Green Options

My favorite Bayview corner sandwich shop, Upper Crust Deli on Third Street in San Francisco, has just started carrying fresh seasonal produce. They are now selling a variety of melons, potatoes, apples, bananas and many other healthy fruit and vegetable options.

Several news sources are reporting that an Arkansas doctor in the town of West Memphis who is the Chairman of the Arkansas Medical Board has been life-flighted to a hospital in critical condition after his Lexus RX 400h hybrid SUV exploded.

>>UPDATE #1 2/4/2009 12:15 pm PST: CNN is now reporting that a bomb WAS found. It appears that police have changed their story. We’ll see how this plays out…

>>UPDATE #2 2/4/2009 2:30 pm PST: Local and federal officials are urging anyone with information to contact law enforcement agencies. The ATF tip line is 888-ATF-BOMB.

>>UPDATE #3 2/5/2009 8:00 am PST: Dr. Trent Pierce has lost his left eye in the blast and is undergoing multiple surgeries to save his right eye as well as remove shrapnel from his neck and abdomen. Investigators are still not sure if the bomb was placed on or near Dr. Pierce’s car. Apparently, the doctor was outside his car when the blast occurred.

Initially a local bomb squad was called in to investigate, but was sent away after no bomb was found. At the time, speculation revolved around a malfunction with the car itself. Since that time, the FBI and ATF have found evidence of explosives. There are no current leads in the case and no one can come up with a reason why a doctor in a smallish town may have been the target of an attack like this.

This week a study by Social & Scientific Systems Inc., summarized by PR Newswire, has found that between 1996 and 2005 there has been a 6 percent increase in the number of U.S. citizens who have three or more chronic illnesses.  And with the lack of affordable healthcare this is no longer just an issue for the millions of uninsured, but for our own children.  According the article “Shaping good health as teens outgrow pediatricians” by Lauran Neergaard of the Associated Press, recent research performed by the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine has found that there are few doctors equipped to provide comprehensive healthcare to tweens and teens.  Adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 years of age, experience, arguably, the greatest biological transformation and yet the healthcare system is poorly equipped to deal with the needs of a demographic that is known for testing boundaries.

In the category of “Things I’d Rather Never Read About Again,” we’ve found a winner.

A plastic surgeon in Los Angeles has discovered that he can use the fat he liposuctions off of his patients to provide all the biodiesel he needs to power his and his girlfriend’s SUVs. Not only that, he says he has extra. I wonder if he’s willing to share?

Got the heebies yet?

Alan Bittner, a high scale Beverly Hills doctor, has been making the liposuctioned human fat into biodiesel for some time now. There are lots of rendering firms in the US — like Tyson Farms, for instance — that already take similar waste, such as poultry fat, and turn it into biodiesel, but I’m imaging that Bittner is the first guy to actually turn human fat into fuel.

Shortly after your labor and delivery, the mixed anxiety and joy of this life experience will be in your past, and it will be time to look forward to the future—to the time when your baby will live and grow in the protective environment that you will create in your home.

As you did when choosing an ob/gyn, you want to find a pediatrician who is top-notch medically. How much better if he or she is also on the journey to an environmentally sustainable perspective on pediatrics!

This may be the first time you have selected a pediatrician; if you already have children, you may have an established relationship with their pediatrician—or you may have inherited a treasured family doc from when you were a child. In any case, here are five representative questions you may want to ask politely to gauge physicians’ thoughts on things green:

1. What advice do you give to new parents about introducing solid foods?
If their first suggestion is to begin with processed white rice flour cereal or processed conventional jarred foods, they may still be working from a twentieth-century industrial mind-set. To learn more, continue the conversation by asking for their advice about introducing whole grains, fresh tastes, or organic foods. Green pediatricians are often conscious of nutrition and care about establishing the nutritional habits of today’s babies in ways that are better than those of previous generations.