Star Trek diseases and their Earthly equivalents

[RAMA]

http://tricorder.xprize.org/news/star-trek-diseases-and-their-earthly-equivalents

 

[Nerys Myk]

I have to wonder where they got their info. Polycythemia is a real disease. It's an increase in the number of red blood cells, It's the opposite of Anemia which is decrease in red blood cells. I was diagnosed with Polycythemia vera a few years ago.

 

[scotpens]

I have to wonder where they got their info. Polycythemia is a real disease. It's an increase in the number of red blood cells, It's the opposite of Anemia which is decrease in red blood cells. I was diagnosed with Polycythemia vera a few years ago.

Yes, polycythemia is a real disease. Dr. McCoy was suffering from the fictional disease xenopolycythemia in the TOS episode "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky."

Just like triticale is a real hybrid grain, but quadrotriticale is Star Trek stuff.

And the author of that chart needs to learn how to spell "fibrillation."

 

[Nerys Myk]

Yes, polycythemia is a real disease. Dr. McCoy was suffering from the fictional disease xenopolycythemia in the TOS episode "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky."

Just like triticale is a real hybrid grain, but quadrotriticale is Star Trek stuff.

And the author of that chart needs to learn how to spell "fibrillation."

Were you under the impression I didn't know that?
Adding "xeno" doesn't turn it in to anemia. xeno=alien/foreign/stranger, poly=many, cyte=cell, haima=blood.

 

[scotpens]

Were you under the impression I didn't know that?

Perhaps I didn't get that your main point was that anemia and polycythemia are opposite conditions.

We're on the same page, just maybe a paragraph apart.

Yeah, but adding "xeno" doesn't turn it in to anemia.

And pon farr has nothing in common with an ear infection. Also, how can high blood pressure be compared to "vaporizing the body through biomolecular disintegration"?

And no mention of Rigelian fever or Sakuro's disease?

I think whoever made up that chart was either being deliberately tongue-in-cheek or was just pulling stuff out of . . . well, you know.

 

[sojourner]

That chart has the same description for low blood sugar and leukocytosis.