Sunday, March 15, 2015

ELECTRIC CARS, CONT'D

Letter to Dr. John Holdren, Director, Office of Science and technology Policy


Dear Dr. Holdren:

State and Federal gasoline taxes average about fifty cents a gallon, The funds are primarily used for highway and bridge construction and maintenance. A driver of a gasoline or Diesel fuel powered car may end up paying upwards of five hundred dollars a year in taxes.

But what about drivers of plug-in electric cars? They pay no taxes equivalent to gasoline taxes, yet enjoy the privilege of driving on highways and across bridges  that others pay to build  and maintain.

This is not fair by any measure, particularly because many drivers are affluent and pay as much as $100,000 for an electric car. (see Tesla). 

Plug-in electric cars are very inefficient due to the low thermodynamic efficiency of fossil fuel power plants, which  supply the major part of the power to the grid. Whereas a modern motor car has an efficiency approaching forty per cent, the efficiency of grid powered electric cars is in the mid-twenties. Moreover, they have a high carbon footprint.

All of the above could be solved with on-board power generation, using a biodiesel operated generator. It is 100 year old technology. Diesel electric locomotives have been around almost that long. Such automobiles would have a near zero carbon footprint.

Chevrolet Volt 2 is almost there, needing only to replace its generator with a biodiesel engine.
GM could offer the first near-zero carbon footprint automobile.

This entire issue needs attention. Why isn’t the EPA doing its job effectively? Correspondence
with them elicited only the comment that I am probably correct and that eventually the auto companies will wake up. Meantime, the tax problem remains unsolved.

Sincerely,

Edward Hujsak

Friday, March 13, 2015

DRUG PUSHERS



    Billions are spent by the government rounding up drug pushers and incarcerating them. With a hundred thousand employees, its annual expenditure runs to nearly three billion (2014 budget 2,88 billion). From this aspect, it doesn’t appear that they are gaining any ground.
    But that target is merely a flea on the elephant in the room. Drug pushers in the extreme are the television broadcasters who day and night pause in their broadcasts to  tout the benefits of this and that product of the pharmaceutical firms to treat everything from erectile disfunction to common headache.
    A litany of side effects that follows the advertisement, typically citing possible loss of eyesight, loss of hearing, kidney failure, baldness,  difficulty walking, urinary infection, dementia, death and on and on, is enough to scare anyone away from requesting a prescription (talk to your doctor). Of course, the ill concealed secret that the doctors enjoy stipend from the pharmaceutical firms may be an intractable part of the picture. Why wouldn’t this be a sound marketing practice? It is both legal and effective..   
    But why list all the possible adverse side effects? One assumption is that the pharmaceutical firms are “gun shy.” Revealing this information is viewed as necessary and useful in the event of a class action suit, which can be expensive.
    The list of possible side effects of Plavix is mind boggling. It's available online, but a partial listing follows. One significant side effect: “May cause sudden numbness down left side of body,” which has afflicted me personally, has oddly disappeared from the listings. The following side effects for Plavix may be an incomplete list.
Chest pain
Collection of blood under the skin
Deep, dark purple bruise
Itching, pain, redness or swelling
Pain in general
Nose bleed
Painful or difficult urination
Shortness of breath
Vomiting of blood
Black, tarry stools
Back pain or back ache
Blurred vision
Change in mental status
Cough or hoarseness
Dark urine
Difficulty breathing or swallowing
Dizziness or faintness when getting up from lying position
Fast heartbeat
Feeling of discomfort
Feeling of tiredness or weakness
Hives
Inflammation of joints

Light colored stools
Lower back or side pain
Muscle aches

Pale color of skin
Rash
Seizures
Sweating
Swelling of eyes, face or inside of nose
Puffiness or swelling of eyelids around the eyes, lips, face or tongue
Swollen lymph glands
Painful glands
Lightness in chest
Upper right abdominal pain
Yellow eyes or skin

Worth mentioning is that Bristol Myers, manufacturer of Clopidogrel, or Plavix, also makes
Warfarin, also a blood thinner, which costs patients only a few cents a day. Within the past two years the company obtained approval of another blood thinner, Apixaban, or Equilis, which  can be prescribed instead of Plavix. But it costs eighteen dollars a day for the two pills prescribed. At the time of the release, the company, in its promotional scheme, proceeded to bad-mouth its own product, Warfarin - a startling example of corporate perfidy at work.
    Moreover, in comparing the possible side effects, Plavix and Equilis closely resemble each other. Even “May cause sudden Numbness down the left side of  body,” which appeared online for a while after the appearance of Equilis on the scene, but has since disappeared,

    A search online under the term Plavix/numbness shows the prevalence of the numbness problem. Unfortunately, in my case anyway, physicians play dumb and categorically refuse to call Bristol Myers about the side effect. Bristol Myers, on the other hand, refuses to provide information, stating a call must  come from my doctor, Their argument is that  on balance Plavix does a lot of good. My problem is rare and therefore can be considered noise level. For me, it is certainly not noise level.

An  impasse.

Note: The comedian John Oliver has recently taken up the torch on the drug pushing pharmaceutical industry issue far more effectively.