2.20 Euphoria - Part 1
From tv.com: When a police officer with a gunshot wound to the head and uncontrollable laughter is admitted, House and the team are baffled. When Foreman begins showing the same symptoms, they race to determine the cause of the illness before Foreman's condition takes the same path.

Wow -- just saw this on SFGate.com
Wasn't this the amoeba that caused Foreman's illness? (09-28) 12:04 PDT PHOENIX, (AP) -- It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die. Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future. "This is definitely something we need to track," said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better," Beach said. "In future decades, as temperatures rise, we'd expect to see more cases." According to the CDC, the amoeba called Naegleria fowleri (nuh-GLEER-ee-uh FOWL'-erh-eye) killed 23 people in the United States, from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials noticed a spike with six cases — three in Florida, two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s. In Arizona, David Evans said nobody knew his son, Aaron, was infected with the amoeba until after the 14-year-old died on Sept. 17. At first, the teen seemed to be suffering from nothing more than a headache. "We didn't know," Evans said. "And here I am: I come home and I'm burying him." After doing more tests, doctors said Aaron probably picked up the amoeba a week before while swimming in the balmy shallows of Lake Havasu, a popular man-made lake on the Colorado River between Arizona and California.

Yep, a lot of people were pretty ticked off at this diagnosis. They were trying to figure out the case themselves, but the show cheated. Not only does the amoeba not cause the symptoms given, but it's 97% fatal. None of this "this drug will completely cure him AND reverse his brain damage" thing.

Link please! I want to pass that on to my microbiology prof. Yeah, that was something that really bugged me about this episode was the diagnosis itself, and how dramatized the writers made it. I actually do watch House for the medical science, among other things, and this was an ep that was scientifically questionable.

Thanks bailey! I actually ran into my prof Monday morning and we started talking about this - she didn't realize that it had been used on House at all. Needless to say I outed my geek tendencies that morning. She then had this in her lecture today.