The Persecution of Charlie Teo

By Erald Mecani - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35272026

Neurosurgery is not for everyone. In my limited experience in assisting with neurosurgery during my medical training when I participated in operations of the brain, I was reminded of comments made by the lexicographer Samuel Johnson about dancing dogs. I paraphrase and say “One is reminded of dancing dogs. The wonder is not how well they do it but that they do it at all.” Messing around inside someone’s brain, in my experience, is a whole different universe to cutting off a toe. We can imagine the latter process and predict the reaction of the subject but with people’s brains the mystery is of a whole different order because, after all, we are at the interface of the human mind, the soul if you will.

Charlie Teo has no trouble in diving into the brain. He is famously good at it. Everyone knows about keyhole surgery which in essence is just like operating through a pipe. Before Charlie Teo and his colleagues, the surgeon virtually had to take the top of the skull off to get inside the head. It made sense that just like keyhole surgery inside joints and abdomens you could minimize the damage by operating through a pipe to get to the brain tumor or other disease process inside the skull. Like all spectacular projects taking place at the limits of human ingenuity, there are spectacular successes and spectacular failures. It is with the failures that Charlie Teo came undone.

The agents of the demise of [Charlie Teo’s] public fame and adulation included reporters from a recent 60 Minutes program.

These people aided by gullible and naive patients and patient relatives, had no trouble highlighting these failures because surgery of this type, at the limits of human understanding, has many of these and this is only to be expected. We can dismiss these people as ignorant, foolish types whose knowledge of medical science is absent. The problem is that they are aided and abetted by a coterie of sinister, jealous and power-hungry types drawn from the ranks of the medical profession and the medical authorities. Maybe, as was said, he charged too much, and maybe he was arrogant but, so what. Sometimes this is the price we have to pay for the kind of medical expertise these surgeons bring us.

…they are aided and abetted by a coterie of sinister, jealous and power-hungry types drawn from the ranks of the medical profession and the medical authorities.

These people who run the medical boards and professional colleges of this country are horrible pinched types who resent anyone who is successful in the profession and especially people like Charlie Teo who enjoy a large following outside medicine. These authorities once were restrained by the fact that they could not publicize complaints against doctors unless they were proven by the courts and professional tribunals. Now they can advertise widely any complaint against any doctor no matter how stupid or how frivolous. There are many of the latter and for the corrupt people who populate the medical boards of this country, they provide fertile ground to persecute and demonize doctors, they do not approve of.

…any complaint against any doctor no matter how stupid or how frivolous…provide[s] fertile ground to persecute and demonize doctors, they do not approve of.

In my time in medicine, working through remote Australia I have met many Weird Doctors of the Western Highway, but there is one man who stands out.

I recall my experience working in the outback with a great bush surgeon (whom I will refer to as ‘GBS’).

Here was a man who could walk into a major operation—such as a total knee replacement—see it once, and then go out and perform the same operation himself. More frighteningly, he could read about it in a textbook and then do it. Genius? Perhaps. p.7

However, it is important to understand the connection between surgeons like GBS and Charlie Teo. Both are fallible.

“…just as GBS the great bush surgeon was aware, every surgeon makes mistakes, errors of judgment, and wrong calls. All that is needed is for someone to complain, and regardless of how eminent you are, you will go down, but GBS was long gone before we came to that.” p.10

To run a health service in remote areas and also to push the bounds of medical science:

“…everything depend[s] so much on keeping your skilful doctors and surgeons?” p.9

Because GBS was performing many highly complex operations outside his specialty, things he would be struck off for doing today, jealous colleagues in those other specialties would have complained to the authorities. GBS, in the outback, was operating on the edge of civilization. Everything depended on his skill and his skill alone and no one else could take over from him.

No one else had his surgical aptitude and no one was prepared to take the risk.

Charlie Teo is also operating at the “edge”, at the edge of medical science and, as he works, there is no one who can step into his shoes.

Ultimately, it is the patients who will suffer if denied skilled medical care while the Medical Authorities of this country impose widespread mediocrity.

I feel sorry for Charlie Teo that he should have come under the sway of these people because fairness and mercy have no place in their lexicon.