Look out for a message in your inbox in. Change). Theres a void in his personality that he seems to want to fill by conning more and more people.. Although the difference in his birthplace, he is known to be an Italian by his nationality. 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. An advantage is that immunosuppressants are necessary only for several months, he said. No one wanted to collaborate with me. Almost immediately after she was fitted with a synthetic trachea in August 2012, Ms. Cetirs condition began to rapidly deteriorate, according to the courts written judgment. By using a patients own cells, Dr. Macchiarini sought to rectify an age-old problem with transplants involving donated organs, which the body sometimes rejects as foreign tissue. Massachusetts Sadly, she passed away soon after her second implant. Recently, Ms. Sein, covering the hole with her hand to speak, enthused about having the energy to cook sesame chicken for the first time and how she aims to visit relatives in Puerto Rico. My wife was the one who said, If you truly believe that people are dying from this and that you could maybe make a difference, you cant just fold up and go home, he said. We have, for example, a growing list of scientific celebrities who have committed major stem cell fraud. However, he eventually found out about his previous associations. Then, in October of 2009, another woman, who had been operated on by Paolo twice before, received her airway transplant. Stem cell clinics have sprung up like weeds, offering to treat just about any ailment you can name. Karolinska Institute announced in February 2016 that it would not renew his research contract, which was due to expire in November 2016, then terminated the contract in December 2016. There was nothing anybody could do for these patients, said Dr. Genden, who became captivated by the problem in medical school 30 years ago after a patient with a tracheal tumor died. KI officials let him do this. In his case, his stem cells were seeded into the airway just hours before it was implanted into him, making it work perfectly fine. The Karolinska Institute, alleging scientific misconduct, dismissed Dr. Macchiarini, who has long denied wrongdoing. Benita Alexander thought that she was living a real-life fairy tale when she met her fianc, Paolo Macchiarini. Alexander said that Macchiarini told her he was still married to his wife because they were Catholic but were separated. In Sweden, both the defense and the prosecution can appeal rulings, and senior prosecutor Karin Lundstrm-Kron says she and her colleagues will decide in the coming weeks. They identified many problems with the way the twin organisations handled him. Likewise, they didnt undertake a proper risk assessment of the procedure, nor did Macchiarinis team seek government permits for the plastic windpipes, stem cells, and chemical growth factors they used. KI fired Macchiarini in March 2016, 2 months after the Swedish documentary came out. He was 63 years old when he was found guilty of causing harm through negligence but not of carrying out an intentional assault and he received a probationary sentence on June 16, 2022. Nevada She would later discover that the woman in Barcelona had been living with Paolo for years, but that there were several other women in his life as well. Euan Ward reported from London, and Christina Anderson from Bastad, Sweden. Georgia Vanity Fair also later discovered that several of Paolo's other statements were false, including his claims about having been an associate professor at the University of Pisa. A surgeon who just a decade ago was celebrated around the globe as a pioneer in stem cell transplants has been convicted of one count of causing bodily harm, a felony, in a Swedish court. Sonia Sein, outside her Bronx home, had irreparable damage to her trachea. Guided by a high-powered microscope, he used surgical thread half the diameter of a human hair. A few years ago, Japans Haruko Obokata pulled a similar con when she announced to the world a new and simple and fake method of turning ordinary body cells into stem cells. Even so, it wasnt until 2016 that the Karolinska Institute declined to renew his contract. Only four months after Macchiarini operated on Claudia Castillo, his results provisional but very positive were published online by the Lancet. Los Angeles Border crisis: Whats happening at the US-Mexico border? A good example is the NBC documentary A Leap of Faith. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. So, as per the last reports, he is alive and well today. Its like when you get on a rocket ship., At times, he felt in a dreamlike state, he said. In 2011, Dr. Macchiarini, a renowned leader in the field of regenerative medicine, took the medical world by storm when he built and implanted the worlds first bioartificial windpipe. The only question was how long it would take weeks, months or a few years. Likewise the whole idea of a wedding: Macchiarini was still married to his wife of 30 years. What's next for abortion rights in America? When you implant a synthetic trachea you have one certainty, and that is that the patient will die as a result of it, Delaere says in the email. Her colleague had sent an article that said the pope would not be in Rome, or even Italy, on the day of their wedding. That meant the donor trachea was accompanied by a blood supply that Dr. Genden connected to Ms. Seins blood vessels. She was wearing a blonde wig, and her nervous laughter is audible on the video they shot. Prosecutors asked for a five-year prison sentence for Macchiarinis liability in Cetirs bodily injury, but a Swedish court instead gave him a suspended sentence this June, deciding that he hadnt intended to cause the patients harm, according to BBC News. Her friends described him as "Mr. Big" from Sex and the City. By this year, Dr. Genden said, her condition had deteriorated so that if we delay further, its not going to work out.. And then there are the surgeons on Dr. Death. They also cited a loophole known as compassionate use. We now know that wasnt true. He did this by chemically stripping away the cells of a windpipe taken from a deceased donor; he then seeded the bare scaffold with stem cells taken from Castillos own bone marrow. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Yet, for the vast majority of such treatments, there is little solid evidence that they work. In early 2014, four Karolinska doctors defied the reigning culture of silence by complaining about Macchiarini. So did Karolinskas dean of research. Benita Alexander and Paolo Macchiarini [Investigation Discovery]. Andrea Bocelli was to sing at the ceremony. Macchiarini was turning the dream of regenerative medicine into a reality. Chatri Sityodtong (LogOut/ Benita Alexander and Paolo Macchiarini in Venice, Italy [Investigation Discovery]. But colleagues suspected that Macchiarini was manipulating his results. 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. His operation was on June 9, 2011, at the Karolinska University Hospital, where he received the upgraded plastic trachea made at University College London. WebPaolo Macchiarini (born 22 August 1958): 2 is a Swiss-born Italian thoracic surgeon and former regenerative medicine researcher who became known for research fraud and Macchiarini, who denied the charges against him, wasnt directly accused of killing any of the three patients. Still, noting that previous attempts didnt show documented success, he cautioned that longer-term results were needed before the technique should be embraced, adding, Lets see how it works and how you can do it in more patients.. That drama began about a decade ago when Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, working at Swedens famed Karolinska Institute, garnered headlines and accolades for replacing None of these institutions have faced the same kind of public scrutiny. The surgeons defense attorney, Bjrn Hurtig, said his client was considering an appeal. This set a dangerous example. We have estimated Paolo Macchiarini's net worth , money, salary, income, and assets. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Paolo Macchiarini was amazingly accomplished, stunningly successful, and fabulously rich. They shared a happy relationship. I thought, If they do a transplant for everything, they should do a transplant for trachea, she recalled. Indonesia Allegations also emerged that the risky procedure was performed on at least one person who was not critically ill at the time. Stem-cell scientist Dr. Paolo Macchiarini was accused of wrongdoing during operations on three people between 2011 and 2014. Gerdin says the conviction on one count still shows that health care doesnt stand above the law. But it was already too late. Four of Macchiarinis colleagues at KI, including Corbascio, filed official complaints in 2014 charging that several papers describing the surgeries deliberately left out serious complications in the patients. 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. The court said the penalty was a suspended sentence, but did not specify how long the sentence would be if imposed. They didnt. The other patients were treated at hospitals in Barcelona, Florence, London, Moscow, Krasnodar, Chicago and Peoria. 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. And the TV shows second season, announced earlier this month, will cover the podcasts third, with Edgar Ramirez playing Paolo Macchiarini, and This Is Us star Mandy Moore playing Benita Alexander, an investigative journalist who falls into a whirlwind romance with the doctor. Selena died in a hospital due to a loss of blood and cardiac arrest, two weeks before her 24th birthday. So far he has not been prosecuted in any of those countries. After being dismissed from the institute, he worked at the Kazan Federal University in Kazan, Russia. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. In 2018, KI finally released the findings of its second investigation, which confirmed he had committed misconduct. Scientists can also suffer from false hope. It showed department heads and colleagues that they should give Macchiarini special treatment.He could do pretty much as he pleased. The story portrayed Macchiarini, who was already married at the time, as a serial fabulist who exaggerated or lied about degrees, academic appointments, and personal accomplishments. Tokyo The vice-chancellor, Anders Hamsten, resigned. Disgraced surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, who faked research relating to dangerous and largely discredited tracheal transplants, has been handed a 16 month prison sentence in Italy for forging documents and abuse of office. Texas She visits Mount Sinai weekly for blood work. Hwang, Obokata and Macchiarini were all attracted to the hottest regions of stem cell research, where hope for a medical breakthrough was greatest. Donald Trump In 2017, prosecutors in Sweden charged Macchiarini with manslaughter in connection with the three patients who had received transplants at KI in 2011 and 2012, all of whom had died: Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene, a graduate student from Eritrea with a slow-growing cancer obstructing his windpipe; Christopher Lyles, a 30-year-old American with tracheal cancer; and Yesim Cetir, a teenager from Turkey whose trachea had been accidentally damaged during a previous surgery. 2nd Impeachment Trial: What this could mean for Trump, Presidential transition of power: Examined, How Donald Trump spent his last days as president, How Joe Biden's inauguration will be different from previous years, Trump challenges the vote and takes legal action, 2020s DNC and RNC are different than any before, Power Trip: Those Who Seek Power and Those Who Chase Them, Leave No Trace: A Hidden History of the Boy Scouts, Keeper of the Ashes: The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders, The Orphans of COVID: America's Hidden Toll, X / o n e r a t e d - The Murder of Malcolm X and 55 Years to Justice, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. Reports of their success always seemed like hot air to him. Colleagues accused him of manipulating his results, even warning of the harm caused by these so-called regenerative windpipes. Some answers have emerged from the official inquiries into the Karolinska Institute and the Karolinska University hospital. His recovery put Macchiarini on the front page of the New York Times. None other than Pope Francis would officiate, and his papal palace in Castel Gandolfo would serve as the venue. He was one of the best con men I have ever come across. Even the jewelry he had given her was By 2011, he was working in Sweden at one of the worlds most prestigious medical universities, the Karolinska Institute, whose professors annually select the winner of the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine. But according to reports, Paolo cheated on his Emanuela Pecchia. However, its imperative to mention that the doctor has only been criminally found guilty of causing bodily harm to a single patient he operated on in Sweden back in 2011 two other charges of assault were dismissed. In place of clinical data, there are gushing testimonials. For six years, she had endured a tube inserted in her windpipe, or trachea, to keep her alive, but her discomfort and distress were becoming more and more unbearable. Pennsylvania In 2019, an Italian court said he had forged documents and abused his position, charges unrelated to his trachea work. But for now, lets focus solely on his medical patients, shall we? Paolo Macchiarinis most notable patient is Claudia Castillo. Born in 1977, this Colombian living in Spain woman suffered from tuberculosis-damaged airways. 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. The Karolinska Institute was seduced by Macchiarini, Gerdin told the newspaper. No, he was just caring for his patients who were, one and all, facing certain death with no other treatment options available and no time to waste. The story portrayed Macchiarini, who was already married at the time, as a serial fabulist who exaggerated or lied about degrees, academic appointments, and Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. By the time the program aired, in mid-2014, the couple were planning their marriage. I didnt want Paolo to not be the man I believed him to be, she told Vanity Fair. She had already spent $10,000 on engraved invitations made for a guest list that included the Obamas, the Clintons, Vladimir Putin, and Elton John. Prior to this, he was regarded as a pioneer in the field of regenerative medicine using both biological and synthetic scaffolds seeded with patients own stem cells as trachea transplants. We will send you a maximum of two emails in, We will be in touch to remind you to contribute. 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. 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. 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. Dressed in a white lab coat or in surgical scrubs, with his broad, handsome face and easy charm, he certainly looked the part. 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. (LogOut/ He convinced the Karolinska Institute that this could make them famous, and they just let him do it. Benita said that, if she can take any lessons away from what happened to her, she hopes that her experience will help others. If she talked for over five minutes, she had to stop because I couldnt breathe.. The theory was simple: let the body do most of the work. There are people who go to jail for 5 years for not paying their taxes. That drama began about a decade ago when Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, working at Swedens famed Karolinska Institute, garnered headlines and accolades for replacing damaged tracheas with plastic tubes seeded with patients stem cells that he cultivated in devices called bioreactors. The first person to receive one of these was Andemariam Beyene, an Eritrean doctoral student in geology at the University of Iceland. He opened and cleaned out the donors esophagus, laying it against Ms. Seins esophagus. But even if his days had been numbered, this didnt necessarily justify what Macchiarini put him through. Almost overnight, he became a superstar. Illinois Cardiothoracic surgeon Matthias Corbascio, one of Macchiarinis former colleagues at KI who first raised questions about the work, describes it as terrible and insane. The court basically gave him a slap on the wrist, says Corbascio, who is now at the University of Copenhagen. They will especially examine the judges decision that Macchiarini couldnt be held responsible for what happened to Andemariam and Lyles because he acted in distress, according to the courts statement. February 28, 2022 Emanuela Pecchia is famously known as the wife of popular Swiss-born Italian thoracic surgeon, Paolo Macchiarini. Likewise the whole idea of a wedding: Macchiarini was still married to his wife of 30 years. In such dire circumstances, new treatments can be tried as a last resort. For the respect of privacy, his wifes identity is not revealed on the internet. Emanuela Pecchia is married to Paolo Macchiarini for over 30 years. Washington 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. Hes clearly bright and has accomplishments, but he cant contain himself. Kentucky 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. 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. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. And investigations by both institute and the hospital found coverups regarding Macchiarinis work. Benita traveled to Paolo's Barcelona home with two friends and a video camera. Learn how your comment data is processed. Ground-breaking work on synthetic organ transplants made Paolo Macchiarini one of the most famous doctors in the world. Support for Macchiarini remained strong, even as his patients began to die. But of 20 patients, including children, most ultimately died, and scientists said Dr. Macchiarini misrepresented data and exaggerated his techniques effectiveness. Seven of the eight patients Paolo inserted tracheas into have died. We would have been planning my funeral, she said, but now were planning a birthday party.. They should be. New Jersey A year later, he began to implant synthetic windpipes seeded with stem cells isolated from the patients own bone marrow, claiming the cells would grow and integrate with the patients tissue. Ultimate Fighting Championship "Maybe it happened because I am a journalist, and once I sort of woke up and put my journalist hat back on, I could expose him," she said. He was born in Basel, Switzerland to Italian parents. She soon went into full-on investigative journalist mode, and learned that Paolo had, yup lied about everything. Ohio To some extent, they believed Macchiarini because he told them what they wanted to hear. KI commissioned surgeon Bengt Gerdin, a professor emeritus at Uppsala University, to investigate the issue. Unfortunately, due to complications, she passed away either around Christmas of that year or in the first few months of 2009. Though Macchiarini was in the public eye, he was able to sidestep the usual rules and regulations. The Italian surgeon and his Italian wife Emanuela Pecchia have one son and one daughter. He was handsome, suave, and a charmer. Surely, he got away with so much because he was considered an exception to the rules with more than a whiff of the Nobel about him. They and their loved ones fall victim to false hope. One of these is the hype surrounding stem cells. Unfortunately, the scandal is much bigger than Karolinska, which accounts for only three of the patients who have received Macchiarinis regenerating windpipes. Dr. Delaere developed another innovative method, performed on nine patients so far: implanting a section of donor trachea in a patients forearm for weeks until it develops blood vessels and can replace part of the patients trachea. They also questioned whether Macchiarini had obtained proper ethical permission for the surgeries and challenged a paper describing animal experiments with the technique. Macchiarinis deceit was so outlandish, Vanity Fair sought the opinion of the Harvard professor Ronald Schouten, an expert on psychopaths, who gave this diagnosis-at-a-distance: Macchiarini is the extreme form of a con man. It must be lined with cilia, hairlike projections like shag carpeting that move and clean the air we breathe in, he said. He could see no real evidence that the windpipe scaffolds were becoming living, functioning airways in which case, they were destined to fail. I have to expose him.". Macchiarini had often boasted to Alexander of his famous friends. There is South Koreas Hwang Woo-suk who, in 2004, falsely claimed to have created the first human embryonic stem cells by means of cloning. She says she feels she has been given a chance of being alive one more time.. The trachea has been characterized as a simple tube, but its very complex, Dr. Delaere said. Does the heat of stem cell research the high levels of funding, prestige and media coverage it enjoys somehow encourage fraud? Benita Alexander wearing a wig as she tracked down Paolo in Barcelona [Investigation Discovery]. Benita packed her bags again, and began to search for Paolo in order to face him once more and their final confrontation is captured in He Lied About Everything. Subscribe to News from Science for full access to breaking news and analysis on research and science policy. As of the time of that judgment, Macchiarini had not been prosecuted in other countries where he implanted his artificial windpipes, and it was unclear whether he was still practicing medicine, the Times adds. The felony conviction means Macchiarini would have a hard time finding employment again in Sweden, Gerdin says. Each new scientific discovery brings a flood of stories about how it will revolutionise medicine one day soon. Virginia He says, Ive created this bioreactor and its stem cells and it makes tracheas. And its huge., Dr. Genden said that when he and colleagues questioned Dr. Macchiarini at a conference early on, in his bigger-than-life way he says, This is ridiculous, you dont know what youre talking about, it functions beautifully., Dr. Genden thought his work had become obsolete, so you basically shut down the lab, he said. The nine-centimeter transplant replaced all but two centimeters of her trachea. He was one of the best con-men I have ever come across, he added. It is unclear whether Dr. Macchiarini is still practicing medicine, but his lawyer said in May that he had no income. According to a witness report, Paolo operated on a 45-50-year-old woman of Middle Eastern origin in a private clinic in Barcelona in the fall of 2008. These included Harriet Wallberg, who was the vice-chancellor of the Karolinska Institute in 2010, when Macchiarini was recruited. Florida As the home of the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, one of its ambitions is to create scientific celebrities. Why dont the Electoral College and popular vote always match up? However, the serious complications that Castillo suffered were, for a long time, kept very quiet. In this episode, eyewitnesses, officials, and some of Paolos victims thus reveal how they got conned by him, with his former lover television producer Benita Alexander at the front and center. Paolo dropped another bomb when he told Benita that, despite the fact that both of them had been divorced, Pope Francis would officiate at their wedding. Wasnt something of this idea behind the special treatment Karolinska gave Macchiarini? His findings at the time concluded that Dr. Macchiarini had committed scientific misconduct, but this was ultimately ignored by the universitys leadership who chose to clear the Italian surgeon. Despite having a wife and a family, Paolo was in a public affair with the internet star Benita Alexandra. 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. 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One biomedical researcher has documented a total of 20 tracheal regeneration procedures by Macchiarini in Russia, Spain, Britain, and the United States, as well as Sweden. Team Lakay Dr. Gerdin said Dr. Macchiarini was allowed to continue his procedures for so long because the Karolinska Institute and its hospital allowed him to do so. And it needs a blood supply to connect to the patients vascular system. US Capitol Its kind of a marginal substitute, and many patients need further interventions to maintain their airways.. In 2016, Vanity Fair published an expose on Paolo that uncovered even more damning evidence. Benita decided to get in touch with private investigator Frank Murphy. In Macchiarinis case, the hope was that patients could be treated with stem cells taken from their own bone marrow. Abu Dhabi Dr. Macchiarini received a conditional, or suspended, sentence, and was acquitted of assault charges related to two other patients who had also received the artificial organs from him at the Swedish facility. Macchiarini, meanwhile, said he did not accept the findings of the disciplinary board. ABCs true-crime documentary series The Con premieres with the story of Paolo Macchiarini, who was once considered a pioneer in the field of regenerative medicine but allegedly turned out to be just a fraud. But that day is always postponed. A 29-year old woman from New Brunswick, New Jersey, posed as a high school student and attended classes for four days before she was caught and arrested. A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 376, Issue 6600. North Carolina She pushed through his appointment despite the fact that he had some very negative references and dubious claims on his rsum. The scandal meant theres an amazing amount of scrutiny, he said. Its very significant, said Dr. Pierre Delaere, a professor of head and neck surgery at University Hospital Gasthuisberg in Belgium, a trachea specialist not involved in the case. The coronavirus pandemic will most likely create more cases because many Covid-19 patients have needed weeks on ventilators.
