He should be given death penalty! Benita was also growing concerned about the cost of the wedding. Gretchen Vogel is a contributing correspondent for Science magazine based in Berlin, Germany. On Jan. 12, Dr. Genden got a call: An appropriate donor had died. Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? But that, and the fact that he had multiple cell phones for different countries, she chalked up to his demanding job and constant international travel. Louisiana Woman Disappeared After Giving Somebody A Ride, 5 Things That Still Bother Us About The Unsolved Maura Murray Case, Two Texas Teens Left After Curfew In 1988 And Never Returned, What Happened To Zion Foster? In January 2016, Macchiarini received an extraordinary double dose of bad press. But even if his days had been numbered, this didnt necessarily justify what Macchiarini put him through. In 2016, Claudia returned to the Hospital Clinic to have her left lung removed, and as per the last reports, she is now alive and doing relatively well. What's next for abortion rights in America? She had subsequently undergone six major surgeries and more than 10 smaller procedures, but with all conventional approaches to address her condition exhausted, she made plans to have the tube removed and receive only palliative care. Not only that, they later covered it up.. The Karolinska Institute, alleging scientific misconduct, dismissed Dr. Macchiarini, who has long denied wrongdoing. At the trial, Macchiarini and his lawyer argued that the patients, with no other options, had been treated under compassionate care standards. And because it was built from Castillos own cells, she didnt need to be on any risky immunosuppressant drugs. The donor was a young man (identifying details are being withheld to protect privacy). Wasnt something of this idea behind the special treatment Karolinska gave Macchiarini? Its very exciting, said Dr. G. Alexander Patterson, a professor of surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved in the case. Brazilian MMA fighters He could see no real evidence that the windpipe scaffolds were becoming living, functioning airways in which case, they were destined to fail. This was the start of a whirlwind romance that included five-star hotels, travel to far-flung locations, and extravagant shopping sprees. In the The university board was dismissed and even Harriet Wallberg, whod moved on to become the chancellor for all Swedish universities, lost her job. Stem cell brain implants could 'slow ageing and extend life', study shows, offering to treat just about any ailment you can name, Pregnant women's stem cells could treat osteoporosis, say scientists. One of these is the hype surrounding stem cells. Ohio Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Dmitris graft had started collapsing six months into his surgery as well, but he managed to get it successfully removed and is now living with a tracheostomy. While many in Sweden expressed disappointment at what they saw as the leniency of the sentence, given that prosecutors had asked for five years in prison, the verdict nonetheless represented the culmination of a stunning fall from grace for a once high-flying surgeon. WebIn reality, Paolo had not worked with the Pope, and he was still married to his wife of 30 years. Macchiarini was fired in 2016 amid allegations of fraud and scientific misconduct after many of his transplant recipients died. KI commissioned surgeon Bengt Gerdin, a professor emeritus at Uppsala University, to investigate the issue. We would have been planning my funeral, she said, but now were planning a birthday party.. The secret sauce in his approach, he said, is transplanting not just the donor trachea but also its attached esophagus (food tube), thyroid gland and thyroid arteries. In September, a Swedish prosecutor indicted him on aggravated assault charges related to three trachea transplants. Paolo Macchiarinis income source is mostly from being a successful . Coming from different countries including Eritrea, Spain, Russian, Iceland, Britain and the United States, 20 patients were operated on by Macchiarini, who provide them with an artificial windpipe. In the same year, he earned his medical degree from the, In 1989, he took a course on statistics in clinical research at, In 1994, he obtained a masters degree certificate in organ and tissue transplantation from the, From 2006 to 2009, he was an investigator at the, In June 2008, he performed a trachea transplant on, He performed a synthetic trachea transplant on, In 2012, he was charged in Italy with attempted aggravated fraud. Illinois Science and AAAS are working tirelessly to provide credible, evidence-based information on the latest scientific research and policy, with extensive free coverage of the pandemic. Hwang, Obokata and Macchiarini were all attracted to the hottest regions of stem cell research, where hope for a medical breakthrough was greatest. As per Las Vegas By June 2013, when Paolo took Benita to Venice, Italy, for a romantic weekend, she knew she was falling madly in love. In their view, he was grossly misrepresenting his results and the health of his patients. Benita traveled to Paolo's Barcelona home with two friends and a video camera. Gerdin determined that Macchiarini committed scientific misconduct, but leadership at the Karolinska Institute ignored the findings and cleared Macchiarini. California They also questioned whether Macchiarini had obtained proper ethical permission for the surgeries and challenged a paper describing animal experiments with the technique. No one wanted to collaborate with me. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. A High-Flying Italian Surgeons Fall From Grace, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/world/europe/macchiarini-windpipe-surgeon-deaths.html. Likewise the secretary-general of the Nobel Committee. Remembering George Floyd: A year of protest. Sonia Sein, outside her Bronx home, had irreparable damage to her trachea. They identified many problems with the way the twin organisations handled him. After several weeks in recovery, she is home. Colorado She met Macchiarini while producing A Leap of Faith and was soon breaking one of the cardinal rules of journalism: dont fall in love with the subject of your story. Paolo Macchiarini was amazingly accomplished, stunningly successful, and fabulously rich. Now his reputation lies in tatters. Even the jewelry he had given her was Sadly, she passed away soon after her second implant. Thailand February 28, 2022 Emanuela Pecchia is famously known as the wife of popular Swiss-born Italian thoracic surgeon, Paolo Macchiarini. At first, they just connected as friends. The operations were hailed at the time as a breakthrough in regenerative medicine, although some observers remained skeptical. Anyone can read what you share. And then there are the surgeons on Dr. Death. Macchiarinis fall was swift, but troubling questions remain about why he was allowed to continue his experiments for so long. Miss Universe 2021 Each new scientific discovery brings a flood of stories about how it will revolutionise medicine one day soon. Nor did they impress the institutes ethics council when Delaere lodged a formal complaint. If the sins of Karolinska have been committed elsewhere, it is partly because medical research facilities share a common milieu, which harbours common dangers. 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science. From November 2011 to June 2014, Paolo Macchiarini gave transplants to Christopher Lyles, Yulia Tuulik, Alexander Zozulya, Yesim Cetir, Hannah Warren (a 3-year-old), Sadiq Kanaan, and Dmitri Onogda. Paolo then came across Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene, a man from Eritrea who was training to be a doctor when he got diagnosed with cancer. Most protagonists on medical dramas are modern-day heroes. Were going to show up and say, As a student, I had this idea on the back of a napkin and now were ready to go and if it fails, the patient dies and it becomes yet another example of some surgeon who thought he could solve a problem and hes created, instead, just the opposite.. Instead, they found him guilty of negligence and the lesser charge of causing bodily harm. The trachea has been characterized as a simple tube, but its very complex, Dr. Delaere said. Which left a big, burning question in the air: if Macchiarini was a pathological liar in matters of love, what about his medical research? She says it may mean the judges thought he and the patients believed time was short and options were few. There was another reason to be daunted too: historical assumptions that tracheas werent transplantable. COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) Swedish prosecutors on Wednesday appealed a sentence given to an Italian surgeon who was put on trial for causing bodily harm during experimental stem-cell windpipe transplants on three patients who died. Some answers have emerged from the official inquiries into the Karolinska Institute and the Karolinska University hospital. She considered backing out. He was handsome, suave, and a charmer. But owing to her cancer returning and the formation of a fistula, she too passed away. The law is supposed to protect individuals from all types of assault, especially when they are powerless, said Dr. Bengt Gerdin, an independent investigator who was hired by the Karolinska Institute in 2015 to look into Dr. Macchiarinis work. You start to panic because you cant breathe., By early 2020, ethical approvals were in place, but the coronavirus pandemic held things up. She received a new trachea in January and is believed to be the first patient in the world to undergo a successful direct transplant of a donor trachea. Change). Stem cell clinics have sprung up like weeds, offering to treat just about any ailment you can name. The plastic trachea that Yesim Cetir received disfigured her and made her last three years in life basically like torture, said Bosse Lindquist, a documentarian who broke the story in Sweden about Dr. Macchiarini in a television series, The Experiment.. Its kind of a marginal substitute, and many patients need further interventions to maintain their airways.. Her colleague had sent an article that said the pope would not be in Rome, or even Italy, on the day of their wedding. Alexander started a problem with the specialist at this time. Today, Ms. Sein, 56, dances and plays tag with her grandchildren and plans to resume working, possibly as an acupuncturist. But after Alexander learned that Pope Francis was scheduled to visit South America at the time of their wedding, she confronted Macchiarini about his claims. Help News from Science publish trustworthy, high-impact stories about research and the people who shape it. The operation, performed at one of the worlds most prestigious medical universities, part of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, was hailed as revolutionary. Chatri Sityodtong In late 2014, four doctors in Sweden accused him of fraud, saying that he'd falsified data in six of the papers he had published. Heres this handsome Italian surgeon at the finest institution in the world, the Karolinska, and hes everything Im not: Hes got a beautiful head of hair, he drives a motorcycle, hes got an accent, hes incredibly charismatic and dynamic, Dr. Genden said. And investigations by both institute and the hospital found coverups regarding Macchiarinis work. Two investigations, one by the Karolinska Institute and one by Karolinska University Hospital, both found that problems with Dr. Macchiarinis work had been covered up. However, he eventually found out about his previous associations. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. The other patients were treated at hospitals in Barcelona, Florence, London, Moscow, Krasnodar, Chicago and Peoria. She told CrimeFeed that, looking back, it seemed odd to her she had not met many of Paolo's close friends in Barcelona. The couple had traveled a lot, but there were some things These included Harriet Wallberg, who was the vice-chancellor of the Karolinska Institute in 2010, when Macchiarini was recruited. Georgia Teen Vanished In South Carolina, Search Continues For North Carolina Girl, 11, Whose Parents Didnt Report Her Missing For Weeks, Where Is Ella Goodie? All rights reserved. Almost overnight, he became a superstar. The plastic trachea that Yesim Cetir received disfigured her and made her last three years in life basically like torture, Bosse Lindquist, the documentarian behind the Swedish TV series The Experiment, told the Times. But Benita, at the time an award-winning investigative news producer for NBC, had no way of knowing that, by the end of her love story, her heart would be broken and many of Paolo's patients who received the "miracle" transplants would be dead. As he said in Experimenten: If I had the option of a synthetic trachea or a firing squad, Id choose the last option because it would be the least painful form of execution.. Macchiarini told people that Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Vladimir Putin would attend the wedding, Andrea Bocelli would perform, and Pope Francis (a patient of his, or so he said) would officiate the ceremony, per Vanity Fair. Alexander eventually fell in love with the surgeon, and in 2014, he proposed to her, and they started planning a lavish wedding for the following year. Karolinskas leadership expected big things from their superstar, things that would bring prestige and funding to the institute. The very next day, she got an email from a friend that outlined the Pope's plans to visit South America on Benita and Paolo's wedding day. Washington Likewise the whole idea of a wedding: Macchiarini was still married to his wife of 30 years. As for Keziah Shorten, who suffered from trachea cancer, Paolo Macchiarini did a transplant on her on July 13, 2010, which failed the very next year. Chinese balloon photos Benita Alexander on attending Paolo Macchiarinis criminal trial in Sweden Alexander said she attended Macchiarini's trial for closure, seven years after she was unknowingly caught in a fraudulent romance with him, and for justice for his patients and for their families. July 21, 2022 Examined 9:54 Whats next for Russia? Andrea Bocelli was to sing at the ceremony. But hes lost his reputation, and thats more important.. But, he added, Its an indirect technique. It takes time and can replace only the tracheas halfpipe side, so its not a complete tube.. The surgeons defense attorney, Bjrn Hurtig, said his client was considering an appeal. Macchiarinis lawyer declined to comment to Swedish media today about whether his client would appeal. Philippines That drama began about a decade ago when Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, working at Swedens famed Karolinska Institute, garnered headlines and accolades for replacing Not just that, Paolo was also entangled in several other controversies. This guy mutilated people., Between 2011 and 2014, Macchiarini implanted artificial windpipes in at least eight patients in Sweden, the United States, and Russia. Benita Alexander and Paolo Macchiarini in Venice, Italy [Investigation Discovery]. Reports of their success always seemed like hot air to him. Disgraced Italian surgeon convicted of criminal harm to stem cell patient. She pushed through his appointment despite the fact that he had some very negative references and dubious claims on his rsum. If there is a moral to this tale, its that we need to be wary of medical messiahs with their promises of salvation. Countless news stories declared it a medical breakthrough. Her ex-husband John was dying of cancer. No one is more powerless than a patient with a disease, said Dr. Gerdin. Get more great content like this delivered right to you! While there isnt enough data to actually prove this, we do have some key indicators. Though Macchiarini was in the public eye, he was able to sidestep the usual rules and regulations. Thereafter it was all over the news. Although the difference in his birthplace, he is known to be an Italian by his nationality. Around the same time, an article in Vanity Fair described how Macchiarini had misled a girlfriendan NBC news producer working on a flattering documentary about his surgeriesinto thinking they would be married in a ceremony attended by the Clintons and Obamas and officiated by the pope.