Bill Frist, MD Biography
- Title:
- Former U.S. Senator (R-TN)
- Position:
- Con to the question "Should Marijuana Be a Medical Option?"
- Reasoning:
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“As a physician I have sympathy for patients suffering from pain and other medical conditions. Although I understand many believe marijuana is the most effective drug in combating their medical ailments, I would caution against this assumption due to the lack of consistent, repeatable scientific data available to prove marijuana’s benefits. Based on current evidence, I believe that marijuana is a dangerous drug and that there are less dangerous medicines offering the same relief from pain and other medical symptoms.”
Email to ProCon.org, Oct. 20, 2003
- Involvement and Affiliations:
-
- U.S. Senator (R-TN), 1994-2007
- U.S. Senate Majority Leader, 2002-2007
- Named one of two Congressional representatives to the United Nations General Assembly, 2001
- Unanimously elected chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), 2000
- Served on the following committees: Finance; Rules; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP); Foreign Relations, Budget, Banking, Commerce, and Small Business.
- “Joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University Medical Center where he founded and subsequently directed the multi-disciplinary Vanderbilt Transplant Center, which under his leadership became a nationally renowned center of multi-organ transplantation. A heart and lung surgeon, he performed over 150 heart and lung transplant procedures, including the first successful combined heart-lung transplant in the Southeast”, 1985
- Education:
-
- Surgical training at Massachusetts General Hospital; Southampton General Hospital, Southampton, England; and Stanford University Medical Center, 1978-1985
- MD, Princeton University, 1978
- BA, Specialty in Health Care Policy, Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, 1974
- Other:
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- MD, board certified in both general surgery and heart surgery
- MD, board certified in both general surgery and heart surgery
- Quoted in: