Expert says 60 Minutes had ‘hidden agenda’
A Us-based professor who featured on the explosive 60 Minutes episode on Charlie Teo has said he was kept in the dark about the direction the story would take.
New York paediatric neurosurgeon Professor Mark Souweidane told Dr Teo in an email: “They clearly had an agenda that they kept hidden from me.”
He wrote: “In any event they can splice and edit all they want. I am fully aware of your mindset and empathise. The realm of the uncharted territories in neurosurgery is a place of solitude. Be well and know I respect you.”
Professor Souweidane appeared on the program on Sunday night where Dr Teo was accused of charging huge fees to the desperate families of two children, one of whom was left vegetative and both of whom died within a year.
Dr Teo reportedly asked the parents of the children, a fouryear-old Indian boy, and a girl, 7, from NSW’S Hunter Valley, to deposit $40,000 and $50,000 overnight in his account before operating.
Both children were diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) – a deadly and aggressive type of childhood brain cancer that neurosurgeons label inoperable and incurable.
Children diagnosed with DIPG are immediately considered palliative and usually given less than a year to live.
Dr Teo argues some of these diffused (widespread) tumours can also have a focal, or central, component and in those cases he believes operating can buy time – and in some cases improve quality of life – for dying patients.
Professor Souweidane told 60 Minutes there was no clinical or research data in the world that showed there was any benefit from conducting surgery on DIPG tumours.
Rules imposed by the Medical Council of NSW since August 2021 mean Dr Teo is unable to perform high-risk procedures such as brain stem gliomas unless he has written approval from a second independent neurosurgeon with more than 20 years of specialist experience.
Dr Teo and Prof Souweidane have co-authored a paper in a peer-reviewed journal about how minimally invasive neurosurgery techniques are fundamental for the modern neurosurgeon.