If themedical true crime dramatelevision seriesDr. Deathwas entirely fictional, audiences would probably struggle to believe that any doctor could behave as sadistically and unethically as the real-life doctors who are featured in the series. The first season ofDr. Deathfeatures Christopher Duntsch, a charismatic, incompetent neurosurgeon who killed and maimed several patients before Duntsch, played by Joshua Jackson, was criminally charged and eventually sentenced to life imprisonment for his crimes.
Meanwhile, the second season ofDr. Deathstars Edgar Ramirez as Paolo Macchiarini, a brilliant but narcissistic stem cell surgeon, who was convicted of committing gross assault against patients, several of whom died as a result of his experimental surgical procedures. Indeed, one of the most chilling aspects of the current season is the fact that Macchiarini, who is set to begin serving a thirty-month prison sentence in the next few weeks, still has his medical license and is technically eligible to practice medicine and operate on patients.
Christopher Duntsch: Portrait of a Sociopath
The first season ofDr. Deathis most compelling when the show explores the twisted psychology of Christopher Duntsch, whose egregious malpractice seemingly masks a deliberate desire to harm people. Duntsch’s incompetence was apparent to his colleagues virtually immediately after Duntsch began his professional career as a spine surgeon in Texas. In the show, vascular surgeon Randall Kirby, played by Christian Slater, immediately becomes wary of Duntsch’s surgical abilities, even before Duntsch’s surgeries resulted in severely mutilated patients.
However, unlike the expertly deceptive Macchiarini, Duntsch didn’t do a good job of hiding his crimes, nor did he even seem to make a determined attempt to do so. Kirby, in his complaint statement to the Texas Medical Board, described Duntsch as being a sociopath who was a clear and present danger to the citizens of Texas. Regardless, after leaving his first surgical post at Baylor Medical Center in Plano, Texas, through a forced resignation, Duntsch moved to Dallas Medical Center, where he was responsible for the death of a patient, who died after Duntsch severed her vertebral artery, and the maiming of another patient, who was left paralyzed.
When the Texas Medical Board finally suspended Duntsch’s medical license in June 2013, the board chairman said that the board members found it hard to believe that a supposedly trained surgeon could be as incompetent as Duntsch was, who, in an email, described himself as being a cold-blooded killer.
Paolo Macchianini: Miracle Man
Unlike Christopher Duntsch, Paolo Macchiarini, the focus of the second season ofDr. Death, was an undeniably brilliant surgeon who nonetheless developed a god complex that eventually compelled him to perform increasingly experimental surgeries that exceeded the ethical boundaries of his profession. Macchiarini was a thoracic surgeon who first gained notoriety by conducting pioneering transplants of bioengineered tracheas, which were colonized with the recipient’s stem cells. However, Macchiarini was later discovered to have performed unethical surgery on several seemingly healthy patients, several of whom died after receiving one of Macchiarini’s synthetic tracheas.
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In addition to being a much more talented surgeon than Duntsch, Macchiarini was also a master manipulator. Macchiarini’s personality is most clearly defined within the series by his manipulative behavior, through which he deftly compartmentalizes his ethical misconduct and increasingly complicated personal life.
Indeed, the central relationship that exists within the show’s second season is between Macchiarini and his mistress, Benita Alexander,played by Mandy Moore. In 2013, Alexander, who was then a producer for the NBC weekly television news magazine showDateline, was assigned to produce a documentary forDatelineon Macchiarini, with whom Alexander soon began an affair, only to discover, in 2015, that Macchiarini had been married for nearly thirty years.
Of course, whileDr. Deathreveals Macchiarini to be a serial con artist, Macchiarini has also proved to be a skillful escape artist, as evidenced by the lenient prison sentence that he received and the theoretical potential for him to practice medicine in the future.
Sinister Surgeons
WhileDr. Deathis grounded in the gruesome misdeeds of its titular characters, the series nonetheless doesn’t present a blanket indictment of the entire medical profession, which is presented in grayish terms. In the first season ofDr. Death, the unethical behavior of Christopher Duntsch is contrasted by the actions of several of his colleagues, especially spine surgeon Robert Henderson, who tried to correct the damage that Duntsch did to patients by performing salvage surgery on those patients. Along with Randall Kirby, Henderson,played by Alec Baldwin, fought to have Duntsch’s medical license revoked for fear that Duntsch might obtain a license outside of Texas.
However, the second season ofDr. Deathis, in accordance with Paolo Macchiarini’s manipulative personality and once starry professional reputation, more ambiguous in this regard. While Macchiarini is surrounded by colleagues who become increasingly suspicious of his behavior, there are also colleagues who are in awe of Macchiarini and his experimental methods.
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This dichotomy is most clearly embodied by Dr. Svensson, a researcher atthe Swedish Karolinska Institutewhere much of the second season takes place. While Svensson, played by Gustaf Hammarsten, is initially impressed by Macchiarini’s work, Svensson becomes suspicious of Macchiarini after performing Macchiarini’s experimental trials on lab rats, all of which subsequently die. Indeed, the lab rats are a defining visual metaphor for the second season ofDr. Death, in which Macchiarini seems to increasingly view his patients as being experimental vessels, nothing more than human lab rats.Stream on Peacock.
