The Big Picture

• Christopher Duntsch, the disgraced neurosurgeon, severely harmed or killed most of his patients, leading to his nickname "Dr. Death."
• The first season of Peacock's Dr. Death , based on a true story, focuses on the rise and downfall of Duntsch and the flawed system that allowed him to continue practicing medicine.
• Duntsch's crimes included rendering his childhood friend quadriplegic and causing lifelong damage to many others, revealing the horrifying consequences of his surgical incompetence.

A doctor who killed or severely and permanently maimed nearly all of his patients. A doctor who rendered his own childhood friend quadriplegic and sliced through a woman’s vocal cords while trying to do surgery on her spine. A doctor who was allowed to keep practicing medicine for two years as complaints against him piled up in the medical board’s office. Such a character might seem too creepy and bizarre to be true, but sometimes reality has its way of surpassing fiction. The person we are describing is none other than Christopher Duntsch, a Texas-based physician who brought harm to 33 of his 38 patients (or 37, the number varies). Played by Joshua Jackson, the disgraced neurosurgeon is the subject of the first season of Peacock’s Dr. Death, an anthology series devoted to exposing, through fictionalized accounts, stories of doctors who turned their patients’ lives into a living hell.

With all eight episodes of its second season available to stream on Peacock now, focusing on the story of surgeon-turned-fraudster Paolo Macchiarini (Edgar Ramírez), the show’s first season reached streaming in 2021. Based on the Wondery podcast of the same name by science journalist Laura Beil, the series was created by Patrick Macmanus. Its debut season focuses on the rise to medical stardom and subsequent downfall of Christopher Duntsch, a neurosurgeon whose sequence of surgical crimes earned him the nickname of Dr. Death. While Jackson stars in the show as the titular physician, Christian Slater and Alec Baldwin play the two doctors trying to stop him at all costs. AnnaSophia Robb plays Michelle Shughart, the Assistant District Attorney who eventually took Duntsch to court and got him sentenced to life imprisonment.

Though Dr. Death is based on a true story, it also takes some liberties with its source material to create a more interesting fictional version of facts. Scenes were created for dramatic purposes, while some characters had their names changed to protect their real identity. So what is the actual truth behind Dr. Death? Who is Christopher Duntsch, and what exactly happened to bring an end to his not-so-promising medical career? And, perhaps most importantly, what does this horrifying case reveal about the flaws in a system that was supposed to protect us?

Dr. Death

DramaCrimeThriller

As patients entering the operating room of Dr. Christopher Duntsch for routine spinal surgeries start leaving permanently maimed or end up dead, two fellow surgeons and a young Assistant District Attorney set out to stop him.

Release Date July 15, 2021 Cast Mandy Moore , Edgar Ramirez , Jack Davenport , Luke Kirby , Judy Reyes , Ashley Madekwe Streaming Service(s) Peacock Showrunner Patrick Macmanus

Christopher Duntsch Became a Doctor in Texas in the Early 2010s

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The real story of Christopher Duntsch begins in 2010 when he moved to Dallas, Texas. A year later, he would be hired to work at the Minimally Invasive Spine Institute, according to a story Beil published in ProPublica. Subsequently, in the same year, Duntsch started his practice, the Texas Neurosurgical Institute, and was granted operating privileges at Baylor Regional Medical Center of Plano, called simply Baylor Plano in the show. However, there is a prologue to all that. A failed college football player, Duntsch joined the University of Tennessee at Memphis College of Medicine in 1995, aiming to get both an M.D. and a Ph.D. During his research and his residency, he looked into the use of stem cells to treat brain cancer and helped launch a company devoted to obtaining and growing disk stem cells called DiscGenics. According to Beil, it looked like he had a promising future as a researcher and a businessman, but, alas, that was not the route that Duntsch took.

As a surgery resident, Beil reports that Duntsch operated on less than 10% of the number of patients recommended by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Still, surgery is what Duntsch chose for himself. And, in two years, he operated on three different hospitals, killed two patients, paralyzed four, and severely injured many others, causing them permanent damage that ranged from numbness in the limbs to loss of voice. His work shocked doctors who operated with him or who were later called to repair his botched surgeries. According to the Texas Observer, one physician even went as far as to compare him to the fictional serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter.

The horrors began not long after Duntsch joined the staff at Baylor Plano. Operating on patients such as Barry Morguloff, a pool service company owner whose counterpart in Dr. Death is Joe Padua (Perry Strong), he caused insurmountable pain and lifelong damages. Morguloff’s surgery, according to Dr. Randall Kirby (Slater), who assisted Duntsch on the case, was a simple one. “In the spectrum of what a neurosurgeon does for a living, doing an anterior lumbar fusion procedure is probably the easiest thing that they do on a daily basis,” he told Beil. However, as Duntsch struggled to grab parts of Morguloff’s spine using the wrong instruments, Kirby grew concerned. He offered to take over and eventually left the room after being consistently dismissed.

Christopher Duntsch Rendered His Childhood Friend Paralyzed After a Botched Surgery

Morguloff was not Duntsch’s only botched case during his time at Baylor Plano. However, he was allowed to continue operating without restraints up until he took on the case of Jerry Summers (Dominic Burgess), a childhood friend of his who had endured a severe neck injury as a teen, one that had gotten worse after a car accident. During the surgery, according to the Texas Observer, “Duntsch sliced into one of the arteries running down Summers’ spine, causing massive bleeding, which he tried to staunch by packing coagulants around the wound”. In Dr. Death, this is described as Duntsch virtually severing Summers’ head from his spine. And, indeed, when Summers woke up, he found himself unable to move his arms and legs. A different surgeon was brought in to conduct repairs, but it was too late.

While in the ICU, Summers accused Duntsch of spending the night before the surgery doing cocaine with him.

The portrayal of Summers' case in Dr. Death is particularly heartbreaking. In a show in which performances can sometimes be a little over the top, Burgess delivers a fine job as Duntsch's former schoolmate who once enabled his substance abuse only to be later victimized by it. By the end of the series, it is shown that Summers never quite accepted that Duntsch was the one responsible for his fate and remained loyal to his friend even when he proved himself unworthy of such loyalty. The real Summers passed away in 2021 from complications related to his paralysis. In Beil's ProPublica article, the author explains that Summers fell into a deep depression after his surgery, but later recanted his version of affairs, according to which he did cocaine with Duntsch on the night before the operation.

Still, his initial statement opens up another entire can of worms in the Duntsch case: his problems with drugs. Patients who have later taken the doctor to court claim that he kept packets of white powder and bottles of alcohol in his office, and that he underwent treatment for substance abuse while at the University of Tennessee. They also claim that Duntsch “skipped out on five drug tests that Baylor Plano asked him to take, without any consequences”. Still, Duntsch was suspended for a month after Summers’ botched surgery.

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After the one suspension, though, Duntsch went back to the OR, where he ruptured the vertebral artery of 55-year-old Kellie Martin, causing her to bleed to death. This case led Baylor to cut ties with him, but not in the appropriate manner. Instead of reporting Duntsch to the National Practitioner Data Bank, as required by law, they simply allowed the doctor to resign and maintained to his subsequent employers that there were no problems during his time with them, as per another story by the Texas Observer, however, the medical examiner from Collin County medical examiner who was responsible for performing Martin's autopsy was reportedly so "astounded by what had happened... that he brought her back in for another examination."

With flawless credentials, he got a job at the Dallas Medical Center, where he would kill another patient like Kellie Martin: Floella Brown had her vertebral artery sliced open and was declared brain-dead soon after her surgery was over. He would also cause irreparable damage to Mary Efurd, a 71-year-old woman whose place in the show is taken by Madeline Beyer (Maryann Plunkett). While performing a spinal fusion on Efurd, Duntsch amputated a nerve root and struggled to place the fusion hardware on her spine, repeatedly drilling and removing screws. A subsequent review of the surgery also indicated that Duntsch had misdiagnosed the source of her back pain. Efurd, who was once an active elderly woman, now moves around with the help of a wheelchair.

As Shown in 'Dr. Death' Season 1, Christopher Duntsch Was Taken to Court in 2017

Efurd’s horror film-looking surgery eventually led to Duntsch being taken to court in a criminal case in 2017. After numerous complaints were made against the doctor by other, more capable physicians as well as by wronged patients, the District Attorney’s Office took an interest in the case. Following an investigation conducted by the DAs, Duntsch was arrested in 2015 for injury to an elderly person and five counts of assault. He was put on trial in 2017, but only for his crime against Efurd. Nevertheless, the jury considered him guilty and he was sentenced to life in prison. He will become eligible for parole on 20 July 2045.

But before he was taken to trial, his license was suspended by the Texas Medical Board in 2013, after a long investigation that began in 2012. Sadly, during the one year that it took the board to put a stop to Duntsch’s bloody career, he was allowed to continue practicing medicine without any way for patients to find out about his wrongdoings. His website and social media profiles remained up, and there was no public database warning people of what they were up against. Furthermore, after losing his license, Duntsch remained working as a biomedical consultant in Colorado. He was also kept on the board of medical publications and continued serving as head of two medicine-related companies.

But why was Duntsch allowed to continue working with no reprehension for so long? Well, the first answer, and the easiest one, is money. Since Baylor Plano had given Duntsch $600,000 in advance and was not looking to lose money, it turned a blind eye to many of his botched cases, only stepping in when things became too dire to ignore.

Secondly, Duntsch might be merely one doctor among many who benefited from a system that discourages lawsuits and protects hospitals instead of those seeking their help. Again, according to the Texas Observer, Texan patients who wish to gain financial compensation or any other kind of retribution after being wronged by doctors have a hard battle ahead of them, especially since the mid-90s. Changes in the law made between 1996 and 2003 mean that those filing a lawsuit have to prove that the hospital and the doctor in question had malicious intent, and also cap the amount that can be paid for non-economic damages at $250,000, driving lawyers away from such cases.

Still, according to the NBC affiliate KXAN, a new law was passed in June 2023, with bi-partisan support, that shall prevent doctors with licenses revoked in other states from practicing in Texas and force the local medical board to inform the public when a physician is put under disciplinary action, among other things. Whether this will be enough to avoid future Christopher Duntsches is still anyone’s guess.

Dr. Death is available to stream on Peacock in the U.S.

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