Bill Frist: Compassionate Vivisectionist

[MosesPresley]

Frist earned his medical degree from Harvard. As a student, he adopted stray cats from Boston-area shelters -- and then dissected them. He later confessed that it had been "a heinous and dishonest thing to do."

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-frist21dec21001436.story

Hide your pets, Bill Frist is coming.

Bill Frist adopted the cats under false pretenses and then instead of giving them a good home, he dissects them! I am not sure where the universities get their animals for study, but I'm sure that Bill Frist could have obtained his animals from a legitimate source.

Is this the kind of man we want to be House Majority Leader?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Better than having a former Klan Member as SENATE Majority Leader (Frist is in the Senate). Robert Byrd was head of the Dems for most of the 1980s, and was majority leader in the late 70s.

Hell, he did apologize! What, you've never done anything bad as a student before?

[MosesPresley]

This isn't about Byrd, bait rejected. The Dems should have ditched him long ago. This is about Bill Frist.

When I was in school, I certainly didn't go to the animal shelter, tell them that I want to adopt a cat, promise to give it a good home, and then take the poor thing home and cut it open. What a sick f***.

There are legitimate sources for these kinds of things and the animal shelter isn't one of them.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It ain't like he cut them open for ****s and giggles! He was doing research on them.

He got some function out them, rather than having them put to sleep.

I think this is a total non-issue.

[MosesPresley]

It is a non-issue to you. The man obtained the animals under false pretenses. When you adopt a pet you promise to give the animal a home, not to cut it open and label all of its parts. Sheesh. The man is a disgusting liar.

A man who is capable of this is capable of just about anything. Who did he learn his medical ethics from, Dr. Mengele?

I am sorry, but this is disgusting. I repeat, there are legitimate sources for these animals and the animal shelter isn't one of them.

[Imran Siddiqui]

[Shi Huangdi]

I agree with Imran:

It was just some dumb cats he used for dissection back when he was in college. Nobody is going to care about this.

[MosesPresley]

You gotta love that snooze smiley. It is such an effective counter-argument. It just proves that you have no basis on which to defend this man's activities in the past.

He takes cats from an animal shelter. He promises the animal shelter people he will give them a new home. Instead, he dissects them. Yet, you two see nothing wrong with this.

As usual you can always rely on conservatives for their compassionate humaneness.

"Mommy, what happened to grandmom's cat?"
"Well, after you grandmoter passed away, we had to give the cat to an animal shelter, because our landlord doesn't allow pets. I was told that Fluffy was adopted right away by a smart young Harvard man. I am sure he will take good care of her."

[Static Universe]

WTF? His father owned a hospital, couldn't he just hang out with dead bodies like a normal kid?



It's a good sign for the Republicans that a man whose family (and himself) profited enormously off of Medicare fraud for years will be Senate leader.

Change is in the air.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The means: non-issue, doesn't matter, who cares.

It's easier than saying all those things though.

He takes cats from an animal shelter. He promises the animal shelter people he will give them a new home. Instead, he dissects them. Yet, you two see nothing wrong with this.

(refer to above about what I mean by this).

And he also apologized for it.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Btw, how do you not know that he adopted cats that were about to be put down? After all, it had to be a non-issue, since the article you posted only had one sentance on it, and then dropped the issue.

[The Mad Monk]

On the off chance anyone really cares:

http://issues2002.org/Senate/Bill_Frist.htm

[MichaeltheGreat]

Well, boys, where I come from, cat-killin' is a hangin' offense. String 'im up!

It's a little "interesting" though Republicans don't want to rock the boat with one of their own. Harvard has no shortage of animals to use in their med school and biology programs.

I think what's interesting is (a) how many cats we talkin' here? one, ten, or a few hundred? (b) what kind of "research?" Cats have limited anatomical, immune-response, or other value in relation to human medicine, so after you've dissected your first one in high school biology, there ain't a hell of a lot of "research" that they're good for. (c) Was this part of the Harvard curriculum? (i.e. it was organized research and he was responsible for obtaining animals and did it through different means, or was this a little "extracurricular" activity?

Apologizing should be irrelevant by your standards, Imran, because Byrd long-ago apologized for his Klan ties, which were token anyway. Hugo Black was a former Klansman, at least nominally, (as was just about every southern politicion around in the 30's and 40's, it was a powerful constituency, and his record within SCOTUS hardly suggests ol' Hugo hewed to the Klan's values.

To me, it's a non-issue, or a significant issue, depending on how it was done, why, and the numbers. Unfortunately, those details are lacking.

[The Mad Monk]

Frist on AIDS:

AID FOR AIDS
On two issues, Frist has been pivotal. One is AIDS. For two decades, Jesse Helms and other moral conservatives opposed all kinds of federal AIDS programs. They treated AIDS differently from other maladies because they saw it as a sexual disease, a product of reckless behavior.

Frist helped change that. He separated AIDS in adults from AIDS in children. On general AIDS funding legislation, he teamed up with Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. But when it came to kids, he teamed up with Helms. The legislation they sponsored offered $500 million to fight transmission of HIV from pregnant women in Africa to their children.
Helms continued to blame adult AIDS on the “homosexual lifestyle.” But Frist wasn’t trying to change Helms’ views. He was trying to get Helms’ support, and he succeeded. Frist also spun African AIDS as a terrorist issue — arguing that kids orphaned by the disease would be susceptible to terrorist recruitment — in order to generate broader interest in the issue. Even Franklin Graham, the Muslim-baiting evangelist son of Billy Graham, worked with Frist to send aid to African children with HIV.
Bush signed the Frist-Helms bill, but only after bargaining Frist down to $200 million. AIDS activists complained that the money was too little and too narrowly targeted. Frist saw it differently: He had put the issue on the president’s agenda and, while accepting a lower number in the first year, had secured a pledge to spend the remaining $300 million in subsequent years. It was classic Frist: taking half a loaf now while reserving the option to take the other half later.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/850169.asp?0si=-

[Static Universe]

I'm just pictured Jeffry Coombs from Re-Animator as leader of the Senate. Scary.