How did one neurosurgeon get away with maiming 30 people in two years?
At times, Dr. Death is almost too difficult to listen to. Dr. Christopher Duntsch was a spinal surgeon working in Dallas, Texas, for roughly two years. He operated on about 38 patients in that time, and today 33 are either paralyzed or living in constant pain. Two others died. He sewed up one man’s throat with a bloody sponge inside. He operated on his own friend and surgically detached his spinal column from the base of his skull, effectively decapitating him and leaving him paralyzed from the neck down—now he can still feel pain, but he can’t move. A former colleague found a horror show when he performed follow-up surgery on one of Duntsch’s patients: Screws meant for her spine driven instead into muscle tissue, three holes in bone where Duntsch had repeatedly tried to set a screw, and a completely missing nerve root that Duntsch apparently amputated, leaving the woman unable to move her leg.
