Faculty Bibliography

Ugly Betty [Television Program] -- Fitzident and limben are fictitious chemicals, but dexedrine is a commonly used amphetamine that can cause rapid heart rate, sweating, dilated pupils, dry mouth and feelings of power and aggression similar to what Betty experiences

Savages [Motion Picture] -- Lenny's physical problems -- weakness, slow movement, rigidity, tremors, mask-like face and shuffling gait -- make his diagnosis much more likely a Parkinsonian dementia such as dementia with Lewy bodies (abnormal proteins that accumulate inside nerve cells responsible for memory and movement) rather than Alzheimer's disease

Secret Life of the American Teenager [Television Program] -- The show is misleading about pregnancy tests -- home urine tests are just as effective as the urine tests available in the doctor's office, with a greater than 95% accuracy rate when used properly after a missed menstrual period. False positives on home pregnancy tests are generally not caused by strange diseases, as Amy's friends suggest, but rather by hormone-containing medications such as fertility treatments, which very few high school students are taking

Weeds [Television Program] -- Having burned down her house, Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) and her family travel to the Mexican border town of Ren Mar, Calif., where they visit Bubbie, the 95-year-old grandmother of Nancy's dead husband

Grey's Anatomy [Television Program] -- The doctors believe that the cement is leaching water from his body while exposing him to alkali, which burns the skin; that toxic chemicals released from the cement are being absorbed; and that the concrete formation is causing a compartment syndrome (compression of nerve, blood vessels and muscle within a closed space, leading to impaired blood flow, and muscle and nerve damage)

The premise: Ann Lord (Vanessa Redgrave) is lying on her deathbed at home, attended by her daughters. Wracked with pain, she appears to be dying of some kind of cancer and is receiving intravenous narcotics. Ann begins to talk about events of 50 years earlier, reliving the untimely death of her former beau Buddy at the wedding of his sister, as she, Ann, jilts Buddy and spends the night with his best friend, Dr. Harris Arden. For the rest of her life, she has blamed herself for Buddy's death and, in a feverish state on her deathbed, relives that fateful night. The nurse in attendance tells her daughters that the characters Ann is talking to and about 'might be real people and they might not' -- she seems to doubt that the memories are real. Indeed, Ann is frequently confused and delirious as death approaches and, among other things, hallucinates that she is visited by Dr. Arden wearing a stethoscope and that her night nurse is in a formal gown

Nip/Tuck [Television Program] -- Dr. Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) and Dr. Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) have moved their cosmetic plastic surgery practice from Miami to Beverly Hills.

El Cantante [Motion Picture] -- [Hector Lavoe] doesn't go to drug rehab, and he is not compliant with his antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication regimen. In 1985, he is diagnosed with HIV -- a time when AZT and other AIDS drugs were not yet available -- but his physician tells him he may not develop AIDS for several years or at all. Ultimately, Lavoe develops AIDS and dies of its complications in 1993. The medical questions: How common was HIV among intravenous-drug abusers in the 1980s? Were there any AIDS drugs available in 1985? How frequently do untreated HIV cases progress to full-blown AIDS (with immunodeficiency and opportunistic infections)? What were the most frequent opportunistic infections affecting AIDS patients in the 1980s and '90s?

The premise: In this fourth attempt at putting Jack Finney's classic 'The Body Snatchers' to the screen, there is a new twist. This time, instead of plant-like pods, it's an alien virus-like particle attached to the wreckage of the NASA Shuttle Patriot, and it begins to spread rapidly through the human population. The virus (in the jargon of the movie) interferes with sweat, causes a 'cellular condensation,' a 'metabolic reaction' and alters the body's 'genetic expression' by the 'integration of alien DNA' -- while turning everyone into emotionless robots. REMAKE: Nicole Kidman stars in 'The Invasion,' in which a virus alters the body's 'genetic expression' and turns people into emotionless robots.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Warner Bros. Pictures

Crossing Jordan [Television Program] -- The reality: Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome has been found in humans in 30 states (460 cases as of January 2007), as well as South America and Canada, though it continues to be quite rare. Outbreaks in the U.S. have been traced to rodents -- spread via their urine, droppings and saliva, which can become aerosolized and inhaled by humans. Antibodies to the virus have also been found in cats, dogs, pigs, cattle and deer. No cases of human-to-human transmission have been reported in the U.S.; however, an outbreak in Argentina in 1976 did appear to be spread among humans. The show's depiction of an asymptomatic spreader is improbable but not impossible. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is no proven treatment or effective vaccine for a hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. Ribavirin, the only approved antiviral treatment that has been shown to be effective against hantaviruses in the test tube, has not yet been shown effective against the syndrome in patients. And a study in the January 2006 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, published by the CDC, reported that a genetically engineered hantavirus vaccine that has been tested in hamsters and monkeys is likely to be of limited use because of variations in the strains of hantavirus