion, the only issue is 'Will the recipient's antibodies recognize the cells as foreign?'
However in this case they were transfusing whole blood. With a whole blood transfusion, there is the additional question 'Will the donor's antibodies recognize the recipient's cells as foreign?' So in the case of whole blood, so an exact match WOULD be necessary.
I hadn't considered that angle, since hospitals don't do whole blood transfusions.
All the genetics stuff still stands, though.
Sorry the show didn't turn out to be fun. There's never enough good science fiction to go around.