[Histonet] Histotechs: born or made?

[Monfils, Paul]

Yes we have come a long way since one of the pathologists on one of my first
jobs referred to histotechs as "glorified salami slicers". Our supervisor
however was not one to take any baloney, and promptly told the good doctor
that without our salami his diagnoses would be baloney.

The only line I remember from Quincy, after watching it for several years,
is "Sam, get me a PAS on this - STAT!"

But CSI, which I also watch frequently, really is a mix of science and
science fiction. I wish we did have machines that could do everything their
machines do. Some of them are really way out there. Like the episode where
two people had a conversation near a pottery wheel, and the clay picked up
the vibrations of their conversation, which were subsequently scanned by a
laser and turned back into audible voices.  :-)

I even noticed a technical error related to my avocation - malacology. In
one episode a dealer in illegally harvested abalone (a type of shellfish) is
shot.  The medical examiner says "serves him right for selling an endangered
bivalve". As you may remember from your invertebrate zoology class, abalone
are gastropods, not bivalves.