Some of the following experiments are horrifying because of how doctors use fellow human beings as guinea pigs. Some of them are horrifying because of what they say about us as a species. In fact, a few of these experiments were even used as a justification by the Nazi doctors during their trials at Nuremburg.

10Measuring A Dying Man’s Fear

John Deering was a convicted criminal, having killed someone during a robbery, and he was sentenced to face the firing squad in 1932. Approached by doctors just before his death, he agreed to take part in a novel experiment. Electrodes would be hooked up to him, and researchers would determine exactly when his heart stopped.

The heart stopped 15.6 seconds after he was shot. He wasn’t pronounced dead until 150 seconds later.

However, the experiment also investigated something else. In addition to detecting when the heart stopped, the electrocardiogram measured the rate at which it beat, and the researchers used this data to extrapolate how scared Deering felt as he died. Immediately before the execution, the heart pounded at a very high 120 beats per minute. When the sheriff called “fire,” the pulse shot up to 180 beats per minute.

Deering had kept a calm exterior during the execution, but newspapers gleefully reported on the experiment by declaring: “You can’t be brave facing death!”

9Vanderbilt University’s Radioactive Iron

In 1945, researchers at Vanderbilt University set up a study to find out the rate of iron absorption in pregnant woman. Their preferred method of measurement was radioactive iron.

Researchers gave pills to 829 anemic women without telling them they were consuming something radioactive. Thanks to the pills, the women received radiation levels 30 times higher than normal exposure.

The study had a secondary objective: to observe the long-term effects of radiation on children. The experiment likely caused the deaths of three children: an 11-year-old girl and two boys, ages 11 and 5.

Vanderbilt ended up the subject of a lawsuit at the behest of the mothers of the dead children, a lawsuit that they settled for over $10 million.

8The Boston Project

In 1953, Dr. William Sweet, in conjunction with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, conducted several radioactive injection experiments on terminally ill cancer patients. As with the Vanderbilt experiment, the purpose of the uranium injections was twofold: to study the effects of ingested uranium on the human body and to see if the radioactive material would have any effect on the patients’ tumors. As part of a deal with the government, Sweet agreed to turn over the patients’ corpses to the government for further research on radioactivity.

None of the patients showed any signs of recovery. Many died quickly. In addition, it appears that no patients consented to the experiment.

7Bacteria Testing In San Francisco

In 1950, fears of biological warfare with the Soviets inspired American officials to test the viability of an offshore attack. The experiment consisted of a single vessel located a few miles away from San Francisco, loaded up with a bacteria known as Serratia marcescens. The bacteria produced bright red colonies on soil or water samples, making it ideal for tracking purposes.

The researchers believed that the bacteria was completely safe for humans. In reality, it caused various respiratory and urinary tract infections. Doctors in the area observed such an increase in pneumonia and UTI cases that Stanford wrote an article about it for a medical journal. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were exposed to potentially deadly bacteria.

The worst part is that the experiment was completely unnecessary. Similar tests could have been done in a deserted area and in smaller quantities. The only thing the experiment proved was that San Francisco was indeed vulnerable to biological attack.

6 Puppy Obedience Experiments

In Stanley Milgram’s infamous experiments, participants were told to deliver electric shocks to victims, and actors pretended that they really were receiving shocks. Charles Sheridan and Richard King’s variation added a twist: The victim was not faking the cries of pain. Also, the victim was a puppy.

The two men felt that perhaps Milgram’s subjects realized that their victims were faking reactions, which would explain why the subjects so readily delivered shocks when asked to. Determined to remove that possibility, Sheridan and King recreated the experiment with a puppy who actually received electric shocks.

The volunteers were told that the puppies were conditioned to pose a certain way when prompted by a light. If they stood incorrectly, the volunteers were to throw a switch, giving the puppy an increasingly strong electric shock.

Over half of male participants, though distraught, obeyed to the fullest extent. Even more surprising, every single woman fully obeyed, some of them crying the entire time.

5The Broken Toy Experiment

Researchers at the University of Iowa gave toddlers toys, instructing them not to break them. The researchers had secretly rigged the toys to break in a matter of seconds, subjecting the children to an immediate flood of guilt.

As soon as the toy shattered, the researchers gave a brief “oh, my” to express their disappointment. They then carefully watched the toddlers for reactions, verbal or non-verbal.

Once a minute passed, the researchers left the room with the broken toy and returned shortly with an identical non-broken toy, assuring the child that they were faultless in the toy’s breaking. However, like any study involving children, this raises a number of issues about informed consent. (Various parents whose children participated in the study claim that there have been no adverse effects.)

4Chester M. Southam’s Cancer Experiments

Chester M. Southam was a well-known cancer researcher in the 1960s, working diligently to study the immune system’s effect on tumors. He wanted to study whether a person already weakened by a different disease would be able to fight off cancer cells. To test this theory, he needed people on which to experiment, and he found them at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in New York City. Convincing the medical director of the potential benefits, Southam was allowed to inject 22 people with foreign, live cancer cells to study the effects.

This was nontherapeutic experimentation performed on elderly, terminal patients, so Southam didn’t even get consent. He convinced the medical director that it was common practice not to. (Some were informed that they were to be part of an experiment but were not told the details.) In addition, some of the patients’ doctors told Southam that they didn’t want their patients to be a part of Southam’s experiment, but he used them anyway.

In the end, Southam was censured and put on a year’s probation. The experiment also brought the idea of informed consent back to the forefront of the American medical discussion.

3The Visual Cliff Experiment

The visual cliff experiment was thought up by two Cornell University researchers, Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk. A strong glass pane was placed on a table, with one end extending some distance off the tabletop. A checkered tablecloth covered the table, but below the rest of the glass, the distant floor was visible.

Gibson and Walk used this setup to discover whether depth perception was innate in various animals. If an animal avoided walking on glass beyond the table, it could perceive depth visually. They experimented on rats raised in complete darkness and found that the rodents could indeed perceive depth. So they next moved on to human babies.

The babies were made to crawl over the glass. The researchers placed the mothers at the end of the glass, having them call out to their offspring. To get to their mothers, the babies had to crawl across the glass, apparently over a sheer drop. Some babies did seem hesitant to move, implying that they were able to perceive depth—and implying that the experimenters had successfully inspired fear in them.

2Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study

One of several human experiments undertaken to further the US effort in World War II, the Stateville Penitentiary Malaria study was designed to test experimental malaria drugs. To find subjects, the government turned to prisons and contracted hundreds of prisoners to become guinea pigs. Even though the men were all sane, mentally capable, and told of the specifics of the experiment, whether or not prisoners can actively consent remains debatable.

No one died due to the experiment, and many prisoners who took part in the study received generous compensation. Most also received reduced sentences for their patriotic service. However, nearly every man who was bitten by an infected mosquito contracted the disease

1Robert Heath’s Electric Sex Stimulation

In 1970, Tulane University ‘s Dr. Robert Heath turned to deep brain stimulation to treat something that he saw as a problem: homosexuality.

A 24-year-old gay man (“B-19”) suffering from paranoia and depression was chosen as the candidate. Stimulation of the brain’s septal region is associated with pleasure. So Dr. Heath inserted electrodes under the man’s skull and shocked his brain. The man did indeed report extreme pleasure. Offered next the ability to shock himself, the man—a suicidal addict—did so thousands of times, in sessions that lasted hours.

Shortly after, Heath monitored the man’s brain activity while B-19 masturbated to heterosexual pornography. The subject successfully orgasmed.

The final part of the experiment consisted of the patient having sex with a female prostitute that Heath had hired. The doctor continually shocked his brain during this process. B-19 didn’t seem interested in the woman, sitting still for over an hour, until she approached him and initiated intercourse.

In a follow-up interview a year later, the patient stated that he had been regularly having sex with both men and women. Deeming the experiment partially successful, Heath moved on to other fields of research, never again attempting to cure homosexuality.

Scientists can be an eccentric bunch of people, especially when it comes to animals. Throughout history scientists have performed all manner of weird and wonderful experiments on animals, some of which have produced surprisingly useful results. For example, giving a robotic arm to a monkey could revolutionize the prosthetic limb. Vibrating earthworms on a loudspeaker might provide the inspiration for a new form of neurotechnology. And feeding helium to an alligator and putting an artificial tail on a chicken have both improved our understanding of the dinosaurs.

At other times, scientists have decided to perform ridiculous feats with no real purpose like feeding LSD to a spider or swallowing a shrew. Nonetheless here are ten of the most absurd, hair-brained experiments ever performed on animals.

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10 The scientist who ate a shrew

Scientists have performed some pretty disgusting experiments over the years, but one of the absolute worst is the man who ate a shrew. In 1994, two strong-stomached scientists decided to find out what would happened if one of them swallowed, digested and excreted a northern short-tailed shrew.

New York anthropologists Brian D Crandall and Peter W Stahl took great care to prepare the shrew for consumption. According to their report—Human Digestive Effects on a Micromammalian Skeleton—the pair began by skinning and disemboweling the shrew. It was then, in their words, “lightly boiled” before one of the two scientists (they don’t reveal which one) swallowed the carcass without chewing.

But their experiment did not stop there. The pair decided to analyze what remained of the shrew once it had been digested and excreted. However, despite an exceptionally thorough inspection, not all if the shrew’s bones made it out of the other end. Among the “missing” body parts were one major jawbone, four molar teeth, much of the leg and foot, all but one of the 31 vertebrae, and a significant amount of the shrew’s skull.

Given that the carcass was swallowed whole, without taking a bite, the scientists were amazed by what they discovered. “Any damage,” they explain in their report, “occurred as the remains were processed internally. Mastication undoubtedly damages bone, but the effects of this process are perhaps repeated in the acidic, churning environment of the stomach.”^[1]

9 Playing hide-and-seek with rats

Rats are often seen as filthy, loathsome creatures, but it turns out they have a childish side too. The scurrying rodents are said to love a game of hide-and-seek, often giggling with delight when they are discovered.

In 2019, a team of neuroscientists at Humboldt University in Berlin devised a way to play hide-and-seek with male adolescent rats. The researchers set up a small playroom full of boxes and shelters to hide behind. The rats quickly learned how to play the game, and began to develop strategies to better evade and locate their human opponents.

During their training, the rats were not rewarded with food or water; instead they were tickled and given positive physical contact. But they seemed to enjoy more than just the reward. The researchers believe the rats would play hide-and-seek for the sheer fun of it. When they were caught, the rodents would often let out ultrasonic giggles and jump for joy, then scamper off to a different hiding place.

This might sound like a silly experiment, but scientists have found that play behavior is vital for cognitive development.^[2]

8 Magnetized cockroaches

When you think of magnets, cockroaches are probably not the first things that come to mind. But, believe it or not, the hardy insects have a number of strange magnetic properties. Cockroaches, like birds, navigate by sensing the Earth’s magnetic field, and some scientists believe they could help improve the design of magnetic sensors.

In order to learn more, researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore placed a group of American cockroaches inside a magnetic field. The little creatures became magnetized in next to no time. But the effect was not permanent. Outside the field, their magnetism faded away and the cockroaches returned to their normal, non-magnetized selves.

But the scientists noticed something unusual. They found that the time taken for the cockroaches’ magnetism to decay varied by as much as fifty minutes to fifty hours. And it all depended on whether the cockroaches were alive or dead.

The scientists concluded that this strange effect was caused by the different viscosities of living and dead cockroaches. Basically dead cockroaches take longer to demagnetize because they are much stickier than live ones. There are actually tiny magnetic particles nestled within the bodies of cockroaches. Typically these particles are scattered about and facing in different directions. But when a magnetic field is applied they begin to line up. Then, when the field is removed, they return to their random orientation. This process is fairly quick in live cockroaches (around 50 minutes) because the magnetic particles are housed in a gloopy fluid, so they can move about with ease. But when the insects die, the fluid hardens up, which is why the particles can take over two days to return to their original orientation.^[3]

So, what are these magnetic particles and where they come from? Sadly scientists are still none the wiser. But this bizarre experiment has proven there is much more to cockroaches than meets the eye.

7 Alligators on helium

What happens when an alligator inhales helium? Strange question, but a team of experimental biologists believe the answer has helped them better understand how the snapping reptiles communicate.

As I’m sure you are all aware, when humans inhale helium our voices become squeaky. The reason for this is simple: helium gas is lighter than air, which means sound waves speed up as they travel through it. This causes the helium molecules to vibrate at frequencies much higher than air, which is what makes your voice sound like Donald Duck.

Although it seems like a novelty party trick, this concept becomes far more useful when applied to alligators. Alligators are known to make loud bellowing noises to mark their territory and attract partners during mating season. But until recently scientists have been in the dark about how these bellows are produced.

To learn more, researchers from the University of Vienna put a small Chinese alligator in an airtight tank, then filled the tank with heliox (a safe mix of helium and oxygen). The alligator actually sounded deeper in the heliox tank, but later analysis confirmed that the frequency of her bellows had, in fact, increased. This suggests that alligators communicate with each other like birds and humans by making the air in their vocal tracts resonate. And, by extension, perhaps dinosaurs communicated that way too.^[4]

6 Songbirds on drugs sing “free-form jazz”

From Jimi Hendrix to Snoop Dogg, all number of musicians have performed under the influence of drugs. But what about birds? Now, thanks to biologists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, European starlings have been heard singing “free-form jazz” while on opiates.

In a 2020 study, a group of starlings were given a small dose of fentanyl. Fentanyl is a medical painkiller that, like morphine, induces feelings of euphoria. The scientists were curious to learn if the drugged-up birds would burst into song just for the fun of it. And they did. Shortly after the starlings had taken fentanyl, they began to sing a kind of “free-form jazz”, scatting away on opioids like Charlie Parker.

Research suggests that flocks of starlings often sing together out of joy of being among other birds. It is thought that the birds carry on singing alone to try to reproduce that social pleasure. “It’s evidence that a positive state is induced by the presence of flock-mates, which stimulates song,” lead author Lauren Riters told The Times, “and that birds continue to produce gregarious song because it is rewarding.”^[5]

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5 Vibrating live earthworms

In 2020, two Melbourne-based scientists made headlines after using a loudspeaker to vibrate earthworms—research they claim could hold significance for neurotechnology.

This seemingly bizarre experiment is actually a lot more scientific than it first appears. The researchers began by sedating earthworms with alcohol. They then placed them on a loudspeaker, cranked up the volume, and watched as the worms began to wobble. Using a laser, they were able to monitor what effect the speaker had on the worms.

The bodies of earthworms are mostly made of water. This means that when they are shaken they behave like droplets of water and begin to ripple. But the vibrations from the loudspeaker produced a particular type of ripple known as a Faraday wave, named after the pioneer of electromagnetism Michael Faraday.^[6]

While this might not sound remarkable, the pair believes their outlandish research could be used to develop a safe, non-invasive method to connect the human brain to a computer. Essentially this bunch of drunken worms wobbling on top of speaker may one day help produce a far less harmful version of Elon Musk’s Neuralink. Who knows what the future holds?

4 Chicken walks like a dinosaur

Studying dinosaurs is a difficult businesses, given they have been extinct for 65 million years. Studying old bones and fossils can only teach you so much, and scientists are constantly on the lookout for new ways to better understand the terrible lizards.

Then in 2014 a team of scientists in Chile had a brainwave: why not put a plunger on a chicken’s bum? Chickens, like all birds, are descended from a group of dinosaurs known as the therapods (e.g. velociraptor, T. rex). So, by giving a chicken an artificial tail, the scientists believed they could alter its centre of gravity and make it walk like a dinosaur.^[7]

Remarkably the experiment worked. A short video produced by the researchers clearly shows the chicken prowling around like a no-budget version of Jurassic Park.

3 Monkey with a mind control robot arm

It sounds like something out of a surrealist sci-fi movie, but in 2008 scientists released footage of a monkey controlling a robotic arm with its brain. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh designed a highly-sophisticated mind-controlled arm, then taught a macaque monkey to use it to feed itself marshmallows.

The monkey was able to control the arm using an advanced brain implant. Electrodes had to be inserted into the monkey’s motor cortex to detect signals from the brain, which the implant translated into commands for the arm. The engineers had taken great care to make the arm’s movement as realistic as possible. The prosthetic limb was given a dynamic shoulder, an elbow that only bends one way and a claw-like hand.^[8]

Following the remarkable work of the Pittsburgh researchers, scientists have gone on to build similar prosthetics limbs for humans to help paralyzed people live independently.

2 Drugged spiders weave odd webs

NASA has performed some incredible feats over the years, but one of their weirdest moments was the time they got spiders high. In 1995, researchers were interested to learn the effects of various drugs on spider web patterns. Scientists at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama fed spiders various toxic substances—including marijuana, caffeine and amphetamine—then watched as they spun webs while tripping.

Unsurprisingly the arachnids exposed to the most toxic chemicals produced the most misshapen webs. The one on marijuana wove most its web to begin with, but lost interest around midway. In contrast, the amphetamine spider spun with a huge amount of enthusiasm but was let down by its lack of order; its web was full of gaping holes. And the one on caffeine produced something halfway between a traditional web and a spiral mandala.^[9]

1 The sex life of rats wearing different pants

If you want to be successful in romance you have to dress sharp. That is not only true of humans but rats as well. In the 1990s, Egyptian scientist Ahmed Shafik conducted an experiment dressing rats in different kinds of pants and studying the effects on their sex lives.

In total, 75 rats were made to wear pants over the course of a year. By the end of the experiment, Shafik found that those wearing cotton or wool were significant more likely to get lucky, whereas the ones dressed in polyester and poly-cotton blend often struck out

So why are the woolen-panted rats such Casanovas compared to their polyester pals? Shafik believed the polyester material created irritating electrostatic fields around the genitals, which led a drop in sexual activity. However American humorist Mary Roach has a different theory. “Having seen an illustration of a rat wearing the pants,” she wrote in her 2008 book Bonk, “I would say there’s an equal possibility that it’s simply harder to get a date when you dress funny.”^[10]

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In medical parlance, “never events” are medical errors that should never happen. However, as we are about to find out, they do happen more than doctors would probably like to admit.

As of 2011, 29 incidents are classified as never events. They include but are not limited to patients falling off hospital beds, doctors using the wrong procedures for treatment, doctors forgetting surgical equipment in the bodies of patients, and doctors performing surgeries on the wrong patients.

Here, we will focus on never events that happened during surgery.

10 17-Year-Old Gets Wrong Heart And Lungs During Transplant

In 2003, 17-year-old Jesica Santillan experienced what should be the worst never event incident that has ever happened. Three years earlier, she had been smuggled into the US by her parents, who wanted her to get medical treatment for her failing heart and lungs. Philanthropist Mack Mahoney read about her story in a newspaper and footed her medical bills for surgery at Duke University Hospital.

Santillan underwent the surgery on February 7, 2003. But it only worsened her situation because the doctors used organs from a donor with the wrong blood type. The donor had blood type A while Santillan had blood type O. They are incompatible.

Santillan’s body rejected the organs as she suffered a series of seizures and ended up on life support. Two weeks later, she underwent a second surgery. This time, the organs were of a compatible blood type. Although they worked well, it was too late. Santillan had suffered irreparable brain damage and was put on life support for some time. Eventually, she was taken off it.

At the time of her death, there were about 200 people in the US requiring donors for a heart-lung transplant. Santillan was supposed to be at the end of that list. But she was allowed to go to the front of the line because her situation was dire.

The medical error resulted in two sets of organs wasted. It also reduced the chances of survival for others awaiting surgery because it deprived them of the much-needed organs.^[1]

9 83-Year-Old Woman Undergoes Heart Surgery For A Respiratory Infection

Staff at Mediclinic Kimberley Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa, committed a never event after they made an 83-year-old woman undergo a heart surgery intended for another patient. The woman was Rita du Plessis, and she was at the hospital to have a respiratory infection treated.

Du Plessis and another patient requiring heart surgery had the same physician. Their doctor told a surgeon to take the other patient into the operation theater, but the surgeon mixed up the names and took du Plessis instead. After she underwent the heart surgery, her family was even contacted and told that it had been a success.

Staffers only realized their error after the physician, who had been looking for du Plessis, informed them that they had operated on the wrong patient. The physician later called du Plessis’s family to explain the situation and apologize. The hospital did not charge her for the surgery.^[2]

8 Woman Loses Breast To Cancer She Didn’t Have

In April 2015, 49-year-old Eduvigis Rodriguez underwent surgery for an aggressive cancer lump in her left breast. The diseased breast was removed, and she was fine—at least until medics realized during post-surgery tests on the amputated breast that Rodriguez didn’t have cancer. The supposedly cancerous lump was caused by sclerosing adenosis, the benign growth of extra tissue in the breast.

The mistaken diagnosis of cancer was made at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital after a biopsy. But they referred Rodriguez for surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. However, this doesn’t mean that the staff at Lenox Hill was completely innocent.^[3]

Per hospital rules, Lenox Hill staff was supposed to run tests to confirm the initial diagnosis. But they didn’t do it even though Dr. Magdi Bebawi, who performed the surgery, signed paperwork claiming that they had. After the initial surgery, Rodriguez underwent reconstructive breast surgery. According to court records, she also suffered a surgical hernia and a pulmonary embolism as a result of the unnecessary mastectomy.

7 Wrong Patient Undergoes Brain Surgery

In 2018, Kenyatta National Hospital in Kenya made the news after a patient underwent a brain surgery intended for another patient. Both men were wheeled into the hospital unconscious and kept in the same ward. However, they somehow ended up with each other’s identification tag and the wrong one ended up in the operating theater.

The patient who required surgery had a blood clot in his brain, while the other simply had a swollen head. Surgeons wheeled the patient with the swollen head into the operating theater. But they didn’t realize that they had the wrong man until two hours later when they didn’t find a blood clot in the brain.^[4]

Hospital authorities suspended the neurosurgeon, anesthetist, and two nurses who were involved with the surgery. In a twist of fate, the patient who was supposed to have the surgery no longer needed it as his situation was already improving.

6 Elderly Woman Dies After Receiving Brain Surgery For A Jaw Displacement

The staff at Oakwood Hospital in Michigan found themselves in hot water after they made 81-year-old Bimla Nayyar undergo a brain surgery she didn’t need. The water got even hotter after Nayyar slipped into unconsciousness and died 60 days later.

Nayyar was admitted to Oakwood Hospital in January 2012 for a displaced jaw. The treatment was supposed to be an easy one until a CT scan revealed that she was bleeding in the brain. Although the scan actually belonged to another patient, the hospital staff thought it was Nayyar’s and quickly planned an emergency surgery.

In the operating theater, five holes were made in Nayyar’s head before the right side of her skull was sawed open. Doctors only realized their error after they couldn’t find any evidence of bleeding in her brain. They informed her family of the error but didn’t inform them of its severity.^[5]

Nayyar never regained consciousness after the surgery and remained on life support for 60 days until the ventilator was switched off on March 11, 2012. Her family filed a lawsuit and was awarded $21 million.

5 Doctor Amputates Wrong Leg During Surgery And Another Patient’s Toe Without Permission

In February 1995, Dr. Rolando R. Sanchez found himself in trouble after he amputated the healthy leg of 52-year-old Willie King instead of the other diseased leg. Sanchez was already cutting the wrong leg when a nurse looked through the patient’s file and started crying. It was then that Sanchez was informed that he had been working on the wrong leg.

Sanchez denied responsibility for the error and shifted it to other staff members involved in the surgery. The blackboard in the operating room listed the wrong leg for amputation. So did the operating room schedule and the hospital computer.^[6]

The wrong leg had also been prepared for surgery prior to the doctor’s arrival. Sanchez added that he didn’t realize that he was cutting the wrong leg because it was also diseased and might have needed to be removed in the future.

Sanchez’s license was suspended in July 1995 after he botched a second surgery. This time, he amputated the toe of Mildred Shuler without her consent. Shuler was undergoing surgery to remove diseased tissue in her right foot when, according to the doctor, a diseased bone “popped.” He decided to remove it to prevent an infection.

4 Healthy Patient Loses A Healthy Kidney During Surgery He Didn’t Need

An unnamed patient at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, was left with one kidney after doctors mistook him for someone else. The real patient, whose CT scan revealed the presence of a tumor on his kidney, was supposed to undergo surgery to remove it.

However, the patient with the healthy kidney was somehow wheeled into surgery instead. The error was discovered after post-surgery tests revealed that the excised kidney was healthy.^[7]

The hospital staff was blamed for the incident as they did not follow proper identification protocols. While both patients had the same name, which was the cause of the confusion, they had different ages. If the staff had paid more attention, they would have realized that they had the wrong man.

3 Healthy One-Day-Old Boy Mistakenly Gets A Frenulectomy

The University Medical Center in Lebanon, Tennessee, got its fair share of medical never events after a one-day-old baby named Nate underwent a tongue-clipping surgery (frenulectomy) he didn’t need. This surgery removes the tissue connecting the tongue to the floor of the mouth.

A surgeon had specifically sent for baby Nate, and a nurse had gone to take him from his mother, Jennifer Melton. Jennifer didn’t ask questions because she assumed that Nate was being taken for a regular postnatal checkup. She only realized that Nate had undergone surgery when the nurse started educating her about the benefits of the procedure.^[8]

Jennifer checked whether the baby given to her was really Nate because she knew that he was healthy and didn’t require surgery. The nurse later confirmed the details and realized that the pediatrician had operated on the wrong baby. The doctor apologized for the mix-up, but Jennifer called her lawyers.

2 Doctor Removes Woman’s Reproductive Organs Instead Of Appendix

In March 2015, an unnamed woman living in the UK went to a hospital managed by the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Trust and complained of abdominal pain. Tests revealed that she had appendicitis, and she was scheduled for surgery to have her appendix removed.

However, the surgeon removed an ovary and fallopian tube instead. The surgeon responsible for the error passed it off as a minor mistake and blamed it on poor vision. He added that the wormlike look of the appendix and fallopian tube confused him.

UK medical authorities didn’t agree. This was the third botched surgery for this doctor within two years. In September 2013, he had removed some fat from a patient who also needed an appendectomy. The patient was in extreme pain until he underwent another surgery a month later.

In another patient, the doctor removed a skin tag instead of a cyst. The doctor apologized for the mistakes, but he was banned from treating more patients.^[9]

1 Doctor Removes Wrong Testicle During Surgery

In 2013, Steven Hanes was scheduled for surgery at J.C. Blair Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania to remove a painful and damaged right testicle. He underwent the surgery, but the doctor mistakenly excised the left testicle instead.^[10]

Dr. Valley Spencer Long claimed that he mistook Hanes’s right testicle for the left one because the two testicles had somehow switched positions. Hanes took legal action against the surgeon and the hospital and was awarded $870,000.