Frist's Cat Problem

[kskiska]

Tennessean columnist Gail Kerr notes that Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) "fessed up in his 1989 book, Transplant, to adopting cats from shelters when he was in medical school, treating them like pets for a while, and then using them in his research experiments." The subject also came up in the 1994 Senate GOP primary.

"It was a short-lived local story that briefly flared in the national press. Yes, what Frist did was odd and rather icky, but he also saved a lot of lives as a heart surgeon. The kitty killer charges were widely dismissed, and Frist won the primary.

"But running a national race is a different animal from running a statewide one. He'd better have an answer ready on the cat thing before he can even think about winning the GOP nomination. Running for president requires candidates to dump out their underwear drawer for all to see, answer questions about what color eye shadow their prom date wore, and explain any cross word ever said to their dry cleaner."

As we noted last week, Frist is shopping around another book to come out during the 2008 presidential campaign.

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[Trouser Trout]

1. His cat problem is that he's a pussy n/t

[Captain Hilts]

10. That would be a Good Thing. Try 'dickhead' instead. nt

[CottonBear]

2. How could the "kitty killer charges" have been "widely dismissed"

when Frist himself wrote about killing the cats in his own book? :shrug:

[thereismore]

4. in the sense that they did not matter... nt

[CottonBear]

5. So then, do Frist backers support pet cat dissection?

:(

[shain from kane]

12. Was there any vivisection involved, which would be dissection

or experimentation while the animal is still alive?

[CottonBear]

16. No vivisection has been reported.

He admitted to dissectingthe poor cats after adopting them as pets and treating them as pets for a number of days and then killing and disscting them.

Sick bastard. :(

[shain from kane]

15. All is forgiven by the radical preachers since he did everything he could

to keep Terri Schiavo alive. When she started purring at the sight of those colored balloons, he wanted to so much kill her.

[Sanity Claws]

3. Cat karma

Wouldn't it be nice if this is how the cats get their revenge? Meow! It's not nice to kill a kitty.

[BrklynLiberal]

6. Yes. If he got horribly sick from a case of cat-scratch fever.

[banana republican]

17. LIONS 1 Christians 0 n/t

[Roland99]

7. Fristian is too married to radical clerics

[undergroundpanther]

8. Do not mess with the cat spirits.

Like living kitties,they never forget when a person mistreats them.
Cats, they can see right through people's bullshit..

[Captain Hilts]

9. He recreationally operates on gorillas too. nt

[shain from kane]

11. How can he claim that it saved any human lives? How is a cat's heart

like a human heart?
I'm sure as a medical student he could have dissected any number of human hearts.


>>>"But running a national race is a different animal from running a statewide one."<<<

A cat is a different animal than a human being.

And then there's that betraying the supposedly established confidence with the cat that he adopted and treated as a pet.

I am sure that he has, in effect, admitted to a breach, at least in a civil matter, by swearing in the adoption process to raise the cat as a pet.

[jmowreader]

19. Cats, like humans, have four-chambered hearts

The problem isn't that he dissected cats. All medical students dissect small animals--cats, piglets, sharks... It's possible to BUY animals for dissection--Carolina Biological Supply sells them pickled, pickled with latex-injected cardiovascular systems, pickled with blue latex in the veins and red in the arteries, frozen...just anything you want. The problem is how Frist got his cats--by lying to the animal shelter workers then killing them after keeping them as pets for a few days.

[shain from kane]

23. I dissected small animals in biology class in high school in the '60s,

and I certainly remember the blue and red latex.

However, by the time that a person is in medical school, shouldn't he be beyond dissecting small animals, and work with human cadavers?

Was he having nostalgia over dissecting cats and small animals, or, like I questioned before, did his activities extend to vivisection of live animals?

[jmowreader]

24. They would, if there were enough cadavers

I'm gonna think out loud here...if you were studying the cardiopulmonary system, you'd probably want to do one dissection to study the heart valves, one for the heart muscles, another for the circulatory system in the heart. You'd want to do one to examine the vessels connecting the heart to the lungs and another to study a lung itself. Then you'd want to look at the major vessels--to the head, to the limbs, the big organs. To do all these, you'd need three hearts (preferably ones that weren't all clotted up from cholesterol, smoking, drinking, meth, or all the other fun things humans do to destroy our innards), a couple of sets of lungs, and two or three whole bodies.

There aren't enough people willing to donate their bodies to medical schools to allow medical students to restrict their dissection training to human cadavers. But a medical student's dissection needs can be more than fulfilled by a couple litters of piglets.

I've also heard that Catkiller Frist really liked to do his studies by injecting the cat with the euthanasia solution then starting the dissection before the body cooled...which is the MO of a certain other right-wing doctor we all know about...

[Mist]

22. And why the plural: "cats" --didn't he get enough medical education

in medical school? The repetition of his "hobby" is what makes me question the whole thing. For the record, yeah, I think Frist is capable of vivisection.

[sandrakae]

13. Man this guy has all kinds of fucked up secrets.

It's going to be fun if he wins the Repukin Presidential nomination.

[WI_DEM]

14. how could he use them as pets and then kill them?

didn't he become attached to them? apparently not.

[banana republican]

18. Family Values n/t

[1620rock]

20. Frist is a peice of shit. May he burn in Hell !!!!! n/t

[aquart]

21. Cat Killer Frist is his name in rescue circles.

He didn't just kill them. He betrayed trust.

May all he loves betray him unto death.