Fiction TV: Keeping You Safe

ONE OF THE persistent brainteasers at work in any TV drama writing room is trying to come up with plot points that seem plausible, without seeming cheesy or farfetched. You want the feel that this could happen, without necessarily being 100 percent true to the science. (this is why, for me, shows like Re:Genesis miss the point. Yes, the truth is often stranger than fiction, but there's a whole (several) genres for TV that can explore that.

With drama -- I want to know what's in the realm of possiblity, not what's likely, and in the choice between the accurate and the best story, I choose story.

I'd rather, in other words, be accurate about how people treat each other by setting it in a world of sentient robots (BSG) than just do an old kitchen sink drama where people say things to each other that we probably never say to each other in real life.

People come down in different ways on this point. And inevitably human nature comes into play, too. In my experience, writers are a whole lot more forgiving of the nitpick leaps they leap on the way to their story, then they are of yours. If you're not careful, the nitpick menace can enervate any story team. It's a constant struggle to keep the right perspective.

Which is why every once in a while, it's great to read stories like this: A failed, four year old TV show helped science out.

Aug 17th, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- Nearly a century after history's most lethal flu faded away, survivors' bloodstreams still carry super-potent protection against the 1918 virus, demonstrating the remarkable durability of the human immune system.

Scientists tested the blood of 32 people aged 92 to 102 who were exposed to the 1918 pandemic flu and found antibodies that still roam the body looking to strangle the old flu strain. Researchers manipulated those antibodies into a vaccine and found that it kept alive all the mice they had injected with the killer flu, according to a study published online Sunday in the journal Nature.

The 1918 flu killed about 50 million people worldwide and nearly everybody else was exposed to the virus, Crowe said. The specific 1918 virus was lost to the world for decades, until it was reconstructed about three years ago using genetic material from victims. When scientists tested the antibodies from survivors on infected mice, they did so in a high level biosecurity lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

The idea for the new study came from an old TV show, said Altschuler. In an episode of the since-cancelled TV series "Medical Investigation," a town improbably gets infected with the 1918 flu and the doctors treat everyone with the reluctantly donated blood of an old butler who survived the original pandemic, he said.

That prompted Altschuler, a professor of rehabilitation medicine who doesn't normally study flu, to look into the idea of testing people more than 90 years old for antibodies. The National Institutes of Health, which paid for much of the study, connected Altschuler with experts in the field and he found the elderly antibody donors.

Cool! Thank you, Medical Investigation!