Washington | featured news

Governor Inslee’s speech was just so typical. Climate change, climate change. We need to fix health care. There’s little snow in the mountains. Climate change started the wildfires in our state. On and on he goes, about nothing factual about his comments. However, he has to cower to the progressives in King County who elected him.

About 50 years ago, I was a nursing instructor at what is now Oregon Health & Science University School of Nursing, teaching pediatric nursing. One of the patients we cared for was a young boy, about 8 years old, suffering from complications from measles. He was comatose, unresponsive; a very sick little boy. He did not recover but instead succumbed to those complications, an awful loss to his parents and siblings — and to the hospital staff, the students who cared for him, and this nursing instructor.

PHILADELPHIA — Half of parents whose teenagers have had thoughts of suicide don’t know it, and more than three-quarters of parents are unaware that their children think a lot about death, according to a new study.

I am a freshman who rows with the Vancouver Lake Rowing Club. I began rowing in June 2018 and have fallen in love not only with the sport, but also the lake that we row on.
The Eurasian watermilfoil weed that’s infesting Vancouver Lake is harmful to the lake and everything that lives in or around it. According to the Washington State Noxious Weed Control Board, “infestations can alter aquatic ecosystems. It forms dense mats that shade out other aquatic plants, degrades water quality, inhibits water flow and impacts recreational activities.”

For years, public health experts have been arguing that where people live matters crucially to their health and life span, even though factors such as genetics or access to health insurance typically get more attention.
Health systems and governments have embarked on massive projects to decode people’s DNA, in the hopes that the information will lead to a new era of tailored treatments and personalized prevention.
It’s the next chapter in the nature-nurture debate: To keep people healthy, is it better to focus on people’s ZIP codes or their genetic codes?

As I read through the paper, I was struck by false statements our politicians regularly present as facts. Wouldn’t it be helpful if all facts they state were fact-checked by the journalist and any false statements would be highlighted in red, with a notation made of where the journalist fact-checked the statement? Am I just dreaming?