If you give a perfectly healthy person one of those pills, will they grow a third kidney?
McCoy's kidney pills
- Thread starter Laura Cynthia Chambers
- Start date
I think those pills were not specific Kidney pills but regerative pills which would cause the body to replace a missing part. It would not make sense to me for McCoy to carry around a stack of piils for each body part- a lung pill, a thyroid pill, etc...- that would be a lot of pills to carry in the field and keep track of. A general purpose 'regenerate missing organ' pill makes more sense since it would be a good field treatment and applicable to many uses.
Int he same vein I think McCoy's hypospray does not carry the multitude of different medications we see him dispensing in the field but rather a couple of general purpose 'raw' medicines which he can set up or configure on the fly. There is no possible way (unless he reads the script first) he would know which medicines to take with him and that small field carry kit just has room for a hypospray, a couple of vials and the scanner. I think he takes a basic vials and with a subtle adjustment not seen on camera it becomes a Tri-Ox Compound or Kironide...
Int he same vein I think McCoy's hypospray does not carry the multitude of different medications we see him dispensing in the field but rather a couple of general purpose 'raw' medicines which he can set up or configure on the fly. There is no possible way (unless he reads the script first) he would know which medicines to take with him and that small field carry kit just has room for a hypospray, a couple of vials and the scanner. I think he takes a basic vials and with a subtle adjustment not seen on camera it becomes a Tri-Ox Compound or Kironide...
It didn't make much sense for a 24th century doctor to have pills at all, but they still have the hyposprays, so who knows?
I figure they would have had machines for regenerating organs, similar to Dr. Russell's device on TNG-Ethics, just less advanced.
I figure they would have had machines for regenerating organs, similar to Dr. Russell's device on TNG-Ethics, just less advanced.
My guess is he dispensed it in pill form so as not to alarm the sick woman in her ill state. Once she's cured, she can celebrate all she wants.
I would like one of those pills.
And also because he didn't want to cause a public scene. No one would think twice about seeing a doctor dispense a pill to a patient.
From the dialogue, it seemed to me that the kidneys she had were simply cured of their malfunction.
Agreed. iirc she says "new kidney" but the doctors are just saying that function returned
A
Amaris
Guest
It wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that the kidney had failed, which is why she was receiving dialysis, and the pill regenerated function. I imagine if it had made a *new* kidney, the doctors would be flipping out over "there's a kidney there?!" instead.
And yet, a century later they don't have them to grow a new heart for a cadet who gets stabbed in a bar fight. Unless, an artificial heart is the only way to have saved young Picard quickly and their wasn't time for anything else. I think that might be the explanation.
McCoy has that machine that repairs a broken blood vessel in Chekov's brain.
Sometimes I wonder why you don't see more of the concept of regenerating damaged or missing body parts in sci-fi.
It seems like in some scenes, you see them adjusting a hypospray rather than reaching for a new med.
That makes sense. Her old kidney would be in there unless it had been removed, and that would only happen if another one was transplanted into its place, or there was an imminent danger from leaving it in place.
A puzzle... you can function ok(-ish) with one kidney. So to be seriously ill she'd need both to be failing. Did the pill restore them both?
The woman said "a new kidney". As in, just one. I don't know how she'd know this, although the doctors were right there talking about it so maybe she just eavesdropped.
A
Amaris
Guest
Yeah, my mother had a nephrectomy, so she only has one kidney, and she does okay. That being said, when she had that one kidney, the doctors were still floating the idea of using dialysis, because they didn't think the one kidney could take up the slack. So far, the kidney is doing exceptionally well, but if it significantly reduces function, she would absolutely get dialysis, so I'm thinking this little old lady was up for it because of the single kidney *and* her age, because she appeared to be in advanced years.
People that receive kidney transplants don't have the bad one removed. They just slave the new good one in to pick up the slack. Kidney recipients have three kidneys. It's just that the ones they were born with don't work so well.
T
Checking, family donations began in the late 60s, so it's possible our old lady donated one 15 years earlier and was now having trouble with the remaining one. Slight stretch, but possible.
That's interesting. I'd assumed the new one 'used the existing plumbing', as it were, but not so.
Checking, family donations began in the late 60s, so it's possible our old lady donated one 15 years earlier and was now having trouble with the remaining one. Slight stretch, but possible.
Always a hard scene to watch while receiving dialysis.
I have both of my original, functional kidneys and this discussion is making me squirm.
