James Holsenback <nom### [at] nonecom> wrote:
> OK ... I'm a HUGH fan of the TV show House.

  I assume that was an intentional pun... :)

> Any other House fans out there?

  The two or three first seasons were absolutely marvelous. However, there
was a significant drop approximately by the time they decided to renew the
majority of the main cast.

  I liked how in the first seasons each team member was a specialist in
a specific field of medicine, and hence contributed his/her own perspective
in each case. For example Foreman was a neurologist, so his ideas were
often related to the brain and nervous system. One of them (can't remember
now who) was a specialist in infectious diseases, so he/she contributed to
the ideas on that field, and so on.

  I also liked that differential diagnostics were really differential
diagnostics, with symptoms and diseases laid out on a whiteboard, and
crossed out one at a time when they don't fit.

  There's none of that anymore. In the latest seasons (spoiler alert)
we have a plastic surgeon who doesn't seem to otherwise be specialized
in anything, a general practicioner who isn't either, and some kind of
medical student/proby who isn't either. None of them contribute in any
special area of knowledge, and they just throw completely random ideas
with no pattern or logic. Even Chase has lost his specialization and it
doesn't come up anymore *at all*.

  (His specialization in the first seasons has been, for some strange
reason, changed to an all-powerful surgeon specialized in all possible
fields of surgery, which is completely unrealistic and almost physically
impossible. Surgeons in general are *not* qualified to perform all types
of surgery. Each specialization takes years and years of study. Chase has
been seen to be a cardiac surgeon, neurosurgeron, microsurgeon as well as
an all-around minor surgery expert. If anything, he is way too young to
be a surgeon even in *one* specialized field, not to talk about a half a
dozen. It also raises the question of where are all the other surgeons
in the hospital because Chase seems to do all the surgeries. In the first
seasons there were actually background characters who were surgeons, but
they seem to have all disappeared.)

  Speaking of surgery, the team certainly performs surgeries rather freely
(although not in the first seasons, IIRC, which were more realistic).
That's not how it works. A doctor has to be *qualified* to perform surgery
before he is even allowed to do it. An unqualified doctor performing a
surgery is a lawsuit waiting to happen (not to talk about it being damn
dangerous for the patient). Taub *might* be qualified to perform some
surgeries because he's a plastic surgeon, but even then it's far-fetched
for him to have qualifications eg. for brain surgery. (Even Foreman,
who's a neurologist, wouldn't be allowed to perform brain surgery without
the proper qualifications for that.)

  Btw, have you noticed the (completely intentional) parallels between
Gregory House and Sherlock Holmes?

                   Sherlock Holmes      Gregory House
                   ---------------      -------------
Job                Solves criminal      Solves medical
                   mysteries            mysteries
Colleage and
best friend        Dr. Watson           Dr. Wilson

Plays instrument   Violin               Guitar, piano

Apartment #        221B                 221B (in first seasons)

Addicted to        Cocaine              Vicodin

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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