Bill Frist said...

"From my standpoint as a physician... based on the footage provided me... she does respond. "

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Mad Scientist Elected to US Senate!

Bill Frist is a former Republican U.S. Senator from Tennessee. He served as Senate majority leader from 2003 until 2007, retiring from the Senate in 2006. He is also a licensed physician, although he no longer practices medicine. He has performed over 150 heart and lung transplants.

In medical school Frist admits that he was going a little crazy. He adopted cats from Boston animal shelters, telling staff that he wanted them as pets. He would then kill the animals for experimentation in his medical studies. In his 1989 book "Transplant," he says "It was a heinous and dishonest thing to do." PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has called for him to apologize.

Frist was a public policy major in college, but was late to take an interest in politics; he voted for the first time when he was 36. In 1992 he began to build support as he prepared to pursue his first public office -- U.S Senate, 1994. During this time he gained a profile by serving on the Republican National Committee's Health Care Coalition's Steering Committee and was the deputy director of the Tennessee George H.W. Bush/Dan Quayle 1992 presidential campaign. Frist won the 1994 election, defeating incumbent Jim Sasser by appealing to Tennessee's conservative, white majority. He became the first physician in the Senate since 1928.

Frist has served in the Senate from 1995 to 2007. He won reelection to the 2000 U.S. Senate by 66 percent. He was elected by the largest vote total ever received for a statewide election in Tennessee history.

During his 2003 legislative session, Frist pushed many initiatives including the Bush administration's third major tax cut and legislation that was against partial-birth abortion. In his efforts he alienated many Democrats.

In 2005, Frist got involved in the debate over Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose feeding tube was removed. Frist viewed a videotape of the woman, then contradicted the diagnosis of her doctors, declaring that Schiavo did respond to stimuli. An autopsy later confirmed that Schiavo had no brain function.

At the Republican National Convention in 2004 he spoke in favor of the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit and Health Savings Accounts. In line with President George W. Bush, he opposes stem cell research.

Frist was seen as a potential Republican presidential candidate for 2008. However, some Republicans were less than thrilled with his work as Senate majority leader. In the spring of 2006, when I asked how Frist had been as majority leader, an unidentified Republican Senator said "I hear he was a pretty good surgeon."

Frist has been married since 1982. He and his wife, Karyn, have three sons: Harrison, Jonathan and Bryan. The family are members of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C..

Frist is the author of Transplant: A Heart Surgeon's Account of the Life-And-Death Dramas of the New Medicine (1989), and co-editor of Grand Rounds in Transplantation, which was published in 1995. He published his third book, When Every Moment Counts: What You Need to Know About Bioterrorism from the Senate's Only Doctor in 2002. In December of 2003, he released co-authored Good People Beget Good People: A Genealogy of the Frist Family. He has also written several medical articles.