John Ronald Brown (July 14, 1922 – May 16, 2010) was an American surgeon who was convicted of second-degree murder after the death of a 79-year-old patient in his care.
Despite excelling in the written aspects of certification for the American Board of Plastic Surgery, he failed the oral assessment (blaming his 'domineering' father).
[4] By the early 1970s, Brown was carrying out gender-affirming surgery on transgender patients[1] at a small clinic he set up in San Francisco.
The program at Johns Hopkins Hospital Gender Identity Clinic, for example, only approved surgery for 24 out of the first 2000 people who approached them with the request for it.
The Forum article and an Inside Edition television documentary made several years later ("The Worst Doctor in America") both portrayed Brown as an incompetent and inept surgeon.
[1] On May 9, 1998, Brown performed a leg amputation on Philip Bondy, a 79-year-old, retired satellite engineer from New York, in Tijuana, Mexico.
A police search of Brown's home – a ground floor unit in a San Ysidro apartment building – revealed blood-soaked towels, sheets and mattresses, as well as anaesthetizing drugs,[12] surgical instruments and hundreds of tubes of super glue.
A surgeon, who was a witness for the prosecution, testified that Brown had not left a large enough skin flap to properly cover the bone and stump.