Sordid Details:
1. The economy for medical testing is piss poor in FL right now. Several of
our competitors have gone straight into Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
2. Thanks to BRILLIANT planning by the US govt over the last 30 years, there
are NO reactors producing the nuclear material needed to perform 95% of the
nuclear medical testing done in the USA. Better than 80% of the radioactive
component comes from ONE reactor in Canada. That reactor sprung a leak in
its reactor cooling system and they had to SCRAM the reactor/ That was three
months ago.
The Canadians do not know if they will restart the reactor, as it is the
oldest one operating in Canada and they say it is not worth the C$ to fix
it. This leaves the US dependent on S Africa and Belgium to make up the
difference. It's not working, and neither am I. My company went from 3 FT
and 1 PD to 1 FT, 1 PT and 2 PD. I am lucky if I get 1 day per week as we
are generally shut down M - W due to lack of drugs.
Congress was told last month that if they spent $125 Million on modifying 1
reactor in the US (I think the 1 in MD, tho not sure), we could be up and
producing all the material we need for the foreseeable future in less than a
year. Congress nodded its collective head and decided to spend $12 Million
to "study the situation" and come up with a plan by Dec.
So we have the perfect storm killing my income right now.
BTW: The radioactive part of the drugs I use has a T1/2 of 66 hrs, They are
shipped in lead/titanium casks as air cargo from Europe and S Africa. Since
no one wants too many of these on any one plane, how do you suppose they
ship all of those casks to the USA? 5 bonus points to whoever said "Cargo
holds of passenger planes" 1st! 8-0
Frank Ney N4ZHG NY/EMT-B NRA(L) GOA CCRKBA JPFO ProvNRA LPWV
--
CPUs execute their instructions in synchonization with the "ticking" of
an internal clock. This kind of thing isn't unusual in the real world.
Musicians play their music at the tempo dictated by the baton of a
conductor or the "ticking" of a metronome. Greek slaves used to row the
oars of their trireme warships in time with the drum beats. Politicians
spend money at 1.5 times the rate at which they can get their hands on it.
You get the idea.
- Gary Cutler, "A Buyers and Builders Guide to Windows PCs"
