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Gene Howard’s trust in Charlie Teo had already been shattered when he discovered a year ago that the controversial neurosurgeon’s disastrous operation on his daughter’s tumour was one no other surgeon in the world would have done.
“It makes me angry that he took advantage of our family, charging so much for a useless operation,” Howard said. “Now he’s gone on national TV calling me a liar. I don’t understand why he’s done it.”
Gene and Sarah Howard with their daughter Bella.
The Shoal Bay tradie was distressed to see Teo appear on Channel Seven’s Spotlight program on Sunday, suggesting that he had lied to the media about being unhappy with Teo’s futile operation on his late daughter, Bella.
Teo told viewers Howard had secretly contacted Teo to absolve him of any blame.
This was misleading. The email Teo read out was one Teo himself had solicited. It was written long before Howard learnt of the additional and unnecessary suffering Teo had caused his daughter with his pointless surgery.
Howard is not the only one infuriated by Teo’s refusal to accept the recent findings of “unsatisfactory professional conduct”.
Charlie Teo reads the email from Gene Howard on the Spotlight program last Sunday.Credit: Seven
Teo has said he has no remorse because he “will never” accept the damning finding of the professional standards committee that he failed to gain proper consent, lacked empathy and lacked judgment “in offering surgery without supporting statistical data or peer support”.
The brain surgeon has denied he offers false hope or provides false information to prospective patients. “Unless you have been in the room with me during the consent process you would not understand the complexities and nuances of informed consent,” he told the Telegraph.
However, this masthead has obtained an audio recording of a consultation in which Teo attempted to obtain consent for surgery from a vulnerable man using an emotive sales pitch.
Teo’s similar spiel to other patients was found to be inappropriate by the professional standards committee.
In the recorded consultation, made with Teo’s consent in 2020, Tom, who asked for his surname to be withheld, went to see Teo about his inoperable high-grade malignant brain tumour which was being held at bay with chemo and radiotherapy.
At the start of the consultation, Teo said: “Don’t interrupt, don’t ask questions until I finish and then I’ll let you ask as many as you like. Just listen.”
Teo wanted to operate, telling Tom that he wasn’t sure the other doctors were being honest with him. “I think your prognosis is terrible. And I think you’re likely going to be dead within a year.”
He told Tom that biopsy results were wrong in up to 50 per cent of cases. “If you were my son I would be crying my eyes out, I’d be upset, you know, thinking terrible thoughts, but I would still be hopeful that I could change the course of your disease with surgery.”
After handing over $800 in cash for the consultation and leaving Teo’s Randwick rooms, Tom broke down, reeling from the shock of his dire life expectancy without Teo’s surgery.
Later, Tom reflected on what he called Teo’s “high-urgency sales tactic” and decided against the operation for which Teo wanted $35,000 and the anaesthetist another $7500.
It has been three years since Tom decided to stay with his original neurosurgeon. So far “the treatment is working,” he said.
‘I’m the best’
Contemporaneous notes from another family’s 2017 consultation with Teo mirror aspects of his consultations before catastrophic surgical outcomes which were the subject of recent adverse findings.
The family’s notes record Teo disparaging other neurosurgeons’ assessments that the location of the woman’s tumour presented too high a risk for surgery.
Their opinion was that the operation would at best paralyse her and at worst kill her.
Of the paralysis, Teo said: “In his hands [the other neurosurgeon], it’s probably the case. But in my hands, no. Possible, but not likely.” He added there was “a 70 per cent chance that she will do well, that she will tolerate surgery. It will certainly buy her time.”
Telling them, “I’m the best … there is no one better in the world, no one” Teo offered that “If that was my mum, looking as good as she does, who has a good history in the past, no co-morbidities, I’d give her a go.”
Charlie Teo with Bella Howard and her father Gene.
But the stinger was that if she did not have surgery the very next day then “she accepts death … she will die in the next two to four weeks”, Teo told them.
Teo’s operation, which cost $100,000, was “an unmitigated disaster”, the woman’s children said. Like the two terrible surgical outcomes examined during the recent inquiry, the woman’s remaining three months of life were a living hell. Before she died, she was paralysed and unable to talk, eat or drink.
‘Bagging me out’
Gene Howard was furious hearing Teo on Spotlight dismissing the disciplinary findings against him as “the worst example of medical bullying” and that the only promise he gave to patients was “I’m going to treat you like a member of my own family”.
Howard said he still felt depressed and sick after the catastrophic operation on Bella and yet Teo was “bagging me out” on television.
Sarah and Gene Howard in the bedroom of their late daughter Bella.Credit: Peter Stoop
In April 2020 doctors at John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle told Howard and his partner Sarah that seven-year-old Bella had an incurable and inoperable tumour called a diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG).
Medical experts in this area say that even if 99.9 per cent of a DIPG was resected, which would be likely to result in immediate death, a resection is pointless as the cancer has already spread and it will come back.
At the consultation, Teo urged the family to have Bella’s operation the very next day, telling them it would cost $100,000 of which $50,000 had to be in his bank account that night.
Immediately after the surgery, Howard was ecstatic when told by Teo he’d removed 95 per cent of the tumour which, in his opinion, was low-grade and slow growing. However, the biopsy showed the complete opposite, confirming the original diagnosis.
As the family was driving back to Shoal Bay after Bella’s 12-week scan, Teo rang with shattering news. He told Howard to pull over and get out of the car.
“Mate, this is really bad. The scan’s come back, it’s grown … probably three times as big as what it originally was,” Teo told him.
Bella deteriorated quickly and required 24-hour care. In January 2021, eight months after diagnosis, she died.
Six months later Teo was the subject of an urgent hearing of the NSW Medical Council which was seeking to place conditions on Teo’s practicing certificate to prevent him from performing certain brain surgeries.
Charlie Teo on Seven’s Spotlight program after reading the email.Credit: Seven
“Your story is one we would really like to highlight [to the council] who is also coming after Charlie,” Teo’s assistant Laine Skene wrote in an email to Howard on July 29, 2021.
Howard, along with other Teo patients, also received a pleading email from Teo that day.
What Howard did not then know was that Teo’s futile surgery on his daughter’s inoperable tumour was exactly the kind of operation the medical authorities were trying to protect the public from.
Howard replied offering support. “If you would like one from me that’s 100% positive in support of mr teo [sic]… but also 100% critical of the doctors that offered us no help.”
He also sent a second email saying that when Bella was moved to an intensive care unit at a public hospital, the doctor had asked some “confronting questions” about Teo’s operation.
It was only the first email that Teo read out on Channel 7 with Teo adding that Howard was still a fan who had said to him, “This is terrible what they’re doing to you. You’re always honest with me” and even though “things went badly wrong” with Bella, Howard still appreciated that Teo “gave him hope”.
What viewers were not told was that a year after sending the email Teo requested, Howard had learnt the awful truth. Numerous experts, who reviewed Bella’s scans and medical records as part of a 60 Minutes/Herald investigation, all concluded that Teo had subjected the young girl to pointless surgery for which they had had to beg family, friends and workmates to help fund.
But the Spotlight interview was not the first time Teo had wheeled out Howard’s email. In October 2022, following the airing of the joint investigation, Teo falsely claimed on Today that Howard “wrote me an email the other night apologising to me about 60 Minutes … he didn’t want me to be condemned over Bella … he concedes it wasn’t my fault”.
Howard is worried about the damage Teo is doing to his reputation. “I’ve just set up a new business called Belle Plumbing [after his daughter]. What if people Google me and see I am being called a liar?”
Channel Seven declined to answer questions about whether they had contacted Howard or asked for details about the date and context of the email they highlighted on air.
Instead, a Seven spokesperson offered: “We asked Dr Charlie Teo the tough questions. The report was strong, balanced and fair to him and his patients. We stand by our story.”
When asked for comment, Teo agreed Howard sent the emails in July 2021, but added they were in response to Herald pieces “attacking” him.
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