Christopher Daniel Duntsch was born in Montana. His father was a doctor and his mother worked as a teacher. When he was a teenager, the family moved to Memphis, where Christopher became interested in football. His team, friends, and even his coach noticed that he did not have athletic abilities, but they paid attention to his hard work. Unable to achieve success on the field, he decided to become a doctor. He enrolled at the University of Memphis, where he earned a bachelor’s degree. He continued his studies at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, where he earned a medical degree and a PhD. Read more at i-dallas.
Biotechnological developments
Later, he began his residency in neurosurgery. Typically, for successful completion of residency, future doctors had to perform over a thousand surgeries. Duntsch had performed less than a hundred.
During this time, he met a couple of Russian scientists, Valery Kukekov and Tatyana Ignatova. They studied stem cells and patented a technology for growing disc stem cells. Duntsch co-founded a company with them called DiscGenics in 2008 and obtained a joint patent. Duntsch took charge of fundraising, while Kukekov and Ignatova engaged in scientific research. However, their names were misspelled on the patent. They believed that it was done intentionally as it could raise doubts about their involvement.
One of the investors that Duntsch attracted was Dr. Rand Page, who began to notice Duntsch’s destructive behavior: drinking and using drugs during work hours. Due to this, Duntsch was fired from his own company.
The beginning of his medical career
After an unsuccessful career as a scientist, Duntsch decided to work as a doctor. At the time, he had a huge debt of 500 thousand dollars. Therefore, he decided to start practicing as a neurosurgeon, where the starting salary for neurosurgeons was $600 thousand. In 2010, he returned to Dallas.
His CV was impressive. It consisted of 12 pages, but the veracity of what he wrote could be questioned. It was noted that Dunch had graduated with honors from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital with a doctorate in microbiology, although the hospital did not have such a program at the time, as it turned out later. The young neurosurgeon was nevertheless hired at Baylor Regional Medical Center in Plano.
The first surgery that Dr. Duntsch performed was unsuccessful, leaving the patient with chronic back pain. Some time later, the man had to undergo a second operation by the killer doctor, which resulted in paralysis of his legs. These were not isolated cases. Patients often complained of unbearable pain after surgery, various parts of their bodies were paralyzed. Surgical interventions were accompanied by massive blood loss, sometimes exceeding the normal 5 times. In the worst case, the patient died. In total, he underwent 5 surgeries in this hospital, 2 of which were fatal.
Why he wasn’t stopped in time
The hospital fired Duntsch not entirely legally and organized an inspection. But later it turned out that the wrongful dismissal could have resulted in large expenses for the hospital. So, it was agreed with Duntsch’s lawyers that he would resign and not mention his work at the hospital in exchange for a registered letter stating that there were no problems with him.
Then the surgeon went to the Dallas Medical Center, where he got a temporary practice. There, his colleagues were also dissatisfied with his behavior, and his surgical activities again resulted in the death of one patient and the injury of another. Duntsch was banned from the medical center, but he was not reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank because it was not required during his temporary practice.
Duntsch was later given the opportunity to practice at South Hampton Community Hospital in Dallas and also got a job at the Legacy Surgery Center. Where he also injured patients.
Finally, a complaint was filed against the surgeon with the Texas Medical Board, which revoked his license in 2013. In July 2015, Dr. Duntsch was arrested and charged, and after a lengthy trial, sentenced to life in prison.