WTF Is It Now?!?

Integritude
Morality Party member Bill Frist tries to weasel his way out of his previous statement on Terri Schiavo's condition

What Bill Frist said on the floor of the Senate, as taken from the text of his speech as quoted on Frist's Senate website:

"Persistent vegetative state, which is what the court has ruled -- I question it. 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 here in the Capitol. And that footage, to me, depicts something very different than persistent vegetative state. One of the classic textbooks that we use in medicine today is called Harrisons Principles of Internal Medicine. In the 16th edition, which was published just this year, 2005, on page 1625, it reads, 'the vegetative state signifies an awake but unresponsive state. These patients have emerged from coma after a period of days or weeks to an unresponsive state in which the eyelids are open, giving the appearance of wakefulness.' I'll stop quoting from the classic internal medicine textbook, but one last sentence, 'in the closely related, minimally conscious state, the patient may make intermittent, rudimentary vocal and motor responses.' .... If you're going to be causing somebody to die with purposeful action, you're not going to want to make a mistake in terms of the diagnosis. I mentioned that Terri's brother told me that Terri laughs, smiles, and tries to speak. Doesn't sound like a woman in persistent vegetative state."

What he said today:

"I raised the question, 'Is she in a persistent vegetative state or not?' I never made the diagnosis, never said that she was not."

"I think it's time to move on," Frist said on CBS' "The Early Show."


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