[Theme music starts]

RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

Dr. Charlie Teo is known for his incredible brain surgeries, taking on operations that other doctors won’t touch.

But now, several families have come forward, who allege they were misled about the risks and that Teo’s operations left their loved ones worse off than before.

Teo denies any wrongdoing, and says he treats his patients like he would want to be treated. But there’s another player in this story that hasn’t been subject to scrutiny: the news media.

Today, contributor to The Monthly, Martin Mackenzie-Murray, on Dr Charlie Teo and how the media built the image of a maverick miracle worker.

It’s Thursday, November 17.

[Theme music ends]

RUBY:

So Marty, Charlie Teo is the most famous neurosurgeon in Australia. He's world famous even. To begin with, can you just tell me a bit about who he is and how he built his career and reputation?

MARTIN:

Sure. He's a gifted neurosurgeon and his peers and critics admit that much to me. The problem with Teo is not his skilfulness, he has good hands, they say. But within Australia he has developed a quite extraordinary reputation and in large measure has cultivated the media, and the media have enjoyed for a very long time, I think, making a saint of him.

Archival tape -- Studio 10:

“He is an extraordinary Australian -Dr. Charlie Teo is also never shy about giving his opinion...”

Archival tape -- Sky News:

“He's a fellow and he’s a quality human being. Describing Dr. Charlie Teo as a world renowned neurosurgeon falls short of what this bloke has achieved.”

Archival tape -- Studio 10:

“Despite his critics, he has performed life saving surgery on many people suffering from brain tumors.”

Archival tape -- Sunrise:

“Dr. Charlie Teo is with us this morning. Charlie, it's always good to see you mate!”

MARTIN:

Teo's reputation has been considerable for a long time. You may have read any number of fawning profiles in newspapers. He’s appeared on radio and TV a lot.

Archival tape -- Reporter:

“Why don't you have a car?”

Archival tape -- Charlie Teo:

“Well, I tried cars. You know, I even had a nice car in America. I had a Porsche in America. And to try and get rid of the motorbike bug. But once you get the motorbike bug, it's there forever.”

MARTIN:

He's a subject of Australian Story, A Current Affair, numerous stories about, and very positive stories, about Charlie Teo.

Archival tape -- Ten News:

“Dr. Charlie Teo is one of Australia's leading neurosurgeons with an international reputation for doing radical surgery on tumours that other surgeons consider inoperable.”

MARTIN:

I would suggest he's the only neurosurgeon that the average person could name. It's not that there aren't other gifted neurosurgeons, as, if not more gifted than, Charlie Teo, but he has for a long time cultivated a quite extraordinary profile and status in this country.

And part of that reputation has been his willingness to operate on very risky tumours. And that's part of his reputation, which he attributes to having greater skill to operate on tumours that other specialists have deemed inoperable.

RUBY:

Okay, so we have the image then of this incredibly gifted surgeon who doesn't necessarily play by the rules, but nevertheless manages to achieve these amazing outcomes for patients. Can you tell me when you first started to hear that there might be a bit more going on to the story of Charlie Teo?

What kinds of things began to circulate about him and what were you told?

MARTIN:

So in 2017, I think it was, I received a handwritten letter from a senior neurosurgeon.

RUBY:

What did it say?

MARTIN:

There was a lot to it, but I'll run through a few of them.

One is that Charlie Teo accepts too high a risk for too many surgeries. So when he says that he operates on tumours that have been deemed inoperable, what inoperable means is not that it's physically impossible to operate, it is. What inoperable means is that after lengthy consultations, multiple specialists, a calculation has been determined. And that is that the costs outweigh the benefits. So, if you're talking a very aggressive, malignant brain tumour, the prognosis is not good. So a cost benefit analysis might be, okay, we can operate -it’ll be extremely risky, and the chances of catastrophic failure. So rendering the patient dead or paralysed or vegetative is considerably high. For what benefit? While possibly extending life by a few months. So that's what inoperable basically means, and this neurosurgeon, and I should say there is overwhelming kind of consensus amongst neurosurgeons about Charlie Teo on these grievances, is that he assumes a much, much too high risk.

And the second grievance is kind of related to that, which is that Teo has self-interest, oddly kind of confused the word inoperable. And depending on which year in which interview he's conducted, it can be as explicit as him saying that other surgeons have refused to operate because they have inferior skills to him, or are in fact cowardly or scared. He's been that kind of explicit, and he said something along those lines in 2007, and it's so incensed the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia that they took out a full page ad rejecting this, and saying that classifying a brain tumor as inoperable is not a sign of fear or incapability.

A third grievance in Charlie Teo is that he's long boasted of superior outcomes, and yet he doesn't publish an audit of his outcomes. So it's not subject to peer scrutiny. Other surgeons do this, they publish an audit, good and bad.

So that's a summary of some of the professional grievances against Charlie Teo.

RUBY:

Mm hmm. So there's a litany of concerns that are laid out to you back in 2017. Can you tell me a bit more about what's happened since then? Because we've seen more reporting emerge, more stories. But I think a lot of what's come out really echoes many of the things that were in that note to you, that was back in 2017.

MARTIN:

Yeah. So, things became a bit graver for Charlie Teo last year. So complaints, and we don't know the specifics, were made to the New South Wales Medical Council. They convened an extraordinary meeting and for that to happen they believe that there's a possibility that the public is at risk. And the New South Wales Medical Council effectively outlawed Teo from operating on brain tumors in Australia unless certain conditions are met. And that includes an independent neurosurgeon confirming guaranteeing that patients have had all material risks described to them and that Charlie Teo has acquired from them informed financial consent.

And this goes back to another grievance about Charlie Teo, is that when people are that profoundly desperate, and we're dealing with something of such complexity as brain surgery, what kind of consent can be given?

Charlie Teo always talks about patient autonomy and saying, who am I to deny someone what they want? Others say consent in this space with that desperation is kind of difficult to acquire.

So we fast forward to the last month…

Archival tape -- 60 Minutes:

“When it comes to performing highly complicated, often life or death, brain surgery. Dr. Charlie Teo makes a proud boast: he is the best in the business.”

MARTIN:

Kate McClymont and others in a joint investigation have run a number of stories about Teo.

Archival tape -- 60 Minutes:

“But tonight, Kate McClymont, the Sydney Morning Herald chief investigative reporter, looks at another side of Charlie Teo, and reveals the dreadful price…”

MARTIN:

There was one exquisitely sad story about an Indian family whose young boy had an aggressive, inoperable tumour. His prognosis was grim.

Local neurosurgeons had confirmed that it was a diffuse tumour and it was inoperable. They were desperate and they had heard the reporting about this great miracle worker, Charlie Teo, in Australia.

Archival tape -- Prasanta Barman:

“Dr. Charlie told us that will get a normal and healthy Nicolaj back and that's why we agreed with this risk.”

MARTIN:

So the father contacted Teo, and Teo assured them that it could be operated on, and that it would likely be curative.

Archival tape -- 60 Minutes:

“Persuaded by Dr. Teo, there was a good chance the surgery would cure his son. Prasanta opted to have the operation for $80,000 in Singapore.”

MARTIN:

They spent their life savings to have this surgery with Charlie Teo in Singapore.

Archival tape -- Prasanta Barman:

“He was playing with his toys, and at the time we told him that there would be a big fight tomorrow. And there's something inside your brain, something inside your head, so that bad things will be taken out, and after that, you will be okay again.”

MARTIN:

It went, as most neurosurgeons would expect it to, which was catastrophically bad. It rendered this young boy mute, incapable of speech, incapable of eating, incapable of moving, for the last few months of his life.

Archival tape -- Prasanta Barman:

“He was bedridden. He cannot move his leg or hands. Doctors say it's like a vegetative state.”

MARTIN:

The family never saw Charlie Teo again, and are obviously riddled with guilt. Their boy would have died anyway, but the last few months he could have at least spoken to them even on his own, walked...

Charlie Teo denies any negligence or malpractice, there have been bad outcomes but as he says and it's true all neurosurgeons, given the complexity of what they do, will have bad outcomes.

So this is the kind of catastrophic outcomes that critics of Charlie Teo had been warning of for some years now.

RUBY:

We'll be back in a moment.

[ADVERTISEMENT]

Archival tape -- Tracy Grimshaw:

“Will the real Charlie Teo please stand up? Australia's most famous neurosurgeon is also the most polarising. If you watched 60 Minutes on Sunday, you might think he's a dangerous maverick who has no place in an operating theatre.”

RUBY:

And so as these stories have come out, these stories that really complicate, or contradict the image of Charlie Teo as this miracle worker. What kind of response have we seen from him?

Archival tape -- Tracy Grimshaw:

“Countless patients say he's their miracle lifesaver. I sat down with him today. Charlie Teo, thank you for your time.”

Archival tape -- Charlie Teo:

“It's a pleasure….”

MARTIN:

Charlie Teo gave you an obviously defensive interview with Tracy Grimshaw on A Current Affair. And in the end he agreed that the tumour in the case study I just gave was in fact diffuse, but he believed gave reasons for why he thought it was perhaps operable. He said he would still do it again.

One interesting thing about that interview, and I've seen this time and time again with Charlie Teo, is his gift at seeming fulsome and articulate in his self reckoning. But I don't think that's the case.

What I mean by that is Grimshaw opens her interview by saying…

Archival tape -- Tracy Grimshaw:

“You have performed thousands of surgeries, you have lots of happy patients, and you've saved lives. And yet you are outlawed by the medical establishment in Australia. Whose fault is that?”

Archival tape -- Charlie Teo:

“I mean, I'd like to say it's everyone else's fault except for mine, but I've got to take some blame for it.”

MARTIN:

And at that point I thought, and the audience may have thought, that what was coming, what was going to follow that, was an admission, or some very painful and intimate self reckoning. But what he, in fact, admitted to was being poor at diplomacy.

Archival tape -- Charlie Teo:

“I mean, I don't do diplomacy well. I think I'm good, and so I'm not scared to say that. So, I've got to take some blame for it, but it's not all my fault.”

MARTIN:

And this is a recurring theme with Teo and with the media, and that is: criticism of him is, in fact, the result of professional envy. They resent his superiority and they resent his large public profile. And this kind of sick, malignant, professional envy has conspired against him for a very, very, very long time. It's tall poppy syndrome, in other words.

And there's a huge problem with this… It's rarely about medical ethics, but instead becomes culture wars. And Charlie Teo has become a totem of, I think, the maverick who shrugs off political correctness and his more cautious and jealous peers try and tear him down. That's the Charlie Teo story.

But in fact, the substance of the controversy is much more interesting and much more important.

RUBY:

Hmm. And it does seem at this moment in time as though there are just as many journalists willing to defend Charlie Teo as there are journalists who are willing to investigate things that might have happened to his patients.

So can you talk to me a bit about that?

MARTIN:

Yeah, I think he's done a wonderful job at cultivating the media and he has been the beneficiary of so much of the media's reporting.

Archival tape -- Karl Stefanovic:

“Charlie Teo joins us now in the studio. Charlie, good morning to you.”

Archival tape -- Charlie Teo:

“Good morning.”

MARTIN:

Charlie Teo has a foundation named for him that he set up. It has a number of celebrity ambassadors.

Archival tape -- Karl Stefanovic:

“I'll just before we get cracking, just wanted to say to and acknowledge that both Alex and I are ambassadors for the Charlie Teo Foundation, and will continue to be so.”

MARTIN:

So these are literal ambassadors for Charlie Teo who have conducted interviews and defended him very vocally and explicitly in public.

Archival tape -- Karl Stefanovic:

“In light of that, in a lot of these stories, this is all so painful all around. Why haven't you thrown in the towel?”

MARTIN:

Completely unmoved by the very obvious conflict of interest here, I have no doubt that they're sincere in their faith in Charlie Teo. But the conflict of interest is gross and obvious.

Archival tape -- Karl Stefanovic:

“There are great breakthroughs that can come through medical experimentation. How much of your operations have been experimental -have ridden that finest of lines, the millimetre lines between experimental and saving someone's life?”

Archival tape -- Charlie Teo:

“Yeah. So again, you can call it experimental, if you will, but as long as you make sure the patients are well-informed.”

MARTIN:

And one other thing I'll note there's there's been so much fawning treatment of Charlie Teo over the years.

One example is a lengthy profile in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, and the author concludes in it that Charlie Teo’s ultimate problem or worst problem, might be simply that he lacks political nous. Well, I would suggest that his very successful cultivation of the media suggests the opposite, suggests he's very good at politics, in fact.

RUBY:

And it’s no stretch to imagine that patients and families of patients have gone straight to Charlie Teo straight away. In part, because the media has portrayed him as this miracle worker. So, ultimately what responsibility do you think lies with media institutions when we consider the outcomes for those families?

MARTIN:

The media is largely witless. I think media logic is determined by tropes, and very old ones. So rise and fall, arcs of redemption, David V Goliath…

In Charlie Teo’s case, it's the brilliant man who's besieged by political correctness. The media love that story. And the media have preferred telling that story, and creating a saint, to examining what are very grave, interesting, rich, complex stories of ethics.

The problem with this now is that Charlie Teo is this kind of, for many, untouchable saint. If you criticise him publicly, it generates extraordinary public outrage. This is a creation of the media who have very credulously gone along for the ride and ignored the very grave essence of the complaints made against Charlie Teo.

I can assure you that neurosurgeons aren't all infected by this malevolent professional jealousy. I've spoken with many now, and they're very bright and sober people, and their complaints and their grievances are sincere. But these have been overlooked by the media for a very, very, very long time in favour of making a saint, in favour of telling the story of the maverick being torn down, the tall poppy being torn down.

RUBY:

Marty, thank you so much for your time.

MARTIN:

Thanks, Ruby.

[Theme music starts]

RUBY:

Also in the news today….

Archival tape -- Donald Trump:

“But we always have known that this is not the end, it was only the beginning of our fight to rescue the American dream.”

RUBY:

Donald Trump has announced his campaign to be the Republican nominee for U.S. President in 2024.

Archival tape -- Donald Trump:

“...in order to make America great and glorious again, I am announcing my candidacy for President of the United States.”

RUBY:

Today’s announcement sets up a fierce contest for the nomination of a divided Republican Party, with right-wing Florida Governor and former-Trump ally, Ron DeSantis, tipped to enter the race as a front-runner.

And…

At least one Russian-manufactured missile has landed inside Poland near the border with Ukraine, killing two.

U.S. intelligence officials told the Associated Press yesterday that early investigations suggest the missile was a Ukrainian missile, fired in an attempt to intercept a Russian one.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

[Theme music ends]