Good TV, bad bad science

Adrift in a sea of reality shows ("Armed and Famous"? COME ON!)  introduced to get us through the winter hiatus of the good shows, I've recently added a few more shows to the list of those I watch.  And I am happily catching up on reruns.

But I must say that a rerun of House that was shown sometime in the last week (sorry, Tivo, so I don't know when things are actually ON) was laughable in its explanation of infertility treatments.  And that is troubling coming from a show about a genius diagnostician.

The patient was a woman undergoing "fertility treatment" a vague term served up and not explained except to say that it involved estrogen supplements and that she'd been on it for a year.  At one point the doctors considered a treatment to cure her ills (uncontrolled flailing of her limbs) that would "undo all those treatments" but the woman could start up again when she was cured.  WHAT?  I feel like I've done most every test and fertility treatment available today and I've never heard anything like that. 

But the most laughable part was the end when the doctors realized the woman must have been taking birth control pills (her husband wanted a baby and she did not). 

I mean what reproductive endocrinologist would miss something like that in all the blood panels drawn from the woman undergoing fertility treatments?  Would this doctor not look at this woman's charts?  Would he/she not notice that the woman is failing to ovulate?  And would estrogen really be the treatment for this?

Maybe I am missing something, because anovulation was not my problem.  But this just seemed ridiculous to me.

Comments

[Yellowgirl]

This is just like one of the two miserable episodes of Inconceivable, minus the arm-flaying estrogen supplementing part.... but the chick didn't want kids (she'd been fat in her youth and was worried about a fat kid) and testing showed she was taking bcp... the ever-helpful staff at the RE's put a video of her "fat years" in the spank tank for her husband to find (knowing, I guess, he was a video man) and he came out (sans spank), they hugged and cried, and went home to "make babies". Sigh. What a crappy show. Sounds like this one was right up there as well.

Yellowgirl (yellowgirlnc@yahoo.com); lurker who shares the same due date I believe (July 25th?) after years of IF treatments....

[Aurelia]

Yeah, when I originally saw this I was ticked because the fertility treatments seemed inaccurately portrayed...I mean give me a break, BCP negating fertility stims...but what really annoyed me was the idea that R!talin brings on seizures, plus House calling it coca!ne. Utter crap...real ADHD sufferers like me end up getting questioned and treated like our disease is imaginary. Not helpful at all.

[Eva]

I remember being annoyed at that episode, too. That sort of thing always makes me think: how wrong must the science be on all the shows that are about medical issues I DON'T know anything about.

[Dawn]

House hates infertile stuff. Remember the kid conceived through IVF and who had a twin he reabsorbed that was making him think he was being kidnapped by aliens?

[Mel]

I keep meaning to watch House, but this...er...doesn't give it glowing reviews. I'm always disappointed when fertility treatments et al are portrayed on television. Those Friends episodes? Grey's Anatomy?