Since Washington State passed the Zachery Lystedt law in 2009, each state has enacted legislation to protect young athletes from the risks associated with concussion in sport. On October 2006, 13-year old Zachery Lystedt collapsed from a traumatic brain injury when he was allowed back into the game just fifteen minutes after suffering from a…
Bikes are generally required to follow the same traffic laws as motor vehicles. A major difference between bikes and cars, however, is insurance. Auto insurance is mandatory for road vehicles in Oregon, whereas the law does not require bicyclists using the road to carry insurance. Personal Injury Protection (PIP) is built into insurance policies issued…
On March 29, 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a statement refusing to ban chlorpyrifos used in agriculture. For decades, corn, wheat, apples and citrus have been sprayed with chlorpyrifos, shown to cause permanent brain and nerve damage in children. The EPA even admits this, but under chemical industry pressure still refuses to…
Nike-sponsored Biketown is Portland’s premier bike-share program. A thousand bright red-orange bikes eagerly await commuters at one hundred stations across downtown and local neighborhoods. At $2.50/ hour or $12 for a full day, these bikes are attractive and convenient options for city transportation. The program launched in July 2016 with extremely promising results. A total…
Arbitration is a dispute resolution alternative that aims to keep court costs down and quicken the time it takes to reach an agreement between two parties. Originally, arbitration was used to settle matters between two companies on equal footing. Today, arbitration is used by large corporations against consumers who are at a blatant disadvantage, having…
The 2017 lawsuit stated that Akorn Pharmaceuticals failed to note in its prescription warning labeling that its drug methylene blue would react adversely with antidepressant Effexor UR, which the woman was already taking when she was given methylene blue during a surgery. The adverse drug interaction caused her to go into a coma and suffer permanent brain…
Friday, May 26th marked the first day of Ramadan. It also marked the day three caring individuals attempted to stop hate speech in its tracks on a MAX train one fateful afternoon. On that day, a pair of teenagers, one of whom was wearing a hijab, were targeted for racial hate speech by a fellow…
Portland is known for its strong bike culture; the state of Oregon boasts the nation’s highest percentage of cycling commuters, with nearly 8% of the population choosing the eco-friendly alternative to sitting in rush hour traffic. Each year that goes by, Portlanders see more bike-friendly improvements to city streets; yet they also see more cyclists,…
Study Links Multiple TBIs with Suicide Craig Bryan, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Utah and associate director of the National Center for Veterans Studies, studying active-duty soldiers in Iraq in 2009, gathered data about their suicidal thoughts after returning to base with traumatic brain injuries. Bryan’s study, published in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry in 2013,…
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) opened a federal investigation into a fire March 2017 that killed a 3-year-old girl and injured four others, two of them critically. The fire occurred when a hoverboard plugged into an outlet exploded in flames. More than six months earlier, the CSPC had issued an official recall of over…