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On Wednesday, the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI) will host its latest installment of the Taplin Environmental Lecture Series. The speaker: former senator Dr. Bill Frist ’74. The topic: the intersection of human and planetary health.
Planetary health is a critical topic for current times. Professors Sam Myers of Johns Hopkins University and Howard Frumkin of the University of Washington describe the move towards planetary health as a “recognition that the wellbeing of humanity and the degradation of the rest of the biosphere cannot remain disconnected for much longer” in their book “Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves.” Each day, a story emerges alerting us to new cases of environmental pollution, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, and global climate system disruption. With each passing day, the time for life-saving action runs out.
Frist seems to have all the necessary qualifications, as a heart and lung transplant surgeon, chair of the Global Board of the Nature Conservancy, creator of the Senator Bill and Tracy Frist Initiative for Planetary and Human Health through a $1 million donation, and awardee of a TIME Earth Award. The planet is sick and the doctor is in. At first glance, it may seem fitting that he speak on the matter of human and planetary health.
However, as Princeton students, we are taught the value of taking a closer look. Frist served as the Republican senator for Tennessee from 1994 to 2007 and was the Republican Senate majority leader during part of the George W. Bush administration from 2003 to 2007. When we listen to his lecture, we ought, therefore, to also keep in mind his actions in the Senate.
Frist’s voting record speaks volumes. As a Tennessee senator, Frist voted against a 40 percent reduction of oil usage by 2025 while also voting for the defunding of renewable and solar energy projects and for the termination of Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards. This latter measure, which dictates at least how far a vehicle must travel per gallon of fuel, was recently eliminated by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Furthermore, Frist, while in the Senate, consistently opposed a ban on drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, otherwise known as “The Sacred Place Where Life Begins” for the Indigenous Gwich’in people. In one form or another, Frist voted against such a ban on four separate occasions between 1999 and 2005. Last week, the Trump administration approved further oil and gas drilling in this region. One has to wonder if Frist would approve of this move. Perhaps it is little wonder that the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group, noted that only seven percent of his votes in the Senate were pro-environmental.
On his health record, Frist fares little better. In December 2003, the American Public Health Association gave Frist a rating of zero percent, “indicating an anti-public health voting record.” He sought to pass a law that would have reduced the damages physicians and medical institutions would have had to pay out in cases of malpractice, to cut the Medicaid budget by $10 billion, and infamously leveraged his medical credentials for political gain in the case of Terri Schiavo.
For those unfamiliar with this case, Schiavo was a severely brain-damaged woman in Florida, and her husband fought to allow her to die. Frist, however, declared from the Senate floor that there was “insufficient information to conclude that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state.” This led Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurologist at University of Minnesota Medical School who had reviewed Schiavo over a span of seven years, to call Frist both “a fool” and “shameful.” Incidents such as this led to people describing Frist as someone who uses “the charisma of medicine as a way to give himself credibility.”
Thus, is Frist the most qualified man to speak on the topic of planetary and human health that HMEI could have found for the Taplin Lecture? To give just two alternatives, HMEI could have reached out to Professor Sam Myers M.D. at Johns Hopkins, leader of the Planetary Health Alliance, which spans 76 countries, and the Institute for Planetary Health. Or, they could have brought in Professor Christopher Golden of Harvard University, the Director of the T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Program on Nutrition and Planetary Health. So, why Frist?
Perhaps, when Frist gives his Taplin Lecture to HMEI, he will show my doubts to be ill-founded and justify HMEI’s decision. Some may argue that he was last in the Senate 18 years ago, and people change. Nevertheless, we must keep the totality of his legacy on human and planetary health in mind. And that includes the impact of his Senate voting record on the very subject of his talk.
While the HMEI website notes that “sponsorship of any event does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers, or views presented”, we should note and discuss Frist’s voting record and the whole of his legacy on human and planetary health. At present, the event materials fail to represent this. It is therefore vital that HMEI’s event is open-ended enough to provide attendees the opportunity for people to ask questions of his Senate legacy.
As scholars and members of the University community, it is incumbent to recognize when we lack the full picture of the position from which someone claims expertise and to call out failures in providing this full picture. Princeton must be better than this. This is particularly the case when one’s history speaks to complicity in the very devastation they claim to work against. For me, while I hope that Frist’s talk will demonstrate a true change of heart and a desire to account for his environmental and health records from the Senate, the depth of devastation within that record leaves me skeptical.
Alex Foster is a graduate student in Anthropology whose research focuses on the overlaps of debt, security, and conservation futures in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador. He may be reached at af0949[at]princeton.edu.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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