Frisk's Colleagues in Medicine Object to His Role in Shaivro Case

From Raw Story.com An oncologist who actually voted for Bush (what on earth was HE thinking?) said Frist is not a practicing physician and should not be blending medicine with politics. Sounds like voodoo medicine and politics to me.



Senate GOP leader takes flak from colleagues


4/17/2005 @ 9:19 am EST



Senate GOP leader Frist under fire from colleagues


From a Newsweek release: LINDSEY GRAHAM EXPRESSES CONCERN OVER BILL FRIST’S INVOLVEMENT IN PRAYER SERVICE ABOUT EASING SENATE FILIBUSTER DEBATE RULE; JOHN MCCAIN TRYING TO WORK OUT A DEAL WITH RED-STATE DEMOCRATS ABOUT THE FILIBUSTER RULE; IN PRIVATE LETTER, 31 OF FRIST’S HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL CLASSMATES ACCUSE HIM OF USING HIS MEDICAL DEGREE IMPROPERLY. (Full story here.


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New York-In a private letter to Sen. Bill Frist, 31 of the 165 members of his Harvard Medical School class of 1978 accused him of using his medical degree improperly, reports Chief Political Correspondent Howard Fineman. The letter was a response to Frist’s role in the case of the late Terri Schiavo. As she lay dying in Florida, Frist-who said he had reviewed court documents and videos-appeared on the Senate floor. Saying he “spoke more as a doctor than a senator,” he declared that “there seems to be insufficient information to conclude” that Schiavo-an icon to religious conservatives-was in a “persistent vegetative state” that would justify allowing her to die.


Frist’s office declined comment; according to public records, at least 13 of the 31 classmates had donated money to Democrats in the past five years. Still, Dr. Lewis Rose, an oncologist who said he voted for President George W. Bush last year, insists Frist had overstepped. “He had no right to use the cloak of the Hippocratic oath, no matter who was right,” Rose tells Newsweek. “He’s got medical training and a medical perspective, but he is not a practicing physician and has no business using that in politics. Period. If he does, he won’t get any of his classmates’ votes who signed this.”


In his profile of Frist, which appears in the April 25 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, April 18), Fineman reports that even some Bible-belt Republicans were troubled by Frist’s planned involvement in a nationally televised prayer service to be held at a megachurch in Louisville next Sunday. (The service focuses on the need to ease the Senate filibuster debate rule so that the Republican majority can confirm Bush’s most controversial judicial nominations. Frist’s role: a four-minute videotape stressing a secular argument-that presidents deserve “up or down” votes on all picks.) The sponsoring Family Research Council’s flame-throwing message-filibusters are anti-Christian-predictably infuriated Democrats. And Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Newsweek, “Questioning a senator’s motives in that way is a very dangerous precedent. That goes to a level where the Senate has never gone before. It is a very unhealthy turn of events.”


The competition for the pre-presidential allegiance of the Republicans’ grass-roots Christian soldiers is ferocious. Among the less-encumbered competitors eager to outdo Frist is his third-in-command, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. He told Newsweek that he would consider impeachment proceedings against the federal judges in the Terri Schiavo case; that he favors term limits for federal judges, and that he would consider redrawing the boundaries of judicial districts to break up the liberal Ninth Circuit. Frist, aides say, does not support any such ideas.


Frist’s solution to an “out of control” judiciary is limited to easing the filibuster rule. But winning the vote to do so is a difficult task even though he has a 55-vote majority. Three Republicans have abandoned him-including John McCain-and several more have made noises about doing so. Few think the compromise Frist will offer to the Democrats next week will fly. McCain, on his own, is also trying to work out a deal with some Red State Democrats, Newsweek has learned. And Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, whom Frist replaced as leader in a painful episode, is pushing an uncompromisingly hard line-happy, insiders say, to make life at the top uncomfortable for Frist.