Who is Christopher Duntsch and what did he do?
CHRISTOPHER Duntsch was a once-promising surgeon in Texas. Dr. Death on Peacock tells the real-life story of Duntsch's gross malpractice. Duntsch is a former neurosurgeon born in 1971 in Montana. He was nicknamed Dr. D. and Dr. Death for malpractice resulting in the maiming of several patients and killing two of them while working at hospitals in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Before his license was revoked by the Texas Medical Board, he was accused of injuring 33 out of 38 patients in less than two years. In 2014, three former patients of Duntsch's , Efurd, Kenneth Fennel, and Lee Passmore , filed separate lawsuits against Baylor Plano, alleging that the hospital allowed Duntsch to perform surgeries despite knowing that he was a dangerous physician. In 2017, he was convicted of maiming one of his patients and a life sentence in prison. The conviction of Duntsch was one of the first instances where a doctor was imprisoned for malpractice and has been called a precedent-setting case. The office of the district attorney prosecuting the case called it "a historic case with respect to prosecuting a doctor who had done wrong during surgery." Dr. Carlos Bagley, the director of neurosurgery at UT Southwestern, testifying for the defense, said that "the only way this happens is that the entire system fails the patients." Additionally, a neurosurgery expert for Duntsch's defense team himself said, "The conditions which created Dr. Duntsch still exist, thereby making it possible for another to come along." Wondry Media, an American podcast network owned by Amazon Music, launched a six-episode podcast series named Dr. Death focusing on Duntsch. Dr. Death, a mini-series based on the podcast will stream on Peacock in mid-2021. It will star Joshua Jackson as Duntsch, Alec Baldwin as Robert Henderson, and Christian Slater as Randall Kirby. The upcoming American crime drama series will be about two surgeons and a young Assistant District Attorney setting out to stop Dr. Christopher Duntsch from maiming and killing his patients during routine spinal surgeries.