Dr. Evil

I really, really, really don't want to write about the Terri Schiavo case. This thing is being beat to death by every media outlet and blogger out there. Some of the best stuff written about this case and the right-wing political agenda behind it can be seen in these links:

The God Racket, From DeMille to DeLay by Frank Rich

DeLay, Deny and Demagogue by Maureen Dowd

Whose Right to Life? by Marjorie Cohn

The Amazing Hypocrites by Cindy Sheehan

When congress decided to butt their noses in to this there was no surprise that the usual suspects (DeLay, Dubya, Santorum) were involved, you come to expect stupid things from stupid people. And of course I don't expect them to feel any shame. Just this morning I heard that the Schindlers' lawyer is claiming that Schiavo tried to say "I want to live" during their last visit. That's about as shameless as you can get. But one person should be very, very ashamed of himself: Bill Frist, M.D. (R-TN).

As I'm sure you all have seen by now, Dr. Frist stood on the floor of the Senate and proclaimed that, based on watching about an hour of video footage supplied by Schiavo's parents, all of the doctors who examined her were wrong and she is not in a persistent vegetative state. The good doctor made no statements about having talked to her physicians or seen her medical records, just a videotape edited by her parents.

Now all evidence points to Bill Frist being a very smart man. Undergraduate degree in health care policy from Princeton, graduate of Harvard Medical School, surgical training at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a successful career as a heart-lung transplant surgeon. So why would he diagnose a patient he has never seen, in an area of medicine that is not even close to his specialty? For the same reason he tried to defend the administration's abstinence-only education program that claims HIV can be transmitted through sweat and tears, he's going to run for president in 2008 and needs the right wing base of his party to win. So he has decided that the letters "R-TN" and "GOP" are more important than "M.D." But then he should stop making statements as a doctor and give up his medical license, as he is now an embarrassment to his original profession. The height of this embarrassment so far was his interview with George Stephanopoulos, when he refused to say that HIV cannot be spread through tears or sweat, first saying "it would be hard" before finally just saying "I don't know". If that's true, that he really doesn't know, then someone hasn't been reading his weekly copy of The New England Journal of Medicine since about 1982.

As I've written before, my wife is a physician. We often get phone calls from my family and friends asking her for help on medical issues, and she is always generous with her knowledge. Often it is merely helping them understand something their doctor told them, or they haven't gone to the doctor yet and want to know if they should, or just give her a list of symptoms and want to know what she thinks. She will listen to them, ask them a load of specific questions, and offer some advice. How it usually goes is that she will tell them her general impressions based on the info and tell them whether they should see a doctor, what kind of specialist to see, or if they might want to get a second opinion. Never does she tell anyone that their doctor who examined them is wrong and that she knows exactly what is wrong with them and to ignore what their doctor said. Especially when it is not her specialty. That would be a serious breach in ethics, and she knows better. Even when it is something involving her specialty she tells them to go see a specialist where they live and doesn't diagnose them over the phone. She gives them her impression based on the info they provide, and then offers some general advice to steer them in the right direction.

My wife is also a dedicated vegetarian. Her specialty is nutrition. Sometimes these two things collide with one another. My wife cannot push her political/social agenda on her patients under the guise of medical advice. If studies suggest things like fish oils having health benefits, my wife can't tell her patients the opposite because the truth doesn't jive with her beliefs. The facts are the facts. And even though she wishes the world was vegetarian, she knows she can't hide the facts from her patients or twist them to fit her agenda. Again, she knows better.

Bill Frist should know better, too. I would bet he'd be mighty pissed if a neurologist told him how to perform transplant surgery, so he shouldn't be telling neurologists how to diagnose brain injuries. Both the Schiavo case and Frist's comments about the possibility of spreading HIV through tears and sweat show his complete disregard for public health when it gets in the way of his political agenda. And he should be stripped of his medical license.

I'm trying to figure out how to file a formal complaint with his state's medical board, and if anyone can file one even if they were never his patient. Hey, if he can diagnose a person who was never his patient, why can't I make an official complaint against a doctor I never went to? Only seems fair.

Until then, you can let Dr. Frist know what you think by clicking here or sending a fax to 202.228.1264 or calling his office at 202.224.3344