Thursday, February 19, 2009 . 3:12 AM

I think I just discovered something wrong in House M.D....

It's during Season 4 Episode 8, "You Don't Want To Know", at the tail-end of the show, House is on his usual end-episodic "eureka" moment and explaining his final, correct diagnosis to his team. This is a transcript of what came up:

13: But we tested his blood!

House: That's because we don't test blood for type, we test for antibodies.

Foreman: Because your body only makes those antibodies when you have actually that type of blood.

Clarification here, if it's not clear enough, the patient has type A blood, they tested him and got type AB blood, cos he's got lupus (apparently) and his body is producing an extra antibody, B.

Now, given that context, can someone tell me if I got it wrong, or is the concept of the diagnosis totally off?

Your body only makes antibodies to the type of blood that you don't possess i.e. If you are blood type A, you make B antibodies and vice versa. Type AB people will have no antibodies while type O will have both! That makes AB the universal taker cos they have no antibodies against any type of blood, and O the universal donor cos their blood cells have no antigens for the antibodies to bind to and eliminate.

What House and Foreman are claiming here is that, for example, if you possess A antibodies, you have blood type A. Which SHOULDN'T be the case cos if you possess A antibodies you will have blood type B! Or if you have B antibodies along with it, have blood type O. So technically the patient, whose tests showed both antibodies A and B, should have been assumed to be blood type O, not blood type AB as they did in the episode!

I'm quite sure I'm right, and that House is wrong... Either that or I totally screwed my first year Physiology, or I totally misunderstood that episode of House.

Oh House, I'm so disappointed in you...

"You'll Never Walk Alone"

Archangel