Doctor of Death

The Columbus Dispatch reports "the bizarre case of Dr. Michael Swango is a hot potato that has been scorching Ohio State University (OSU) for 15 years." Swango was dropped from OSU's residency program in 1984 after being accused of poisoning patients there and is currently in federal prison in Oregon after falsifying his medical credentials in New York. He is suspected of killing as many as sixty people from Ohio to Africa. Swango is eligible for release from prison in early 2001.

Swango reportedly grew up with a father obsessed with death and disaster; Swango kept his father's scrapbook and added his own clippings about death. He attended Southern Illinois University Medical School (SIU) in the early 1980's, where it took five years for him to graduate because of poor grades and where he was reportedly fired from an ambulance job because he forced a heart attack victim to drive himself to the hospital instead of transporting him. And beginning at SIU and continuing to OSU, there were darker concerns about Swango; people in his care and around him were more likely to get sick and to die.

In his book Blind Eye: How the Medical Establishment Let a Doctor Get Away With Murder, author James B. Stewart lists the following among many strange incidents involving Swango at SIU:

During his senior year, Swango wrote a paper on the poisoning murder of a writer living in London. The man had died of a poison called ricin; in large enough doses it is invariably fatal.

The ambulance company that fired Swango had earlier restricted him from direct patient contact.

Fellow students referred to his strange behaviors as "Swangoing"; fellow workers at the ambulance company called him "Double-0 Swango" because of his obsession with killing and death.

When required to dissect part of a cadaver, Swango reportedly was so incapable he shredded the cadaver "like he had used a chainsaw", seemingly strange for someone who later studied to be a neurosurgeon.

Several students wrote a complaint letter to medical school officials outlining Swango's incompetence, lack of care for patients, and arrogance toward medical procedures and the medical school. SIU Medical School officials considered expelling him; their vote to expel failed by only one vote.

On March 16, 1983, OSU offered Swango a residency in neurosurgery after the successful completion of a general surgery internship for a year. Swango then graduated from SIU on April 12; he made no mention to OSU officials that he had nearly been expelled, or that he later was fired from America Ambulance.

Next: Swango heads for OSU...

Next page > Swango at OSU