Dr. Robert Bentley is a Portland ophthalmologist with more than 30 years of experience.
As a physician and practicing ophthalmological eye surgeon with more than 33 years of clinical experience, I ll be among the first to tell you how important a different profession, that of optometry, is for overall eye health care. Optometrists perform valuable services, including routine eye exams and prescriptions for eyeglasses and contacts.
But optometrists are not medical doctors; they are not physicians. They do not have years of medical school education and post-med school residency or surgical training. Nor do optometrists have the direct clinical experience that helps ophthalmologists like me manage and avoid difficult, or even life-threatening, patient safety situations.
There s no escape from plastic.
Look around your kitchen, walk around your favorite park or beach and you ll likely find yourself in the presence of plastic pollution.
The United States produces enough plastic waste every 15 hours to fill Cowboys Stadium, the largest football stadium in the country. We eat about a credit card s worth of plastic every week because microplastics are so omnipresent in our environment. If our waste patterns continue, by 2050 the oceans could have more plastic than fish.
How did it get this way? It s not because people have been clamoring for more plastic in our lives. In fact, it s become nearly impossible to avoid plastic in packaging and consumer products.
Michele Veenker: Sheriff s Levy shouldn t be considered an either/or proposal
On Feb. 25, Pamplin Media Group reported on the Clackamas County commissioners voting to support the Sheriff s Levy. In that, they quoted me. Although the quote was correct, because I was not allowed to finish my testimony, my quote was taken out of context and left the readers with the misconception that I was against the levy, when in fact I support it.
The reporter said I supported the idea of increasing bed capacity for mental illness but questioned whether the sheriff s office is the best agency to administer such services.