Do we like Charlie Teo?
Our score: 5 out of 10. A clean record on harm to people and the planet, but a regulator's findings, a settled lawsuit and a 'lack of insight' finding pull the good-person side into mixed.
Charlie Teo is Sydney-born, went to Scots College and then UNSW for medicine, and trained in the US, working in Dallas and as an associate professor at the University of Arkansas. He became Australia's best-known brain surgeon, famous for taking on tumours other surgeons wouldn't touch.
What stuck in the committee's craw was the reaction. It flagged his 'lack of reflection' and said his lack of insight caused concern. He told it he believed he was 'hated' by other doctors and that enemies in the medical fraternity were behind the complaints. The committee also noted an allegation that he slapped a patient while she was unconscious; the ABC report doesn't mention that one.
The condition that bites says he needs written support from a Medical Council-approved neurosurgeon before operating on recurrent malignant brain or brainstem tumours. It has no end date. Since then he has operated overseas, including Spain, where the Australian conditions don't reach, and families have paid tens of thousands of dollars to fly there.
A civil case followed. In March 2025 he settled in the NSW Supreme Court with the family of a woman who died after one of those operations. They alleged he understated the risks and operated with no realistic benefit; he filed no defence, the terms are confidential, and no admission is reported.
On the harm test, there is genuinely nothing here. The searches turned up no comments from him about LGBTQ+ or trans people, women, migrants, vaccines or climate, and no run of dodgy associations. That's a thin record rather than a glowing one, so it's a pass, not a distinction.
Nothing new has turned up on him lately beyond the 2025 settlement and podcast. He says he wants the conditions lifted and has described a smear campaign driven by professional jealousy; the regulator and the committee's findings say otherwise on insight. We'd call it a close call: a devoted, driven surgeon who the regulator says didn't always put the patient's interests first.