I believe that it was an outgrowth of the fact that by the time these administrations caught up with what he was doing, they had already moved him on. Christopher Duntsch was sentenced to life in prison in February 2017 for his heinous acts. It's just a very different way of thinking about interacting. And you know, the hope and dream is that the generation that comes up behind me, it seems inconsequential whether it's all women, all men or a blend of something in the both. And so, the producers started Googling and decided that he would make a good story, and then they contacted me because they were looking for a local reporter in Dallas who could work on the story. Follow her on Twitter at @lizlet. I have to say, it was nice to do something different. Out July 15, Dr. Death introduces viewers to Christopher Duntsch, a real-life Texas-based surgeon who in 2017 was sentenced to life in prison after maiming and even killing almost all of the nearly 40 patients he operated on between 2011 and 2013. But not in front of my lawyers and accountants and partners and employees and friends. "Between god, Einstein and the antichrist", Anyone close to me thinks that I likely am something between god, Einstein and the antichrist. Now, a podcast called Dr. Death is breaking down the deranged surgeons criminal acts and shows how drug abuse and blinding overconfidence led to big trouble for the patients who found themselvesunderneath the spiraling doctors knife. According to Summers, he first met Duntsch in junior high school in Tennessee when they both played football together and remembered him being a "real smart" and "hard-working guy." As an undergraduate in college, Duntsch even lived with Summers and Summers' grandmother. Like, let the story speak for itself. I think Ava is the first person to have a completely female directed show on Queen Sugar. I had an urge to do that very early in the process. I knew I had to get across that even if you think you know the story of Christopher Duntsch, you dont really know the whole story. But there was so much that came together. Over this period, Duntsch performed back surgeries that left his patients in a worse condition, paralyzed, or deceased. However, it wouldnt be long until Duntschs seemingly perfect career began to unravel. In July 2015, a grand jury indicted Dr. Death on five counts of aggravated assault and one count of harming an elderly person, his patient Mary Efurd, according to Rolling Stone. I couldnt go beyond that. I couldve done more, like, the actual surgical details, but listening to it with other people, I could see how youd want to leave some of that out. You had people that could barely move. 2023 TIME USA, LLC. Christopher Duntschs late friend and victim, Jerry Summers, claimed Dr. Death gave him his first hit of acid.. I wanted to talk to his father, and his father indicated that he did want to, but his appellate attorney wouldnt allow that for reasons that I dont understand. It's a complicated plank that he tried to walk. And even after he eventually lost that appeal, the train had already left the station. And that wasnt a manufactured thing. I felt sick for most of the last three years in the best possible way. So I have to constantly remind myself here that no matter how well-intentioned or well-meaning any doctor or any hospital that I'm interacting with, ultimately they're selling me something. Speaking only for myself, I could have listened to seven hours of the incredibly graphic stuff. Well, it was familiar content-wise because Im a medical reporter, so Ive never covered anything else. Yeah, that was a concern. A new four-part docuseries from Peacock premiering July 29, called Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story, peers inside the torturous crimes of Duntsch, featuring chilling stories from victims and coworkers who saw the killer surgeon in action and were forever harmed as a result. Right? It was a gold mine. I think his upbringing fanned the flames of that sociopathy and that narcissism. Entertainment Weekly may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. MACMANUS: You know, it's interesting that you asked that question because it was something that we talked about quite a bit, even before we had the writers' room I'm talking three years ago, I think I got the podcast exactly three years ago next week and my answer was that I genuinely don't believe we will ever be able to answer who Christopher Duntsch was and why he was, and it was not my intention, nor was it our writer's intention, once we got to the writers' room, to answer that question in full. He stayed in New York while everyone else went home. He is absolutely a narcissistic sociopath. Liz Shannon Miller is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor, and has been talking about television on the Internet since the very beginnings of the Internet. [3] And so, that was one of my goals to start out with, is to just report the hell out of it. Theyre not just props in your story, they are real people whove lived this, and you need to just be respectful of that, and not fall into tropes, and not exaggerate what theyve been through, but also not diminish it. Everything You Need To Know About Dr. The question of how Duntsch was able to operate with impunity for so longwhen surrounded by many people who tried to raise the alarm and faileddrives Dr. Death, which jumps across time in each episode to show what the doctor was like as a young man, friend and medical student, and then later as a surgeon, a partner and a father. He might have been fired from the Institute but was still a surgeon at Baylor Plano. That would be my guess. Dr. Death begins streaming today on Peacock. The patient Duntsch operated on continues to walk with a cane and lives with chronic pain. And then the rest were injuries. My wife laughs at me all the time about it. JACKSON: Yeah. That it needs to be noted that like, well, you can only give these ladies so many slots. Was that something that he knew? Im saying the system played a role in it, but it was clearly his fault. Right? And I need to think of it, not as a patient, but as a customer, which is a very difficult thing because you're in an extremely vulnerable place anytime you're interacting with the medical system. And so, one of the overriding things is that when he was at a hospital and it would become apparent how incompetent he was, the hospital would let him go, but they wouldnt do it in such a way that would warn everybody else. or were you like, "No, we should push it further, we should make this really clear?". Death. He is serving his sentence at the O.B. Duntsch, hes an outlier for sure, but he exposed a lot of larger truths about the healthcare system. That's something that I think the show captures really well, especially when it comes to bringing you into the worlds of the patient. Duntsch received his undergraduate degree from the University of Memphis and stayed in town to receive an M.D. My instinct was that the only way, that this man has to be evil, because there has to be a reason why all of this spectacularly bad stuff happened and the simplest and easiest answers he's evil. His father was a missionary and physical therapist and his mother was a school teacher. I know youve done this for a long time, but what are some of the things you have to be careful about in reporting a story like this? The charismatic neurosurgeon was actually a successful researcher before he starting killing people in the operating room. I say to her 'someday, I'm going to be right and you're going to feel bad about this.' surgeries in Dallas and Plano in 2012 and 2013, killing or maiming up to 15 patients. I will not insult our writers when I say that because they elevated everything, but it's one of those stories that you have to be particularly bad to mess up, right? Magazines, Digital And by not stopping a narcissistic sociopath, you're encouraging a narcissistic sociopath. The best of these series retain the lurid appeal of the news magazine while offering the opportunity to go deeper; to tell stories that resonate as much as they titillate. In February 2012, he went under the knife for an elective spinal fusion surgery. In this case, Duntsch remained a popular hire in part because neurosurgeons bring more revenue to the hospitals they work for than nearly any other medical specialty, and officials are unlikely to second-guess a candidate with stellar credentials and recommendations. But at the end of 2012, Kirby was called to help yet another patient whod had her vocal cords and an artery cut during a neck surgerya surgery he discovered had been done by Duntsch at another clinic. The trial of Dr. Christopher Duntsch in Texas was one of those most surprising revelations in the past few years. Some are on the tape, some are not, just for space reasons. There isn't a question that there is a larger theme at work in the show, which was ultimately something that drew me to the show, which is that Christopher Duntsch doesn't just wear a black hat. And we did have full access to doctors as well as Laura Beil, who did the original Dr. Death podcast. If people come away from the show saying, "We don't know who Christopher Duntsch was," that was the intent, right? Later, following another accusation that he was abusing drugs before doing surgeries, Duntsch was relegated to mostly minor surgical procedures at the hospital. When Josh and I had our first conversation, he said to me from the beginning, 'I've got to figure out how to approach this character without any judgment. I can tell you that I do believe that he was a product of nature, nurture and the system that enabled him to be able to do what he did. Duntsch declined a reporter's request for a jailhouse interview Tuesday. And I had none of those things. Death' Gets Life in Prison for Botched Surgery, How Other Doctors Tried and Failed to Stop Texas' 'Dr. Creator/Executive Producer Patrick Macmanus (Homecoming, Happy) knew he had a ready-made hit in Dr. Death when he first learned the story of Christopher Duntsch, the Texas neurosurgeon who permanently maimed and killed patients during routine procedures. When we are alone, my love for you will let you do so because that is your nature. You have to be spare and selective with the details. Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater in 'Dr. One patient, a childhood friend of Duntschs, went in for a spinal operation with someone he trusted and woke up a quadriplegic after the doctor damaged his vertebral artery. How much of a gift was it to have characters like the ones Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater play, to basically serve as protagonists? And I dont know that he really ever even wanted to be a neurosurgeon. There, other surgeons quickly realized their new colleague was not just arrogant about his abilities but an actual danger to his patients as the casualties began adding up. Dr. Death stars Joshua Jackson as Christopher Duntsch, with supporting performances from Alec Baldwin, Christian Slater, AnnaSophia Robb and Grace Gummer. Peacock released the series to complement its scripted portrayal of the story, Dr. Death, which released a couple of weeks ago and stars Joshua Jackson as the titular character. Duntsch was not reported to either the data bank or the Texas Medical Board, preventing him from being tracked as he continued his career elsewhere in the state. Right? Liz Shannon Miller is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor, and has been talking about television on the Internet since the very beginnings of the Internet. You had people on crutches. Right? So, yeah, I think the fact that he was in a profession that brings in a lot of money for hospitals was certainly a factor. Duntsch declined a reporter's request for a jailhouse interview Tuesday. Determined to play football for a Division I college team, Duntsch dedicated himself to training while in high school. That was probably the biggest adjustment for me, was just the spareness of the script. A former coworker, Dr. Randall Kirby (played by Christian Slater in the Peacock series), said he watched Duntsch botch a relatively simple procedure by refusing to use a scalpel to remove a disk, instead using a different instrument that ended up causing more damage. And then there were comments that he made himself on the Dallas Observer article [about him]. Were there times when you would look at drafts and be like, "Maybe we should pull back on the administrative stuff?" Of those 38, 31 were leftparalyzed or seriously injured and two of them died from surgical complications. She was a National Magazine Award finalist in 2016 and in 2018 won the Victor Cohen Prize for medical science reporting. Do you think we get an answer at the end of the show? All Rights Reserved. They suffer with everything from agonizing spinal problems to severely damaged vocal chords and they say their problems are the result of botched surgery performed by the same surgeon, a doctor many of them claim is a butcher and a drug addict. Dr. Death was fired before the end of his first week for the damage hed inflicted on Brown and Efurd. It was a conscious choice from the very beginning to not show the surgeries until the finale. What are the potential pitfalls for you as a reporter? Naysha Lopez hilariously previews 'fashion' and 'some ugly stuff' on, Kandy Muse will be 'the main character' of. So what it meant for the particulars of our show is that we had three excellent directors. Duntsch, who declined KXAN's multiple requests for an interview, was sentenced to life in prison on Feb. 20, 2017. JACKSON: I mean, I think, leaving aside our show, it means that finally the industry as a whole is starting to redress some of the failures of imagination that have led us into a predominantly male, predominantly white-dominated creative industry. In June 2013, Duntschs medical license was suspended and fully revoked later that December. Crucially, as is recounted in careful detail in the podcast, in part because of the voluntary exit, Baylor-Plano was not required to report Duntschs actions to the National Practitioner Data Bank, a resource medical professionals and hospital administrators use to track which doctors have been fired, suspended, had their licenses revoked or have had to make malpractice payments. Planes dont crash because one big thing goes wrong. And then I believe it absolutely became a full-blown fire when he went through school and went through the different hospitals, administrations that he went through because he wasn't stopped. WFAA-TVChristopher Duntsch a.k.a. Season 1 tells the story of Christopher Duntsch, a Texas surgeon who was convicted of gross malpractice after thirty-one of his patients were left seriously injured after he operated on them, and two patients died . Their efforts to stop him, as documented both in the podcast and show, take a long time, as Duntsch moves between hospitals and continues injuring patients. This meant Summers could still feel pain, but was unable to move from the neck down. He was a phenomenal partner right up until the pandemic hit and we got shut down. In July, he performed an operation on a woman who lost a tremendous amount of blood and lost consciousness upon waking up after surgery. So many podcast series, from Serial to S-Town to the incomparable In The Dark, set out to solve a mystery. For months, they stopped getting reports about messed up operations and thought theyd found success. Were there some that you were trying to avoid sounding like. But neurosurgeons are big money makers. JACKSON: Well, it's not. I do believe he was born as a narcissistic sociopath. You can't justit doesn't come out wholly formed. And at first, Duntsch appeared to have what it took: He enrolled in an M.D./Ph.D program at the University of Tennessee at Memphis College of Medicine and put in dozens of hours in cancer and stem cell research. In the Canadian system, you go for care first, and then you pay a couple of times a year into the system. He had 15 years of medical training under his belt, his CV reportedly spanned 12 single-spaced pages and he exuded confidence all of which landed him a job performing minimally invasive spinal surgeries. Naomi Martin. And the American system, I often find myself having to remind myself that in the American system that the money comes first before the care. I think Patrickhe chose a very difficult path of how to tell this story, particularly by centering Duntsch. On that note, tell me a little bit about your background. They were trying to process the horror that was Christopher Duntsch as they were going along, because they couldn't answer the question that we began with: "Why does he do what he did?"
