Like death and taxes, you can always count on Bill Frist's hair to perfect and his politics to be opportunistic. His unprecedented and inappropriate meddling in the case of Terri Schiavo is no exception.

Tom Delay is using the Schiavo case to distract attention from his imminent ethical implosion. The Republican Party leadership is using the Schiavo tragedy to energize its anti-choice base. In the case of the Senate Majority Leader, he's abusing his medical credentials and flouting his Hippocratic Oath to help jump start his 2008 run for the White House.

As Saturday's Washington Post notes:

Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a renowned heart surgeon before becoming Senate majority leader, went to the floor late Thursday night for the second time in 12 hours to argue that Florida doctors had erred in saying Terri Schiavo is in a "persistent vegetative state."

"I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office," he said in a lengthy speech in which he quoted medical texts and standards. "She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli."

Congressional intervention in Michael and Terri Schiavo's personal medical tragedy is unprecedented and dangerous. But Frist's comments are especially shocking. As a surprised and concerned Laurie Zoloth, director of bioethics for the Center for Genetic Medicine at Northwestern University, noted of Doctor Frist's statements, "It is extremely unusual -- and by a non-neurologist, I might add. There should be no confusion about the medical data, and that's what was so surprising to me about Dr. Frist disagreeing about her medical status."

This is not Frist's first abuse of his medical background for partisan political leverage. In December, the Senator tried to defend a federally-funded abstinence program which claimed that HIV/AIDS could be contracted through tears and sweat. Pressed by ABC News host George Stephanopoulos, Frist was forced to recant. “It would be very hard,” he said.

It is sadly ironic that Frist, Mr. Tort Reform himself, would commit the Congressional equivalent of "witness malpractice." Lacking expertise as a neurologist and having never examined the patient, he weighs in all the same. It's exactly the kind of bogus expert testimony in the courtroom that Frist routinely decries.

Unfortunately, there is no price to be paid for witness malpractice at the bar. Hopefully, the court of public opinion will hold Dr. Frist to a higher standard.

—Perrspective 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) |