Promising Beginnings
Christopher Duntsch was born in Montana in 1971 and raised alongside his three siblings in an affluent suburb of Memphis, Tenn. His father was a missionary and physical therapist and his mother was a school teacher.
Duntsch received his undergraduate degree from the University of Memphis and stayed in town to receive an M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee Health Center. According to D Magazine, Duntsch did so well in medical school that he was allowed to join the prestigious Alpha Omega Medical Honor Society.
He did his surgical residency at the University of Tennessee in Memphis, spending five years studying neurosurgery and a year studying general surgery. During this time, he ran two successful labs and raised millions of dollars in grant funding, according to Rolling Stone.
Over the course of just two years, Christopher Duntsch — known as Dr. Death — operated on 38 patients in the Dallas area, leaving 31 paralyzed or seriously injured and two of them dead.
From 2011 to 2013, dozens of patients in the Dallas area woke up after their surgeries with horrible pain, numbness and, paralysis. Even worse, some of the patients never got the chance to wake up. And it’s all because of one surgeon named Christopher Duntsch — a.k.a. “Dr. Death.”
Duntsch’s career started off bright. He graduated from a top-tier medical school, was running research labs and completed a residency program for neurosurgery. However, things soon went south.
Now, a new podcast called Dr. Death is breaking down the deranged surgeon’s criminal acts and shows how drug abuse and blinding overconfidence led to big trouble for the patients who found themselves underneath the spiraling doctor’s knife. However, it wouldn’t be long until Duntsch’s seemingly perfect career began to unravel.
The Downward Spiral Of Christopher Duntsch
Around 2006 and 2007, Duntsch began to become unhinged. According to Megan Kane, an ex-girlfriend of one of Duntsch’s friends, she saw him eat a paper blotter of LSD and take prescription painkillers on his birthday.
She also said that he kept a pile of cocaine on his dresser in his home office. Kane also recalled a cocaine- and LSD-fueled night of partying between her, her ex-boyfriend, and Duntsch where, after the end of their all-night party, she saw Duntsch put on his lab coat and go to work. According to D Magazine, a doctor at the hospital where Duntsch worked said that Duntsch had been sent to an impaired physician program after he refused to take a drug test. Despite this refusal, Duntsch was allowed to finish his residency. Duntsch focused on his research for a while but was recruited from Memphis to join the Minimally Invasive Spine Institute in North Dallas in the summer of 2011.
After he arrived in town, he secured a deal with the Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano and was given surgical rights at the hospital.
