Remember Bill Frist and his video diagnosis of Terry Schiavo, a diagnosis that proved enormously wrong? There must be something about being a Republican Senator and medical doctor, because now Rand Paul has gotten in on the act. Via Steve Benen, Roll Call is reporting that the ophthalmologist has made his own diagnosis of the Arizona shooter, on Fox News, no less.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Sunday that, based on Internet writings attributed to a 22-year-old accused of shooting Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), he believes Jared Lee Loughner is a paranoid schizophrenic.
Paul has a medical degree from Duke University. However, he was trained as an ophthalmologist and not a psychiatrist. Paranoid schizophrenia is a mental disorder.
“I looked at some of the writings of this young man, and from a medical point of view there’s a lot to suggest paranoid schizophrenia and a really sick individual,” Paul said on “Fox News Sunday.”
From a lay person's point of view, yes, there's a lot to suggest and extremely disturbed individual, starting with the fact that mentally stable people don't shoot up crowds of people. But what Steve says:
But what rankles here is Rand Paul's comfort with offering his "medical point of view" on national television. With due respect to the freshman senator, he's a self-accredited ophthalmologist. He's worked as a medical professional, but has treated patients' eyes not their mental health, and as best as I can tell, he has no background as a psychiatrist.
Rand Paul, in other words, isn't qualified to diagnose mental disorders by reading some stuff on the Internet. He shouldn't pretend otherwise.
And the media (yeah, I know, it's Fox) should let him pretend otherwise.