Is Seal Disease From Doctor Odyssey Real?

Photo: Tina Thorpe/Disney

A broken penis, a waterslide injury, someone falling off a boat because they were too horny — these were just some of the insane injures from the premiere episode of ABC’s Doctor Odyssey. The only logical explanation for how all of this and more could happen in a 60-minute episode of network television is because Ryan Murphy is involved. Doctor Odyssey follows hunky Doctor Max Bankman (Joshua Jackson), onboard a luxury cruise ship, who is apparently Connecticut’s first diagnosed COVID-19 patient. His first patient is Burt (played by Tom McGowan), who ate so much shrimp that he got iodine poisoning. What is this, a Three 6 Mafia song?

Three ounces of cooked shrimp has about 13 mcg of iodine, according to the USDA, which means that an average person would need to consume over 1,100 mcg to get iodine poisoning potentially. In other words, you’d have to eat more than 15 pounds of shrimp to come close to poisoning yourself. So, a very indulgent cruise guest with a history of thyroid issues may be at risk. Dr. Todd McNiff, an internal-medicine physician based in New York, also entertained the idea of a shrimp-inspired poisoning but said that it’s probably a “TV thing” and not based in reality. “There’s no amount of shrimp that a person could eat to have an acute iodine poisoning that would kill them,” he explained, confirming that someone would have to eat an ungodly amount of shrimp for that to happen. But are people actually calling iodine poisoning by shrimp “seal disease”? Is seal disease even real? Dr. McNiff has “never heard of it,” not even in relation to iodine poisoning. It seems to be something just made up for the show, as most research about “seal disease” shows that diseases affect actual seals or people bitten by them, not seafood lovers. While the disease may only exist in the Doctor Odyssey cinematic universe, the show has plenty of other illness plaguing the guests onboard; this was just the first one of the season.