It sounds like a great idea, actually: Take the excess body fat from liposuction patients and use it to power your car. That's what a Beverly Hills doctor figured, and he even bragged about it on his website LipoDiesel.com (now shut down). It even sounds like a California trend: Get thin and reduce America's dependence on foreign oil all at the same time! But sometimes the "cutting edge" of green goes too far, and California's state medical authorities were not amused to learn of Dr. Bittner's eco-friendly body fat recycling program. It is apparently illegal in the United States to use human body parts (even the parts people are throwing away) as fuel to power automobiles. I'd like to see somebody quote me any law that actually says that, by the way. Personally, I don't believe such a law exists.
So now Dr. Alan Bittner's clinic is closed, and liposuction patients have to get their fat sucked out somewhere else. So where, exactly, does all that excess body fat go from liposuction clinics? If you saw Fight Club, you might recall the main characters rendering the body fat into high explosives. I like the Lipodiesel idea better, because it puts the excess body fuel towards a more productive use.
Instead of shutting down this operation, the state of California should embrace it. Why not do a joint venture with McDonalds? "Eat a Big Mac. You'll get a smile, and your car goes another mile!"
Besides, a nation full of fat people could serve as a reserve oil supply. If the Arab nations stop shipping us barrels oil, we can just start tapping into the population to power our cars with liposuction fat. And if we run out of body fat to process into diesel fuel, we can always eat more, right? Eating more junk food might actually become patriotic: "Snarf down some burgers and fries for your nation's energy independence!" Talk about Freedom Fries, huh?
Don't laugh, because I'm not making this up, but the human body stores so much energy that the town of Helsingborg, Sweden, uses the heat from local crematoriums to generate about 10 percent of the heat used its homes. Technically speaking, it would be a very simple matter for crematoriums to power steam turbines that generate electricity.
Although the idea may seem a little strange right now, it's not hard to imagine a future where people are either encouraged or forced to donate their bodies back to society upon their death by converting their physical body mass into usable energy. Dr. Bittner was merely doing that with patients who volunteered to use their liposuction fat to help power automobiles.
The exhaust of vehicles burning biodiesel made from fast food grease smells a bit like French fries. I wonder what Dr. Bittner's car exhaust smells like? Fried rump roast?
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