An ill feeling

[LA Times] 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."

Maybe this is just the old "softy", animal-lover part of me, but I find this absolutely astounding.  The idea that a person who is old enough and smart enough to get into Harvard would think that it is ok to go to animal shelters - where people take stray animals expecting them to be cared for and adopted out to new and loving homes - and adopt cats so that you can kill and dissect them is something that seems to be unthinkable to me.

While I'm certainly not a supporter of using animals for medical research, to an extent I can understand why that is allowable, since in most cases the scientists are at least attempting to find answers for medical mysteries, better ways to treat or cure diseases or otherwise resolve problems that people face with their health.  In my opinion, if there are any other ways to make these determinations - such as through the use of computer modeling - then those methods should be used, but if those are not possible, I can accept that animals will be used.

With Bill Frist, however, it appears to be a very different situation. He wasn't trying to solve any problems, cure any diseases or any else that might be considered useful to humanity in general.  He was doing it for himself - for his own education and advancement.  He says that he "later" realized that it was heinous and dishonest - but what worries me is that it took him any time at all to realize that.  Someone who is in training to be a physician should have the ethical sense to realize that killing cats just to practice on is wrong.  They should have the ethical sense to not even think of it in the first place.

Much has been made of Frist's potential conflict of interest since his family founded HCA, the largest for-profit chain of hospitals, and he and his wife earn a great deal of their wealth from investments in the company.  The fact that he did not vote prior to 1989 has also been raised as an issue, and it does seem odd that someone who now feels he is qualified to run the Senate, is also someone who, just over a decade ago, didn't even bother to vote.

Now, I'll grant that the fact that someone's a Republican and in Congress is generally sufficient reason for me to be a bit skeptical about them, so Bill Frist already has a ways to go to convince me that he's trustworthy.  None of this is going to help him much.  It says that the governing of this country wasn't important to him until he decided to become part of it, that he will willingly put himself in a place where his decisions may have a direct impact on his own pocketbook (especially since he plans to make health care a significant issue), and he was willing to lie to an animal shelter so that he could get cats to kill.  There's a certain selfishness and arrogance that runs through all of these issues, and it does not seem to bode well for the Senate or the country in general.