Sen. Frist urges new doctors to be more than just doctors

WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., told graduates of George Washington University's medical school Sunday to expect to use their degrees for more than just doctoring and urged them to serve all of humanity.

Holding up a glass prism to signify their new degree, Frist, a heart surgeon who was elected to the Senate in 1994, told the 153 graduates to keep that symbol in mind "to explore, to discover that vast potential of medicine and the opportunities that it brings before you."

"Do dance on the exploding rainbow of colors that come out of that prism," said the 1978 Harvard Medical School graduate.

Frist told the graduates to be ready for the challenges ahead -- from "unscrupulous HMOs" and "overly aggressive trial lawyers" to SARS and threats of bioterror.

He also stressed the importance of rectifying the huge differences in medical care that people receive.

"That injustice and inequality is a cancer that we can just simply no longer allow to fester," he said, pointing out, for example, that infant mortality is two times as high for blacks than for whites.

The crowd applauded when Frist spoke of a $15 billion AIDS bill that the Senate approved Friday and which he said would save hundreds of thousands of lives in 14 Third World counties.