Tennessee Republican is Heart-Lung Surgeon
Senator Tried to Save Victims

By Steven E. Brier
ABCNEWS.com
July 27, 1998 — Sen. Bill Frist, a surgeon, helped two of those shot at the Capitol when a gunman attacked Friday afternoon.
     Frist, who performed CPR on one victim and then rode to the hospital with another, is a heart and lung transplant surgeon. He graduated from Harvard Medical School and was on the teaching staff at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Sen. Bill Frist explaining how he raced from his Capitol office to the scene of the shootings. (Leslie E. Kossoff/AP Photo)

     Frist reportedly heard about the shootings and rushed to the scene, resuscitating a victim with several chest wounds and then moving on to the second person.
     The Tennessee Republican founded the Vanderbilt Transplant Center and, according to his biography, has performed more than 200 heart and lung transplants.
     He graduated with honors from Harvard in 1978 and spent the next seven years at Massachusetts General Hospital, Southampton General Hospital in England, and the Stanford University Medical Center. He is board-certified in both general surgery and heart surgery.

Active on Medical Issues
Frist’s Web site says he has written more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, chapters and abstracts on medical research, and is the author of Transplant, a book that examines the social and ethical issues of transplantation and organ donation.
     In the Senate, Frist has been active in pushing medical issues, according to his biography. He helped draft and pass two major pieces of health care legislation, one establishing the portability of health insurance and the other guaranteed insurance coverage of hospital stays for up to 48 hours after childbirth.
     He introduced bills to establish Medical Savings Accounts, to protect patient confidentiality, to reform the FDA and a bill, which passed in 1997, to allow physicians and hospitals to form their own health provider networks.
     Frist established the Senate’s first bipartisan Science and Technology Caucus, supports doubling our nation’s commitment to basic research, and has held hearings on emerging technology issues and important scientific and ethical issues such as cloning.