Tough (guy) love. (Scan).

Not many of us would have the heroic composure to do what Senate majority leader (and physician) Bill Frist did at the scene of a bloody accident in Florida earlier this year. An SUV had rolled over several times after a tire blowout, and there were six badly hurt people requiring medical assistance. Frist, who happened to be driving by with his sons, swooped in to get the injured people on life support quickly. He helped paramedics with the tricky job of getting a tracheal tube in place in one of the women who had suffered much trauma to her face and neck.

According to one of the emergency workers who responded to the accident, the most important thing Frist did at the site of the crash was triage. That's a polite word for the tough but necessary concept of sorting people out in order of priority. If you only have so much time and so many resources, you'd better deal with the most critical cases first. Set aside those with less serious injuries, and those who have no chance of surviving. You'll come back to them later if you can.

"He actually pulled me away from one patient to render care to another patient, who he correctly identified as being more critical," the captain of Broward County Fire Rescue explained of Frist's contribution. It takes a certain hardness of heart to abandon a person who's hurting to go care for someone else, but logically it is the only sensible course. It saved lives in this case.

With this episode in mind, consider the other set of news stories about Bill Frist that circulated around the same time he was selected Senate majority leader. These articles painted Frist as unfeeling and harsh because, as an eager medical student, he stopped by humane societies and fibbed to get his hands on homeless cats so he could ...