Bad science in Trek

[scotpens]

. . .It's actually "Obsession" where Spock states that "my haemoglobin is based on copper, not iron". But if it really is haemoglobin, then it must have iron there, or it wouldn't be called haemoglobin. Either Spock is misusing words for the sake of his uncivilized friends, or then he's actually saying that the oxygen carriers in his blood have copper in addition to iron, perhaps boosting rather than replacing the function of that metal.

Some Earth organisms have the protein hemocyanin in their blood, which does use copper as an oxygen-binding agent. But they’re arthropods and molluscs. I don’t imagine hemocyanin would be very efficient for vertebrates.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Are you calling Spock spineless????? Why I oughta!!!!

 

[Paradon]

. . .It's actually "Obsession" where Spock states that "my haemoglobin is based on copper, not iron". But if it really is haemoglobin, then it must have iron there, or it wouldn't be called haemoglobin. Either Spock is misusing words for the sake of his uncivilized friends, or then he's actually saying that the oxygen carriers in his blood have copper in addition to iron, perhaps boosting rather than replacing the function of that metal.

Some Earth organisms have the protein hemocyanin in their blood, which does use copper as an oxygen-binding agent. But they’re arthropods and molluscs. I don’t imagine hemocyanin would be very efficient for vertebrates.

That's why you dead squids when you go to the beach where these things are everywhere. Sometime they were starved of oxygen when the condition isn't right and die in the ocean and washed up on the shores. That's why most animals have evolved to use iron compound as the based for their blood.