Frist..the memory fades but the the transcripts remain...

Let's go back into time....Dr. Bill Frist's comments on Terri Schiavo...

March 17th....

She will be starved to death next Friday. I have had the opportunity to look at the video footage upon which the initial facts of this case were based. And from my standpoint as a physician, I would be very careful before I would come to the floor and say this, that the facts upon which this case were based are inadequate. To be able to make a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state--which is not brain dead; it is not coma; it is a specific diagnosis and typically takes multiple examinations over a period of time because you are looking for responsiveness--I have looked at the video footage. Based on the footage provided to me, which was part of the facts of the case, she does respond.

On March 18th:

Persistent vegetative state, which is what the court has ruled, I say that I question it, and 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, depicted something very different than persistent vegetative state.

he quotes from ``Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine.'' And 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.

Yesterday.....

"She had devastating brain damage, and with that the chapter is closed," Frist said Thursday on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"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 did say that certain tests should be performed to determine that before starving her to death," Frist said in the interview.

The autopsy by a medical examiner in Florida, released Wednesday, showed irreversible brain damage, consistent with a persistent vegetative state.

"The diagnosis they made is exactly right. It's the pathology, I'll respect that. I think it's time to move on," Frist said on CBS'

One can question if he really made the claim she wasn't or not -- he certainly used his medical license as evidence he had some superior knowledge in this based on watching the video tape. However? At least he's decided to move on -- Terri's mother, father, sister and brother are still out making the rounds of the conservative tv outlets denying it.