Dr. Gil B. Scarnati Scholarship

Gil Scarnati, DO (’90), has earned the first Dean’s Award for Humanitarian Service presented by the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine to recognize TCOM alumni who distinguish themselves through outstanding personal and professional achievements and humanitarian service.

As a practicing primary care physician, Scarnati treated HIV/AIDS patients in Dallas and also conducted several HIV-related research projects and drug trials in an ongoing effort to promote the best possible quality of life for his patients. Often he saw patients who could not pay for his services.

Scarnati now has a rare degenerative disease, nemaline rod myopathy, and had to give up his practice.

“This truly broke my heart, because I realized there was no coming back,” Scarnati said. “I enjoyed teaching my patients – helping allay their fears by answering their questions and providing information that would help them manage their condition. In retrospect, I think that which amazed me the most was the impact one can have on someone else’s life.”

He has returned to the Health Science Center to pursue a PhD in immunology and neurosciences in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and recently made provisions to provide a $75,000 TCOM scholarship to a deserving physically handicapped student.

Scarnati was honored with this award at the 2010 TCOM Reunion on Sept. 18.

The article below highlights the wonderful legacy that Dr. Scarnati provided the Health Science Center before his passing in February 2011
~ UNTHSC Connection article

Until the day he broke his neck on an Australian beach, Gil Scarnati said practicing osteopathic medicine was a fundamental part of his identity and a source of gratification.

He was vacationing in Australia when a wave caught him up and slammed him head first on the beach, causing an injury similar to the one the late actor Christopher Reeve suffered while horse-back riding.

The specialists gave grim prognostications regarding his rehabilitation and recovery. Yet two years later, after two spinal reconstructions; the placement of titanium rods in his upper spine; two years of rehab, Pilates and yoga; and 11 months in a wheelchair; the determined Scarnati came back, to the amazement of his orthopedist, physiatrist and neurosurgeon.

Then two years later, fate intervened again. Unrelated to his previous injuries, Scarnati was diagnosed with a rare, progressive, and degenerative disease called nemaline rod myopathy. It strikes about one in a million people and is believed to be genetic or autoimmune. The disease so quickly ravaged his body that he was forced to give up the practice he loved.

“This truly broke my heart, because I realized there was no coming back,” Scarnati said. “I enjoyed teaching my patients – helping allay their fears by answering their questions and providing information that would help them manage their condition.”

He had been inspired to become an osteopathic physician by his older brother, also an osteopathic physician, a forensic psychiatrist and professor at the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

“I saw the excellent medicine he practiced and how fulfilled he was,” Scarnati said. Despite his circumstances, Scarnati retains the talents to do anything he wishes. Fluent in three languages and able to read two more, he
holds an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University in German and linguistics, and masters degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University (Psychology) and Texas State University (Cell and Molecular Biology). He has designed and built Jacobean- and Elizabethan-style furniture, and his designs, sculptures and furniture in his former home in the Dallas suburb of Highland Park were featured several times in Architectural Digest magazine. He had applied to and was accepted by several medical schools – both osteopathic and
allopathic.

“There simply was never any doubt or deliberation,” said Scarnati, who graduated in 1990. “I chose to go to TCOM because I wanted to be an osteopathic physician. I also realized that TCOM would provide superior education and training. At TCOM I perceived an atmosphere of community, of emphasis upon shared values,
and of professors and physicians who were deeply committed to their students and their patients.

“And now, 20 years later, I still see it. Technology and knowledge have advanced dramatically, but values are permanent. Quality, excellence and integrity will always endure.” That spirit, Scarnati believes, has helped
TCOM and UNTHSC thrive during a challenging economic time.

“UNTHSC is flourishing because of the students, the faculty and the administrators – there are phenomenal people here,” he said. He’s more than a casual observer. Scarnati is a student again, negotiating the Health Science Center’s campus on board a scooter while pursuing a doctorate degree in neuroscience from the
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. “I want to be productive and contribute,” he said. It’s a logical progression for Scarnati. He was a family practitioner in Dallas, emphasizing HIV/AIDS medicine and serving as the principal researcher in numerous pharmaceutical studies of anti-retroviral medications. He had a rewarding and busy patient practice that he said was based on the osteopathic principle of “wholeness,” a quality that he believes is becoming rare.

“We are breaking down the component parts of medicine and learning more and more about them, but we are getting away from wholeness. When I closed my practice, many patients said they would never find another physician who cared for and about them as I did. I believe the most precious things you can give people are your time and your compassion.”

Scarnati finds the unique circumstances of his own life have provided insights of their own. He has directed in his last will and testament that $75,000 in proceeds from his estate be allotted for a scholarship to a deserving
physically handicapped TCOM student – an act of generosity he originally intended to be private. But when
presented with an opportunity to make the gift public, he decided “there might be some value in influencing and touching the lives of other TCOM alumni to realize the significance of ‘giving back’ and leaving a tangible expression of concern for one’s fellow man – and providing the opportunity to examine their own capacity and realize that if a disabled physician, who lives on disability income and savings, can provide a measure of support, they might be able to as well.” As he pursues his second doctoral degree, he gladly shares his insights.

“Age is not a limiting factor,” he said. “I am actively pursuing a challenging PhD, but I do not regard it as a job or as a pastime. Because of my age, my love of learning and teaching, and my passion for discovery, this is now a way of life.” And he’s learned that “your body is not everything.”

“Young people think they are their body,” he said. “We are so much more than our bodies. We are, as individuals, 90 percent our mind, heart, spirit, intellect and talents. Young people who look in the mirror see their reflection and say ‘that’s me.’ As for myself, when I see my reflection in the mirror, knowing that I inhabit a body with severe physical limitations, I tell myself, ‘that is the least important part of who I am.’”