Doc Used Patients' Blubber to Fuel Cars? Fat Chance

A Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who claimed to have turned excess fat taken from patients into “lipodiesel” that could power his girlfriend’s Lincoln Navigator is apparently on the run after California health officials raided his practice, the Times of London reports. A message on Alan Bittner’s site says he’s “going back to South America to volunteer with a small clinic.”

Authorities were alerted to Bittner’s racket through lawsuits from former patients, charging that they’d been disfigured in liposuction operations performed by his unqualified office manager. And his claims of turning the fat into fuel seem rooted more in a plot from the movie Fight Club than in reality. Even if true, it happens to be illegal in California, and state authorities are investigating.
(More Alan Bittner stories.)