My pharmacy ran out of antibiotics today.

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Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 12:38 PM
To: wwo@worldwithoutoil.org
Subject: My pharmacy ran out of antibiotics today.

Wow, I can't believe it.
Here in Iowa we have been in the midst of an explosion of pneumonia cases due to the natural gas shortage. People are only keeping their houses at about 55 degrees to keep the pipes from freezing, and that has caused many of my older and sicker patients to catch pneumonia. We've been able to get antibiotics from our wholesaler until recently, but due to the $5.00 cost of diesel, they are only delivering once a week, compared to the daily deliveries in the past. Our nursing home had a rush of patients needing antibiotics, and we have been unable to restock yet. We kept a small supply of liquid antibiotics for children, but those ran out today as well. And to make matters worse, we are hearing that drug wholesalers are getting reduced deliveries from manufacturers, particularly the companies who outsourced medication production to India and Europe, Croatia in particular. I'm afraid that people are going to start to die of treatable illnesses due to our inability to get restocked. We tried to get our wholesaler to use Ethanol fueled trucks last year, but they scoffed at us. The doctors in town and I are going to start a triage system for medications next month.

Now the local Ethanol plant is working 24-7 and it looks like we are going to be able to get a crop in this spring, but the farmers are really torn, corn for ethanol or soy for biodiesel. Most are cutting back on their production of beef and pork, it's too expensive to ship it more than a hundred miles or so. We heard rumors of some particularly good farms being approached by investors from New York who would have all their soy and corn earmarked for the production of ethanol and biodiesel for a small number of wealthy subscribers. We heard that they were chased away, but I'm not sure I believe the shotgun story that we heard at the cafe.

Well, we'll see what happens tomorrow, if we don't get our weekly delivery, I guess I'll close up, and drive my ethanol fueled hybrid to Des Moines to get our medications.

Signing off from Iowa City