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Former faculty entrepreneur digs deep into his own pockets to honor his commitment to Stanford

September 18, 2007

Former faculty entrepreneur digs deep into his own pockets to honor his commitment to Stanford

By Susan Ipaktchian

Despite the huge publicity generated by a 2002 study on the potential dangers of hormone therapy for postmenopausal women, Stanford researchers find that only 29 percent of women knew about the study two years later.

STANFORD, Calif. - Neurosurgeon and entrepreneur James Doty, MD, was feeling generous when he agreed in 2000 to give a multimillion-dollar gift of stock to Stanford University School of Medicine, but he didn't realize at the time that he would end up giving away his entire personal fortune.

Doty, who had planned to retire on his stock earnings and share his time between San Francisco, his Italian villa and his private island in New Zealand, instead wound up with virtually nothing as a result of his philanthropic commitments.

"I'm happy to give it. I'm thankful. It's actually been a wonderful experience and has made me a better person," said Doty, 51, who served on Stanford's adjunct faculty for four years between 1997 and 2004.

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Neurosurgeon James Doty, MD

As of Sept. 17, the school had sold all of Doty's donated stock - 398,400 shares of Accuray Inc., a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based medical device maker. The sale brought in nearly $5.4 million and amounts to one of the largest to the university to date from a current or previous faculty member. The funds will support an endowed chair in the Department of Neurosurgery and other related programs such as research on spinal cord injury and repair, including stem cell therapy. The funds also will support a collaborative project with the Dalai Lama on the neurological basis of human compassion and altruism.

"Jim is a truly remarkable individual," said Philip Pizzo, MD, dean of the medical school. "A highly successful physician-innovator and committed academic leader, he is also an incredibly honorable individual with admirable integrity. He has continued to commit his support even though his own personal wealth has unfortunately declined. We stand in awe."

The remarkable story of Doty's gift began in early 2000, by which time he had accumulated about $75 million in paper profits from investments in medical technology companies, including Accuray, where he had served as chief executive officer from 1997 to 1999. He was doing some estate planning and had decided to put a substantial amount of stock into a charitable remainder trust in which the Department of Neurosurgery at the medical school was one of the beneficiaries.

But then the dot-com meltdown occurred, and the value of Doty's holdings plummeted. All of his hopes for early retirement were dashed. He had already made a down payment on a $5 million San Francisco apartment with a view of the bay, and was in the process of buying a 6,500-acre island in New Zealand and a villa in Tuscany. He had planned to divide his time between the three homes, while also volunteering a significant part of his time as a neurosurgeon in Third World countries, he said. All those plans evaporated overnight, along with Doty's personal fortune.

 "In six weeks, I not only had lost the paper profits but was $3 million in debt," he said. While he did not complete the purchase of the island, the villa or the new San Francisco apartment, he was able to keep an existing home in San Francisco for himself and his family.

At this point, Doty had not yet put the committed stock into the trust, and some advisors told him there was a fine legal line that could allow him to back out. A few told him he was a "complete fool" to give away his remaining assets, but he said, "I felt an obligation to do what I said, and I went ahead and did it."

Doty said he chose Stanford's medical school as one of the beneficiaries of the trust because it was the place where Accuray was born. The company was founded by John Adler, MD, a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford and longtime friend and colleague of Doty's. Adler invented the CyberKnife, a robotic radiosurgery system used for treating tumors throughout the body. In 1990, Adler started Accuray to manufacture and market the device.

Stafford said the low level of knowledge about the WHI and the effects of hormone therapy may reflect that people don't always heed medical news unless it relates to their current medical problems. He speculated that some of the surveyed women weren't experiencing menopausal symptoms at the time of the 2002 announcement and may not have paid attention to the news. Additionally, he found that women who lived in large households knew less about WHI and hormone therapy than women who lived alone, indicating that these women may have put the health needs of their spouses and children ahead of their own.

The women were also asked whether they had discussed hormone therapy with their physicians; Stafford found that 36 percent of the women who were aware of the WHI findings talked to their doctors about it compared with 15 percent of those who weren't aware of the findings. "The most likely way for this kind of information to be retained is through discussions with physicians, and for many women it appears that those discussions never took place," he said.

Stafford said his study is indicative of a larger problem - namely, ensuring that people can make informed decisions about their medical care. "It's a particularly relevant issue because of the increasing burden of chronic disease. Right now, we're not successful in educating the population about health issues that will become increasingly common and increasingly complex in the future," he said.

The study was funded by GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare and by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Stafford's co-authors include lead author Alison Rigby, PhD, a research associate in pediatric endocrinology, and Jun Ma, MD, PhD, a former research associate at the Stanford Prevention Research Center.

The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's top 10 medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. For more news about the school, please visit http://mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. For information about all three, please visit http://med.stanford.edu/about.html.

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Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu.

ipaktchian-susan-90

Director of print and web communications

Susan Ipaktchian

Susan Ipaktchian is the director of print and web communications in the Office of Communications. Email her at susani@stanford.edu
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