Top Nightmare MDs

Almost everyone has a doctor horror story or at least heard of one. We've all heard stories of doctors who have left sponges and even scapels inside patients during surgery. Those who have prescribed the wrong medications, and even those who have even been a little too hands on with some patients. While these stories are enough to make us more than a little nervous about our medical needs, we should count ourselves lucky that we haven't met some of the Mds throughout history that make for those real life nightmares. Let's take a look at some of these Nightmare Mds.

Dr. Josef Mengele

Dr. Mengele would be the perfect villainous doctor in any horror movie, however, the horror he inflicted on those he called his “patients” during WWII was very real, and while those who lived through his experience never recovered from their nightmares, many others did not survive his ministrations.

Dr. Mengele received his medical degree from Frankfurt University and instead of using his knowledge to save lives he used it to end them at the German concentration camp of Auswitzch where he was one of several doctors who made the decision about which prisoners would be sent to death camp and which ones would be used as forced laborers. Later, he used his so called skills and knowledge to perform “experiments” on camp inmates including children. His twin experiments became infamous, and to make his crimes against the youngest and most innocent of his victims worse, he would refer to himself as “uncle” to the children, make sure they ate well, and even bring them sweets only to in the end, inject substances in their eyes to change eye color, sew twins together, and kill them and dissect them while taking notes during their autopsies. Those who survived his terrible experiments were usually killed or sent to the gas chambers once he moved on to the next set of twins and another experiment.

Those did survive never forgot this real life Jekyll and Hyde who could seem caring and sympathetic one minute and then murderous the next. Known as the “Angel of death” there was nothing angelic about Mengele and he lived out his life after the war never having to pay for any of his crimes.

Dr. Harold Shipman

Was a British Physician who made house calls to his patients, something that is totally unheard of in this day and age and even in the 1980s-1990s when a large number of his 250 victims lost their lives. It is now believed that Shipman began murdering his patients in 1971 and continued until his arrest in 1998. Interestingly enough it was not any of his fellow doctors who were to make note of the unusually large numbers of his patients who were “dying from his treatments” but rather a member of a funeral parlor who became concerned over the seemingly large number of the good doctors patients who were ending up at their business.

It seems that Dr. Shipman mostly preferred older ladies in good health, and it was later discovered that he had been not only killing them with injections, but stealing their jewelry as well. He has since become known as one of the most prolific serial killers in history. There have been movies, books, and songs written about this doctor, but to the families of his victims this doctor is their worst nightmare come true.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian

Although some have called Dr. Jack Kevorkian a hero, too many Dr. Death is their worst nightmare. From the beginning of his career Dr. Jack Kevorkian was preoccupied by death first wanting to use convicted death row inmates for scientific experiments (with their consent) then experimenting with transfusing blood from the dead into the living and finally by setting himself up as an authority on Doctor assisted suicide. While many people believe that terminally ill patients have the right to decide to end their own lives, Kevorkian helped many people who were not terminal and in 5 cases did not even suffer from a disease to die. In one case, the good doctor helped a woman die after consulting with the woman's husband and not even determining whether or not it was the woman's own wish.

While many of the families of Kevorkian's patients/victims were extremely supportive of his actions, many other people had nightmares about the good doctor ending the lives of their loved ones without sufficient evidence that their loved ones could recover. In Michigan, where many of Kevorkian's activities were carried out with little regard to whether a patient was actually ill, or suffered from treatable depression, jokes circulated to help people deal with their fears that one of their loved ones could be next.

While most doctors do everything in their power to heal the sick these three MDs stand as a reminder that sometimes our nightmares do come true and when they do, doctors can leave a terrifying path of destruction and broken lives in their wake.