Goodyvery welcome to conversations. We have a special guest. Not that everyone is not special, but Charlie too is a unique individual. In twenty eleven, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for his pioneering efforts into development of I Better Get This right, minimally invasive techniques in neurosurgery. In twenty twelve he was invited to give the Australia Day Address to the nation, and in twenty thirteen he was the first non politician Australian to address
the US Congress. He was for seven years have named the most trusted person in Australia, but there's been issues around his brilliance as a neurosurgeon. In twenty twenty two, we had to endure a hearing with the New South Wales Healthcare Complaints Commission. Now, look, I'll claim bias here because I've met Charlie. I've attended his foundation functions. I've heard the testimonials from people whose lives he's either saved or prolonged. For le Man himself, Charlie, Charlie T, how how are you?
Very good? Cons It's nice to be here.
We were delayed. You apologize for delaying out chat today because you were locked in conversation with the patience of yours. Can you give us some indication of how those sort of conversations go.
It's quite ironical actually that you mentioned already the tribunal in twenty twenty two, so that's the elephant in the room. So at least we can talk about that. And I guess at the end of the day, the tribunal found me guilty of professional misconduct because of two reasons. One that I was overly optimistic and I didn't give patients
a reasonable idea of the risk of surgery. And two is that I gave contrary second opinions to patients about whether they should or should not have surgery, and if it didn't match the opinion that they got before me, then of course that was something that I did wrong. I should listen to my colleagues essentially, so to talk about an one identified me as a bad surgeon. So in fact, even my greatest attractors have said that I'm a talented, good surgeon. So they all had to do
with my consent process. So when I heard that, that's the one thing that I'm actually most proud of, and many of my fellows who come to learn from me from overseas, from the most you know, the most reputable universities in the world, they almost always say, you know, we've learned so much neurosurgeon Charlie. But what we've learned mostly is how to treat how to treat our patients with respect and autonomy. And so the reason I was delayed to this podcast is because, you know, I like
spending time with my patients. I enjoy getting to know them. I don't like rushing the interview. A lot of surgeons or doctors in general, give an amount of time to their patients and then if that time runs out, they could of wrap up the interview and hurried along. And I know that if I was a patient, I wouldn't want my doctor to do that. I'd want him to spend time with me, answer all my questions, be honest and be very candid. And that's why I was delayed.
This patient had a particularly bad tumor. It's life threatening. She had received the opinions of many different doctors. She was incredibly intelligent and well informed. You know, the last thing I wanted to do was rush the consultation. She needed a level of comfort and reassurance that I was there to talk about her case, to talk about her circumstances, and to talk about my experience and my opinion about what should and should not be done with her tumor.
So yeah, ended up being ninety minutes rather than the usual sort of an hour, but that's what she required, and you very kindly allowed me to sort of delay this interview so I could treat her with the sort of respect that I'd wanted to be treated with when I saw a doctor.
I've heard you say that when you are discussing outcomes with patients, you give them four options. Can you run through those options? You know?
The do? It's a narrative that I used with all my patients, and I've used it for the last thirty years. And so again, all the more reason why I find the findings of the tribunal so abhorrent. So I stayed to look. There are four potential outcomes. Is a win win, win, lose, lose win, or a lose lose, And sadly, you could fall into any one of those categories. Now, sure there's more chance you're going to fall into the better categories,
but you could fall into any category. And lose. And a win win is where we do surgery, no complications, and we achieve the goal of surgery, either cure or prolongation of life. A lose win is where we do surgery, we still get the prolongation of life for cure, but the complications are such that you have a negative impact
on your quality of life. A wind lose is where we do great surgery, no complications, but the biology of the chamber is such that it's just going to grow back again and you're still going to die, and we haven't achieved the goals of surgery. And a lose lose is where sadly you are worse after surgery and it still doesn't buy your time or cure you. And sadly
some patients fall into the lose lose category. And that lose lose category is very, very dependent on the location of the chairman, the size of the tumor, and the biology of the tamer. And I say that to everyone, and so everyone is well informed about these potential outcomes. At the end of the day, I say to the look, there's only one thing I can promise you, And the one thing I promise you is that I will try my hardest. I'll treat you like a member of my
own family. And that's the only thing I can promise you. I can't promise you good outcomes or bad outcomes or no complications, but I can promise you I'm going to try my hardest.
The thing that intrigued me about the findings of that that Healthcare Complaints Commission was the composition of the of the commission. I mean, you've got a judge, You've got two neurosurgeons obviously, who either affiliates of yours or competitors of yours, and lay a lay member that's just a member of the public who has probably no Is that the concern that were they? Were they qualified enough to pass judgment on you?
Absolutely not. It was it was. It was Kangaro Court, Ganti. It was terrible, and everyone that was witnessed it witnessed it was almost laughable. So the two neurosurgeons had never done the surgeries that I'd done. If you looked at their CVS, one of them had an impressive CV, but it was mostly spying surgeries and epilepsies surgery. And the other guy, I had never done a brainstem chimer in his life, had never done, had never published, at least
on recurrent gleomers. They were not peers. They were people who were neurosurgeons elected by the Neurosurgical Fraternity to represent the standard of care of neurosurgery in Australia. And the expert witness that they called in as well was a guy that's got zero publications on brain chammers. It was ridiculous to you know, I don't mind being judged by peers who have the same experience as me, but these guys, well, firstly, you know, there's no one in the world who's done
eleven thousand brain chammits. I'm sorry, but there's just no one that's done that. So to get someone at least who's done you know, thousands of brain jumors who specialized in brain chamans is what they should have done. But there's no one in Australia who could fit that bill. And not only that, they're my competitors. So it's like asking war Was to judge Coles. You know, you just can't do that. You've got to get someone who's going to be right from the front, as objective and as
unbiased as you can. And both these guys had a record of being malevolent to me, you know, making comments about me in public forums, writing letters about me. And the reason we couldn't object to that is because when we said these guys are biased right from the start, they go, Okay, pick two neurosurgeons, aren't biased, and we couldn't and well we actually did, but they deemed those
neurosursions to bias the other way. In other words, our friends of mine, they'd either trained with me or they'd attended one of my courses, so they were biased the other way. And you know, I do conceide that the ones that we picked would have been friendlier or more objective.
So as long as your ban from performing at surgery in Australia, you need the approval of other eurosurgeons to do. Did I read that right?
Look, everyone thinks that I'm banned from doing surgery. That is not the case. They found me guilty of professional misconduct on those two counts and the punishment was a reprimand so slap on the rest and that was all. However, they did say that you know, you keep bad records, and I were the first to admit that I hate writing up records and we need you to improve your
record keeping. Tick, I'll do that, and we'd like you to get a second opinion before you do difficult cases like brand sim Timbers or recurrently Owmers, And I go, tick, absolutely, you know that's great. You know someone else can share the responsibility. But they knew that that second requirement would never be fulfilled because every neurosurgeon friendly or otherwise who I've asked to be my supervisor to give me that
second opinion have rejected me. And they rejected me on very reasonable grounds, and that is that malpractice insurance companies have said, don't do it, that he should do this case and agree to it. If something goes wrong, you're going to be held liable. And if you say he can't do it and they die, you're going to be held libel. So and they knew that right from the start. They knew that no one was going to ever step
up and be my supervisor or my second opinion. So yeah, So, in other words, the restrictions they put on me were so onerous that, yeah, I can't operate now. I can still operate on other cases where I don't need permission, But the trouble is that now that I'm so everyone knew before this that my colleagues were against me, and so everyone's known that for ages. But now to have the media against me as well, it puts me an extremely high risk of, you know, a high profile case
that might go wrong. So now the hospitals are going, well, the hospital that I work that goes Charlie. You know, you've been great, You've been here for thirty years. You've brought a lot of money to our hospital. But now it's too high risk. The media against you, your colleagues are against you. You need supervisors. And they took my privileges away, and again I kind of can't blame them. So then I go, well, don't worry, I'll just go
somewhere else and someone else will give me privileges. But everywhere I go, of course, the neurosurgeons have to who work at that hospital have to agree to bring me on board, and they all circle the wagons and keep me out. So now if I had a hospital that I could operate in in Australia, I could operate today. I still have my license and I still can do cases that aren't controversial. In other words, the majority of
neurosurgery cases I can still do. It's only it's only those two particularly difficult cases where I need a supervisor.
Doctor Charlie TiO is my guest, folks. We need to take a break back shortly. Welcome back to conversations. Doctor Charlie Teo is my guest, folks. If you just tuned in and explained the circumstances of the tribunal hearing that he had to go through the Healthcare Complaints Commission and at the outcome of that, he can't really operate in Australia. But he can operate, but it's a bit too complicated. I'm intrigued, though, Charlie. Let me just get this quote up.
In an interview from Beijing, the Professor Ling Feng, who's the deputy director of the China International Neuroscience Institute, said she was not worried about the restrictions imposed on doctor Teo. She said, I took a careful look into what happened over there. I don't think it should be imputed that Charlie's neglect of care or passion for the patients. Instead, I thank Australia for the restrictions on Charlie, which gave
me the opportunity to work with him. So you're doing a lot of your work overseas now.
Obviously in China, the enforced retirement from the tribunal put me in a bad place. Cornse I don't know. I just I love neurosurgery. I still had the passion. I was still getting great results. I wanted to pass on the wood and disseminate the information before I retired, and it just wasn't the right time, and so I sought
my refuge overseas. I guess I'm lucky enough to have had a fellowship program over the last forty years where I've trained neurosurgeons from almost every country in the world, and so I have friends and colleagues in almost every country in the world who were eager to have me operate and teach in their countries. And so I initially went to Spain where I taught to of the neurosurgeons
and they were just lovely. And I was operating in an environment that was non hostile, and it was the first time I'd ever operated in a non hostile environment, and I must say it wasting. It was just beautiful where you know things are going to go wrong occasionally, but in Australia, when things went wrong, I was always worried that the knives would come out and the colleagues would see it as an opportunity to destroy me, whereas overseas it was exactly the opposite. They was supportive. They
saw it as a teaching lesson. You know, if Charlie can get a complication like that, then you know anyone can. And it was a it's a beautiful environment to operate in. So from Spain I then went and you know, people heard that I wasn't operating in Australia and they invited me. So I've operated in God, it's like I can't even listen to them all India.
All Peru, Spain, Germany, Nepal, three three and three in Nepaul, Brazil, South Africa, India, China. And then it's intriguing to see the outcome where the statistics have given me love successful come one hundred and forty five, a good outcome, twenty a fair outcome, thirty three, a fair outcome three one unfortunate death out of those operations you've done. Now, who compiles those figures? Are you know they peer compiled?
Yes, So you have to keep a log book with all the surgeries you do, and you have to document it, and so all those cases have been well documented. We've got X rays before and after, et cetera, et cetera. And then of course they're endorsed by the Chairman of the Department, and so they're very accurate figures, they're legitimate, and they're actually not as good as my normal figures. So one death in you know, in one hundred or
two hundred patients is unusual. But in my defense, the cases I'm doing are like the world's most difficult cases. When I operate in a country like Nepal and Cambodia, which I did last week, they don't give you the cases that they can do. They give you these really really difficult cases that no one is prepaired to operate on. So of those, I forget how many there are, but of those, say two hundred cases, easily one hundred and fifty of them are the world's most difficult cases that
no one else will operate on. So I know those figures don't look good with one death out of one hundred and forty patients, because normally I have, you know, in my eleven thousand cases, I had twelve deaths. So the figures are much better than that, but these are really difficult cases that I've been operating on.
I can't imagine what it would be like to operate in Nepal. What sort of conditions do you operate exactly?
Exactly. You've got to adapt to the conditions that are available. Like Nepal was actually not too bad. But in Cambodia they don't have a drill, so you've got to use the old fashioned way of opening the skull with this wire called a jiggly saw. They don't have a headholder, which means that the patient, if they wake up, will
move during the operation. Then it can be disastrous. So yeah, you have to make all these sessions about what you can and can't do because of the limitations in technology and equipment and expertise.
Patients wake up during an operation.
Yeah, if the antithesiologist is not on the ball, they are. And even if they are on the ball, even good ant caesiologists will have the occasional patient that will move during an operation because they absorb the anesthetic agents faster or are more efficiently than others. And so everyone's different, and it's not unusual for a patient to move a little bit during an operation as the anesthetic agents wear off.
That's why you put them in three pin fixation. We put them in three pin fixations so that if they do have the move, the head doesn't move. And so while you're doing delicate neurosurgery where every millimeter counts, it doesn't matter, it doesn't affect you. Now, when you don't have a headholder, it means you've got to take the head down, which with a sticky tape and that's the best you can do. And so the patients have to be really, really obsessively anesthetized so they don't wake up
and they don't move during the operation. But that of course introduces another lay of complexity because the more an aesthetic agency is, the more expensive it is for the patient. And remember these patients are paying for their own anesthetic agents, and it means they wake up less quickly, and you know all these other all these other potential complications that you've got a factor in when you operate in a developing country.
What is an operation like that cost, Charlie.
Yes, So if it's a surgery in a developing country and I'm doing it to teach the local neurosurgeons, of course it's all pro bono, so I don't charge a patient anything, and you know that's usually done in a public hospital, so they don't pay anything, or they pay a little bit. If it's a private patient who's insisted on meeting the operation, then I charge them a fee, plus the hospital charges them a fee, and that fee
can vary according to which country you're in. The total fee can vary from as little as twelve thousand dollars in some countries, so as much as one hundred thousand dollars in other countries. So yeah, it's not cheap, but it's very comparable and in most cases cheaper than Australia. So in Australia, if a patient wanted me to operate privately and they didn't have private health insurance, the total bill would end up being somewhere between eighty and one
hundred thousand dollars. Again, everyone accused me of taking that hundred thousand dollars, which is ridiculous because everyone knows that you've got to pay the hospital as well. But you know, in Spain, for example, it's twenty thousand dollars cheaper than that. In China it's thirty forty thousand dollars cheaper than that, so it really does depend on which country you're operating in.
Doctor Charlie Teo as my guest, folks, something I'm intrigued about his journey from where he came to where he is now, so we'll talk about that after the break back shortly. Welcome back everybody. If you just tuned in with speaking to doctor Charlie TiO, one of the most eminent neurosurgeons in the world, renowned for his skill, not without his controversy. Charlie, I'm always intrigued in the journey.
I mean, you're obviously of Asian extraction. Can you tell us about mum and dad in your early days?
Yeah, well, you know, it is quite a checkered upbringing of past. But in summary, so both parents Chinese from Singapore, immigrated to Australia to do medicine. My father was an obstrician gynecologist. Before that he was a GP. My mum was a nurse. Not a wealthy sort of background. We did it hard at first.
Were you born when they immigrated?
No, I was born here. Okay, yeah, yeah, so they immigrated, I was born here and the first say ten years of my life was pretty hard. Little fire Row house, I bought Bomby sort of car, and I can just remember it wasn't the most salubrious situation. But then they sent me to a private school, so things obviously got better. I went to Trinity Grammar initially, and then I went to Scott's College. From there, I decided I wanted to
be a motor mechanic. I chose an apprenticeship, and then I realized that it wasn't intellectually stimulating as I wanted, so I actually got the march again in medicine, got into medicine, and the rest is history.
Well, you just skipped over too quickly. Do you have any connection and did your mother and father maintain a connection with Singapore, given that's where they were born.
You know, it was in the days, Cornsey, that and most of your listeners won't be of this vintage, but it was in the days that the population of the colonies wanted to be more English than the English, and that's why a lot of the Chinese called their children very very English names like Winston and Hamilton and Charles, and I was called Charles after Prince Charles. My mother was Elizabeth, my father was Philip. My sisters ann so
where you can't get more anglophilic than that. So no, they didn't really reject their heritage, but they certainly didn't want me to be Chinese. They wanted me to be more English and more Australian than them, So you know, they chose not to speak Chinese in front of me,
so I would never speak with a Chinese accent. They sent me to a greater public school where they wanted me to row in the head of the river and played rugby, and so all those very English things were encouraged now household, rather than discourage.
Did you row? Did you play rugby?
I did row? I wrote in the Social four, because I was never big enough or strong enough to be in a competitive four or competitive eight. I played rugby, and I was very good when I was young, but then everyone got bigger than me and faster than me, and so by the time I finished playing rugby, like I was in the eleven a's and ten a's and twelve a's and then the thirteen b's and then the fourteen c's and then the fifteen d's, and so by the time I got to my senior years, that's not true.
I actually played in the seconds for a game I never played in the first and yeah, I loved rugby, so I played it right up until my HC.
Did you follow a team?
Not really? I mean I went to New South Wales University where I played rugby socially again when I got there, and I guess I followed the New South Wales University team. But and I lived in the eastern suburbs, I like these in Sydney, But no, I never followed, never really followed a team.
Were you discriminated against much because of your Chinese heritage?
My god, yes it wasn't. It wasn't a single day in my life that I wasn't mocked and jeered for being Chinese, Not a single day as a child. Every time we went to a shopping center, every time we went to school, every time we sat in the car and went past someone who someone would mock or jeer. You know, slanty eyes, ching chong chinaman, yellow yellow belly, I mean, you name it. And yeah, it was not a single day that I wasn't targeted for being Asian.
How did you deal with that?
Well, you know, you know what you know, and I didn't know any better. I just thought, you know, I used to cry at night and just hope that I would turn white the next day. And and yeah, you just had the live with it. I mean that was just the way it was in those days.
Was there a time you emerged from that darkness?
Well, I was never immerged in darkness. I mean, it didn't make me melancholic, it didn't make me angry. It just I just accepted it as been. You know, that's what you've got to accept when you live in a white country.
But if you're crying it, if you're crying at night, you're sad.
Well, yeah, all sad. But and I'd try and I'd prayed for me to change my appearance. But but you know that's only at night, and then the next day you get up and you fate the fire again.
Well, there must have been a time that changed.
I guess it changed when I became a black belt in karate. So I tried to So you either accept it or you don't accept it. And if you don't accept it, then you either become melancholic or you become angry. And so I didn't like it, and I didn't and I was very Again I was going to say I was pugilistic wasn't pugilistic. I mean, I'm not a pugilistic sort of person. I don't like Biffo, but when I get into Biffo, I really like it. And so you know, if you get to my sort of threshold, then yeah,
and that's my entire life has been like that. You know, I've been targeted by the neurosurgical fraternity for years and you know, bring it on. I used to say, bring it on. It wasn't until the the playing fields became an even that I lost. But I still tried to fight it. And that came from my childhood. You know. I rather than being bullied and being beaten up, I go that or sorry, I go, well, I'm gonna I'm going to fight back. And I was little, and so
I tried bulking up. So I've never talked to eevile this stuff. It sounds a bit embarrassing, but anyway, I tried to bulk up. So the back of the magazines in those days there was always ads by Charles Atlas, you remember them, and Bullworker, Remember the Bullworker. I bought a Bullworker. I bought all the supplements of Charles Atlas, A drank and ate and I went to town. So I'd have all these terrible supplements every day, and they were, you know, molasses, and I don't know what they were,
but they tasted terrible. But I thought, I'm going to bulk up. So I bought the Charles Atlas stuff. I bought a bullworker. I worked the bullworker every day, and I could never bulk up. I just didn't have the body habitats and I didn't have the genes. So then I thought, well, if I can't bulk up, and if I can't be a muscleman, then I need to get skills. So then I took up karate, and karate defined my life. It was just a game changer. So if you're asking me,
when did a change A change? Because I immersed myself in karate, it became my entire life. I'd train every day. I bought a punching bag. I watched every Bruce Lee movie. I you know, would punch a punching bag hundreds of times, kick it hundreds of times. I got my black belt. I competed, and if anyone picked on me, it was like, bring it on. And I really enjoyed the biffo because
I'd be able to beat big guys. I became a bouncer at the university, and I used to bounce at all the balls and I'd take on ten twenty guys at once and I'd come out on top. And then I thought, well, this is great. So then I became a bouncer at Center Point Tavern. And so when everyone else was earning three dollars fifty an hour, I was earning ten dollars an hour as a bouncer at Center Point Tavern. And I did that all through university, and yeah, I really enjoyed it. And so that's I guess that's
when things changed. When I took up karate. By the way, my schoolwork improved. I was in the debating team, and my debating improved my school true because I had this real confidence about me. It's like, you know, once you're confident with one thing, it has this knock on effect. And I became very, very confident after that.
Doctor Charlie Teo as my guest, Folks back after the break, Charlie Teo as my guest on Conversation Today, Doctor Charlie Teo, we learned things about him we probably didn't know before. He was a black belt in karate and having been persecuted in Tea so often because of his Asian heritage. He took up karate became very proficient at it. I loved getting in fights, was a bouncer at center point. It seems to me that that would have been counterproductive
to your medical studies. But it's the other way around.
Look, that added confidence made me a little bit more confident when it came to public speaking, for example, and debating. But it also had a positive effect of my schoolwork and my studies for some reason. I'm not sure why, but it did. But no, it wasn't all together positive. I mean, when people found out that I was a bouncer and that I got into a bit of biffo, it didn't go well. And you know, I failed my
neurosurgery exam not once, not twice, but three times. And on the third occasion, my mentor sat me down and goes, Charlie, we need to talk. I go, okay, yeah, let's talk. He goes, look the college a little bit upset with you. I go, yeah, okay, why did I fail the pathology part? No you pass that? Did I fail the short cases or the long cases? No? No, you pass that. I go, well, what did I fail? And he took Texas glasses off and he sits me down and goes, Charlie, we just
don't like the way you are portraying yourself. You call people by their first name, and you get them to call you by your first name, and you just can't do that. You go out partying every night, and you go clubbing until you know, one two o'clock in the morning, you just can't do that. You ride a motorbike, and neurosurgeons do not ride motorbikes. You know, you're a black belt in karate, you work as a bouncer. That's just
not what neurosurgeons do. And what we would like you to do is, you know, Charlie's about time you got married, settled down, buy a car, get rid of the motorbike, and you know, just become and call people. Don't get people to call you by your first name. What are they supposed to call you doctor Teo or mister Teo? Yeah, And I go, okay, well that's what it takes to pass the exam. Then you know, I'll change, And I changed past the exam and then I went back to bed.
I got rid of the car and board a motorbike again.
You got married and had four kids.
Oh yeah, no, no, no, I married a beautiful lady who was, you know, just an amazing wife, an amazing, amazing mother. I just wasn't the best husband. It's a whole nother story. You know, I'm a great neurosurgeon, but I'm a you know, I wasn't the best husband. So unfortunately our marriage ended about six years ago. Eight years ago.
You got four daughters, have you know?
Because I was a great father and I love my girls dearly. They love me dearly, and thankfully the girls are still very much a part of my life, and I'm part of their lives, and it's a very rewarding sort of relationship with them.
Did they pursue medicine as you did?
I know two of them sort of inherited my sort of empathy. I guess. One of them is the most empathetic person I know, and she's a dog She loves animals and she's a dog trainer, dog psychologist, and she's amazing. She's like a dog whisperer. The other one went into business, but I think she's the human factor in business. And she now runs a clinic for mental health and she
just loves the interaction with the patients. I mean, she likes the business side as well, and she's very good at it, but she just loves talking to the patients as well. So I think those two probably inherited that sort of that gene from me.
There's a real sadness to your profession. And when you're dealing with people with brain cancer, because I've heard you say it's not curable, can you come back to some sort of stark reality and give us an explanation of that when you're dealing with people who have those symptoms and that disease.
And it is sad, okay. So the big picture is that if you do brainchim is, sadly, the majority of brain tim is a malignant in other words, brain cancer Sadly, they're more common than the benign ones or the low grade ones. So that means most of your patients, if
your brain tumor patients, are going to die from their disease. Now, unlike most other cancers, where there have been huge strides in the treatment of these cancers such that the majority of patients survive, the same can't be said for brain cancer. Now you're probably thinking, well, why not and the answer is probably multifactorial. It's difficult to know why we haven't made the same advances in brain cancers we have with other cancers. But it goes something like this, because everyone
dies from brain cancer. Most doctors have a very nearalistic, fatalistic approach to it. They're going to die, so why would we even try? Well, the worst thing about that is that, of course it's a self perpetuating situation where you know it's a self fulfilling prophecy. If you don't try, then of course they're going to die, and so you
never make advances. The second thing is that brain cancer is incredibly heterogeneous, so they say it's like having thirty cancers in one because a lot of the other advances in cancer treatment is big because they've found some target and it's called targeted therapy or immunotherapy. They require the tumor to have a common denominator, a common gene, a common protein on the cell membrane, or something that they can target, and that means that those tumors are mostly homogeneous.
In other words, all the cells look the same and behave the same When you've got a heterogeneous guman like brain cancer, you might find a target, but that target will only kill a small percentage of the tumor. And so that's one bad thing about brain cancer. The other thing about brain cancer is that it's protected by I
think called the blood brain barrier. So the blood brain barrier came around because the brain is the most important organ in the body, and whoever made our beautiful body said that we need to have extra protection to the brain, and we need to protect it from toxins and large molecules that might be damaging to the brain cells. So they designed a blood brain barrier. Well, the bad thing about the blood brain barrier is, yes, it keeps out toxins,
but what are chemotherapy agents? Said toxins, And so most chemotherapies that have been effective against other cancers can't be used in brain cans because they don't cross the blood brain barrier. Okay, what's the next bad thing. The next bad thing is that when you have cancer somewhere else, like bowel cancer, you can surge. You can be very very curative because you can be extra aggressive and you can take out the cancer and a normal bit of bowel above and a normal bit of bowel below, you
can do the same thing with lunk cancer. You can do the same thing with skin cancer, and that's called a super marginal resection, where you take out the cancer plus some normal tissue. Well, the brain is so eloquent a structure that if you try and take out brain cancer plus some normal tissue, you're going to get some pretty devastating outcomes because that normal tissue has some sort
of function. Now that function might be very subtle, and we do do super marginal resections of brain cancers, but only if it's in an area where you can take out some normal tissue and not have a devastating outcome. But if your tumor is close to the motors strip, for example, then taking out normal tissue is going to paralyze them completely down one side of their body. And you know people aren't king to accept that. So and
then I can keep going. I can keep talking. It's brain cancer is incredibly challenging and because of the nearism associated with it, no one until I came back to Australia was concentrating on brain cancer. When I came back from overseas, I was totally flabbergacid to hear that there were no major NGOs or government bodies that were funding
brain cancer research. It was terrible and that's why I decided to start the Cure for Life Foundation back in two thousand and that morphed into the Cure Brain Cancer Foundation, and that morphed into the Charlie Teo Foundation. And I'm proud to say that I've raised over fifty five million
dollars over that period. And without fifty five million dollars, we funded amazing projects in Australia and overseas, and some of those projects have come up with treatments that were never going to be found until we put the money in the effort into research. I was lucky enough to be on a panel last night with a research scientist called Matt Dunn who works out a Newcastle in New South Wales and he personally was affected by brain cancer.
His daughter die from brain cancer and he has now identified some agents that potentially could treat a significant percentage of children with brain cancer very effectively. And again we funded him. Another foundation called the Little Leagues Foundation funded him and with that funding he's made a significant change. And so that's what we need. We need awareness. Awareness will lead to funding, Funding will lead through answers and hopefully we can turn the tables on brain cancer. In
the next few years. We can find cures for these incurable cancers.
And that's what your foundation does, and people can find your foundation just your Charlie Chair Foundation and support. I've been at functions where you've been so well supported. But can we finish? We hear so much negativity and so much sadness around the work that you do. Can we finish with a happy story? I just have a few of those.
Ah, we can, Cornsey. But look, it's too sad. It's too sad. I mean, really, at the end of the day, what's happened. What's happened is that you know this is going to sound incredibly pompous and arrogant, but you know I'm a good neurosurgeon and I had a good track record, and I've done more brain timers than anyone in Australia and possibly anyone in the world. And I can't even operate on fellow Australians. I mean, there's nothing happy about that, Cornsey.
It's I'm happy, so I don't worry. I'm happy that I'm still saving lives overseas and I'm doing what I love and I'm using my experience to teach others. And I'm really happy about that because it's given me good mental health and I've got purpose still and it's great, and you know, and China have embraced me, and I'm operating on all these patients in China from all around China, and they're building me a three story building of a
teaching building so I can teach neurosurgeons. And so don't worry. I'm okay, but I can't. I get sad and frustrated and angry every time I come back to Australia and I have to consult and see see all these all these Australians, good people not being able to get access to to me and to and other neurosurgeons. You can't learn from me. And there's one other bad thing, Conzi, and that is that because of what's happened to me, the whole ethos of Australian medicine has changed. I think.
And you know, again, people going, I don't big note yourself, but but I think it has because I've seen it. I've witnessed it. And so what's happened is that you know the people who have been doctors aving faced with a challenging situation where they have to step outside the box, step out of their comfort zone, do high risk treatments
like high risk or high risk surgery. They're going if they can destroy Charlie Teo, and really, all Charlie Teo did was operate on patients that he was told that others wouldn't operate on, and he was overly optimistic in his consent, then they can destroy anyone. So why would we put ourselves at risk. I'm not going to take that tumor out. I'm just going to buy upset or I'm not going to do one hundred percent reception. I'm going to do a fifty percent reception so I don't
cause any complications. So I don't put myself in the same precarious situation that he put himself in. I'm not going to push the envelope. I'm not going to contend with my colleagues. I'm not going to give contrary second opinions. I'm going to toe the party line. I'm going to I'm going to not put my patients at risk and therefore not put myself at risk, and the whole level of medicine will be adverse the effected because medicine is dependent on pioneers and risk takers who are willing to
challenge the status quo to advance a specialty. And now Charlie Teo, who was the basically the epitome of that sort of person pushing the envelope, challenging the status quo, getting bad cases as a result of it. You know, people suffering occasional people are suffering for it. Now that person has been destroyed by the system, and that sends a very clear message to doctors do not do what he did. Cherry Cornsey, I know you wanted a positive note, but I am saddened by it.
You know you've made your point, Charlie. People can go to your foundation, the website and Charlie Teo Foundation, and as I have been meeting Charlie personally and hear him speak, hearing his patients speak, you will be inspired. Charlie Tea, thank you so much for your time.