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BCM Family Participates in Fundraising CampaignBestMinds BestMedicine includes commitments from faculty and staffby Toby Weber This year marks the mid-point of Baylor College of Medicine's Best Minds Best Medicine campaign. To date, the college has raised more than $657 million toward its $1 billion goal. While the campaign has been supported with headline-making donations from many of the region's most prominent citizens, it has also received significant backing from the College's faculty and staff through the BCM Family campaign.
BCM Chancellor Emeritus Michael DeBakey, M.D., has donated nearly $12 million to the campaign. These funds are dedicated to three areas: educational initiatives at the College; research awards for outstanding BCM investigators; and the construction of the DeBakey Library & Museum. The Library & Museum will chronicle DeBakey's groundbreaking career and serves as resource for physicians and scholars studying advances made at the College in numerous medical areas, such cardiovascular surgery and the discovery of new genes.
Another significant donor to the institution is James Pool, M.D., Professor of Medicine and holder of the James L. Pool Chair in Clinical Pharmacology—a chair that he and his wife, Pamela support in various ways.
"According to corporate standards and federal law, the responsibility of a pharmaceutical company is to its shareholders," he said. "There's obviously a tremendous amount of ethical care and regulatory oversight of these companies, and they are there for the well-being of society. But somewhere along the way there has to be someone who is independent, who can pursue what is in the best interest of society rather than what's good for shareholders."
The condition has been addressed with an operation that connects the intestines to the liver, and Eleanor is thriving. But this surgery offers only a temporary fix. Like many individuals with biliary atresia, Eleanor will likely require a liver transplant at some point.
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FeaturesTreatments on the Horizon: Chapter and Verse on a Brain Killer Two Brains are Better than One SpotlightCaring for Community at Home and Abroad Injecting a Little Scientist in Every Doctor Designing a Building in the Eyes of a Researcher Laser Treatments Best Left up to Doctors BriefsFalls in Elderly Indicate Illness Findings may Increase Survival after Injuries Some Like it Hot! Structure of Receptor for Chili Pepper and Pain Revealed Beware of Drinking Margaritas in the Sun Development/AlumniBCM Family Participates in Fundraising Campaign BCM Alums take D.C. Fellowships Seed Funding Leads to Breakthroughs Father, Daughter Team up for Health Care
Steps to Discovery and Innovation
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Volume 4, Issue 2, Summer 2008 |
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| Last modified: October 7, 2008 |
Like most donors, many members of the BCM family who have given to the College support the areas of the campaign about which they feel most strongly.
Lisa Kennedy, the College's Senior Vice President for Development and Executive Administration, has also given generously to the BCM Family campaign. Kennedy has made a gift to the portion of the campaign dedicated to the construction of Baylor Clinic and Hospital, which is scheduled to be completed in 2011.
"The new Baylor Clinic and Hospital is absolutely essential to the College maintaining its status as one of the top medical institutions in the country," Kennedy said. "By owning our own teaching hospital that at the same time provides the community with a facility built from the ground up to offer personalized medical care, we are positioning ourselves to stay at the forefront of research, education and patient care for decades to come."
Such support is necessary, Pool said, in order to help ensure that clinical pharmacologists, who oversee tasks such as establishing the protocols for clinical trials of new medications, remain a presence in academia. A vast majority of clinical pharmacologists, he explained, work in industry, where compensation packages typically dwarf what is offered in academia. Many scientific and research institutions, therefore, make little effort to keep a clinical pharmacologist on their faculty rosters. By supporting this endowed chair, Pool helps to ensure that BCM does not become one of those institutions.
Other members of the BCM family have given to the campaign for even more personal reasons. Harriet Spain is manager of employee wellness and work/life in BCM's human resources department. Her daughter, Eleanor, age 7, has biliary atresia, a rare liver condition that prevents her liver from draining bile properly.
Harriet and her husband, Bruce, therefore have established the Spain Fund for Pediatric Liver Research. The fund is directed by Saul Karpen, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Liver Center at Texas Children's Hospital, where Eleanor is treated, and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at BCM. Ideally, said Harriet, this research fund will help find a better treatment for biliary atresia.
The Spains' situation has inspired those with whom they are close to give as well, both to BCM and to Texas Children's Hospital. "People always ask what they can do," said Spain. "We tell them they can donate money to research and they can pray. When Eleanor was born, we didn't need meals or anything like that. We just needed to do something to make a difference."