ellen@reed.UUCP (Ellen Eades) (03/22/86)
Well, in the spirit of my KILL MARV posting, I'm gonna hit Claremont and Guice this time. Actually, maybe I should criticize Ann Nocenti, who as editor should have caught the errors. Guice seems to be incapable of deciding, over the first 6 pages, whether or not Danielle is wearing her hair in braids. And with her hands that cold, I doubt she's the one who's braiding and unbraiding. Not to mention if she dumps her packages in front of Pat's gang of kids in the mall, where does she get the new clothes she's wearing when she receives the radio transmission? (As an aside, I really liked Dani with short hair!) Claremont's error is more annoying. He, too, is not paid to be stupid, or to skip his research. He manages to confuse 'insulin shock' with 'diabetic coma', two absolutely opposing conditions. If Danielle lived with the Roberts family for more than 24 hours she would have known that Pat was a diabetic. She then would have had more information about his condition. Insulin shock, or hypoglycemia, results when a diabetic patient does not eat enough to balance the insulin levels in his blood. This is a rapid-onset condition that is easily offset by giving sugar to the patient (like in o.j.). Diabetic coma results when not enough insulin is in the bloodstream. It requires massive amounts of fluid and insulin therapy in a hospital. If Pat's body used up its insulin during the night, he was in a diabetic coma; if he 'went into insulin shock' as Death says (and she should know), he needed not insulin, but calories. I'm not saying this is an uncommon error (I have a hard time keeping it straight myself, and I took an emergency medicine class!) BUT it shouldn't be perpetrated in print, because people believe what they read, and treat diabetics accordingly. Ellen Eades -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - "Who's been repeating all that hard stuff to you?" "I read it in a book," said Alice. - - - - - - - - - - - - -