Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related A medical/science question regarding medical isotopes.

Now, as I understand it, for a number of procedures, medical isotopes are ingested. These isotopes are actually radioactive and stay in the system after the medical procedures are finished. Now, since radioactivity never completely vanishes, but instead decreases by half-lifes, would it be possible for someone who had had one of these procedures done to figure out, by measuring the half-life of the resulting radioactivity in one’s system, how long ago the procedure had been done?

Now, keep in mind that this is for a Lois and Clark story - so the science doesn’t have to be perfected yet in our universe. But in theory, could someone like Dr. Klein come up with a way of doing this?

Also, if this might be possible, what type of procedures do they use medical isotopes for? I need Lois to have had this procedure at some point in the past. Oh, and I need some medical jargon for Dr. Klein to explain what he’s doing to Lois.

Can anyone help?

ML

I have absolutely no freaking clue but ...

DOES THIS MEAN YOU'RE WRITING?!?!!?!

Carol

ML, I'm afraid it's not possible. A living body is recycling atoms all the time with body functions, eating, etc, it's not a closed system. Were it a dead body, it would work.

Sorry to burst your bubble, ML,

Yeah, I'm writing, Carol. In the past couple, the bug has sort of hit me again. Of course, that could end tomorrow, so I'm trying to write as much as I can in the meantime .


Okay, J. Then I'll have to come at this from another angle. What I need to do, without giving too much of the story away, is to prove Lois' age. Hmm... Oh, wait! I think I might have another idea! Let me think about this for a minute.

Thanks!

ML (who always says there is more than one way to skin a cat - even if she's sort of stumped on what the one way is that everyone seems to know about.)

Oh, one more thing. What about carbon testing? Could such a thing be used to find out Lois' age - or is that too inacurate on living tissue - or would they have to get some bone fragments?

Or is there any other way anyone knows about that could be used to find out how old a person is?

Or, here's another one. We know that Lois broke her ankle while skiing back before the series started. Now, what if they had inserted something while reparing it? I'm not sure exactly what. A pin or something. Could that be dated? And if so, how would that be done? Or could they x-ray the scar to find out how long ago the ankle had been broken?

Another idea... If someone had a bug bite - say from a bug that was only found in Africa. Could that bug bite be dated somehow? Or could they prove what caused the bite?

ML

I don't know if this helps but according to a recently published (2008) journal paper:

The pin would have a serial number of some kind on it but I don't know if you could read that on an x-ray. Superman might be able to I'd think, but...

Carol

Dating a bug bite? Seriously? Maybe if it wasn't a simple bite, but a bug laying its eggs, it might work by estimating the age of the larvae. Things like that are done with maggots in deceased bodies, but some bugs prefer live bodies for their offspring to feed on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myiasis

Okay, guys. Thanks for the help. AnKS, that quote was very helpful. It gave me a definite starting point for my research. However, it seems the hand x-rays, the dental and even the clavicles exam only works to give an approximate age of young people. They deal with development until adulthood. Dental seems to go a little further in time because it deals with the development of one's wisdom teeth. However, still it isn't accurate since everyone develops at different rates.

However, what made it quite useful was that it allowed me to disgard a lot of possible ways to tell a person's age.

I also have ruled out Carbon dating since it measures the rate at which carbon leaves tissue after death. While tissue is alive, the amount of carbon remains constant.

Having said all that, I think I can use the dating of the fracture to accomplish what I need to do. After all, it appears that there is a difference between a fracture which only happened a couple of months before and one that has happened a few years before.

So as I said, thanks, guys for all the help.

I have just one thing to say to that Lara: Yuck! I went to the website you posted, too, and looked at the picture of the person with the larvi in his eye and got completely grossed out

Anyway, thanks again.

ML

Okay, concerning carbon 14, I think that's what you're refering to - it only works with dead material. The theory is, that a living being ingests carbon as long as it is alive. The amount of carbon 14 (carbon with 14 neutrons) doesn't change as long as you eat and drink. When a living being dies, the amount of carbon 14 reduces according to its half-life . It's great to find out the age of something actually old, but it doesn't help much when you want to now if something's been dead for 100 or 50 years.

Other procedures...

Well there's PET (Positron Emission Tomography) used as an imaging procedure. You get FDG, which is Glucose ( a special type of sugar) with a F-atom (Fluor (?))instead of an Oxygen-atom. I'm not sure how long it's half-life is. Long enough for the imaging procedure, but it will wear off pretty quickly.

Another imaging procedure is bone- szinthigraphy, usually done with Technetium. It's used to find places of high metabolism (such as inflammation or tumor). The half-life of Technetium is about 8 hours, I believe.

An imaging procedure using radioactivity deals with substances that have a rather short half-time. Substances with long half time are used to cure people with tumors.

Dating a fracture will be difficult when it's healed. As long as the fracture is still relatively fresh that could be done rather accurately, I think.

Dating a bug bite - huh, I guess that depends on the grade of healing the wound shows. It would be difficult.

Maybe you can find something useful here:

Determining the age through ribs and teeth

This quote is from this article :

ML is writing! Woohoo!

Andreia

Well, this article is not for the queasy, I'll give you that. And I only know about that stuff happening at all because my grandma once had something like that happen to her (her arm, not her eye). And, considering bugs mature rather quickly, you can tell the age of something like that very accurately, but only for several weeks.

So, if you wanted to prove that Lois had been somewhere (like the Congo) rather recently, find a bug that lives in that area (but not the US) and go with it.

ML is writing! ML is writing! al least I have something to look forward to now.....

This is probably totally off the wall, but what if she'd done something "totally crazy" (the way she views it now) in the past and had a tattoo with a specific, verifiable date on it? Like... I don't know, Lucy's 21st birthday because they were really drunk?Or better yet, a tiny replica of her first Kerth award with the date & everything (maybe somewhat concealed so the average person didn't know about it)... Or a tattoo of the Kerth she *would* have had if what's-his-name hadn't stolen her story...

Here's another way to possibly determine age:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11547407

hth

Tara

Regarding the surgical pin, that was a plot point on House M.D. a few years ago - the pin would have a serial number on it, which can be used to find out the date it was put into place as well as any additional identifying information about Lois, details about her hospitalization and treatment, and probably her medical history.

On House, they had to surgically remove the pin to retrieve the number in order to identify their patient. A CT scan showed the existance of the pin, and the excuse the doctors used to take it out was that the patient needed an MRI. If Lois needed an MRI, the pin would have to be removed, because Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines (I hope I got that acronym right, haha) are basically big magnets - if you have metal pins/plates in your body, they can't put you in it.

Julie (Whose medical knowledge mainly comes from watching House and Grey's Anatomy )