Bill Frist: Heart Transplant Surgeon Turned Senate Majority Leader

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Bill Frist was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1952 into the family that founded the Hospital Corporation of America. During a 1972 internship, Congressman Joe L. Evins advised him to succeed in a career outside politics first. At Harvard Medical School he performed unauthorized procedures on shelter cats, which he later called heinous and dishonest. He trained at Stanford under Norman Shumway, founded the Vanderbilt Transplant Center, performed more than 150 heart and lung transplants, and did Tennessee's first single lung transplant in 1990. In 1991 he operated on Lieutenant Colonel David Petraeus after a training accident.

Encouraged by Howard Baker, Frist beat Senator Jim Sasser in 1994, pledging to serve two terms, and became the first physician in the Senate since 1938. He treated wounded officers in the July 1998 Capitol shooting, became a public voice during the 2001 anthrax attacks, and in 2002 succeeded Trent Lott as Majority Leader. He helped pass PEPFAR, pushed Project BioShield and BARDA, broke with President Bush to expand stem cell funding, and questioned Terri Schiavo's diagnosis from video, which her autopsy did not support. He left in 2007, later partnering with Tom Daschle on health policy and investing in health care companies.

• He told Tennessee voters that while he transplanted hearts and lungs, Jim Sasser had been transplanting Tennesseans' wallets to Washington.
• He resuscitated a constituent having a heart attack in the Dirksen Senate office building.
• He reached Majority Leader with the shortest congressional tenure of anyone before taking that role.
• He attached an internet gambling ban to the SAFE Port Act, leading to the 2011 crackdown poker players call Black Friday.
• He campaigned in South Dakota against Tom Daschle in 2004, then became his close collaborator after both left the Senate.