But it did not work, and a court in Sweden has found him criminally liable for the harm 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. There he reinvented his technique. I cant do this anymore, Sonia Sein told herself, her family and her doctor. Faced with this public relations disaster, the Karolinska Institute immediately promised to investigate the allegations but then, within days, suddenly announced that Macchiarinis contract would not be extended. He convinced the Karolinska Institute that this could make them famous, and they just let him do it. KI officials let him do this. Paolo Macchiarini is exposed Reality struck Alexander's fantasy romance eight weeks before she was supposed to marry Macchiarini in 2015, when she received an email from a colleague with the subject line saying, "The Pope." Countless news stories declared it a medical breakthrough. 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science. How climate change and forest management make wildfires harder to contain, Disparity in police response: Black Lives Matter protests and Capitol riot. Kevin Belingon He took the medical world by storm when he built and transplanted the worlds first bioartificial windpipe two years earlier. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. In 2010, the Italian surgeon was recruited by KIhome of the committee that awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. All rights reserved. "If I made a checklist of what I wanted a man to be, he had everything.". Benita Alexander thought that she was living a real-life fairy tale when she met her fianc, Paolo Macchiarini. The other patients were treated at hospitals in Barcelona, Florence, London, Moscow, Krasnodar, Chicago and Peoria. 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. Andemariam Beyene, for instance, had recurrent cancer of the windpipe but, aside from a cough, was still in good health. None of these institutions have faced the same kind of public scrutiny. He hopes the immunosuppressant drugs, which can create health risks, can be reduced or even stopped if the entire graft becomes filled with Sonias cells.. Benita told CrimeFeed that Paolo always paid for everything and was "extremely generous." Not only that, they later covered it up.. 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. At night, when she connected her tracheal tube to a ventilator, the alarm kept going off to let people know that I stopped breathing, said Ms. Sein, who hated causing her family concern. 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Why dont the Electoral College and popular vote always match up? In early 2014, four Karolinska doctors defied the reigning culture of silence by complaining about Macchiarini. Massachusetts Plus: A Chicago mother is arrested in connection to the murder of her 6-year-old son; the convicted killer Robert Durst dies at age 78; Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes sentencing date is set; and an LGBTQ+ rights movement hero is found dead in a Florida landfill. It relieved a little bit of burden from him.. Ms. Seins trachea before, left, and her new transplanted trachea. "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. Paolo Macchiarini traveled to Illinois to operate on toddler Hannah Warren, who was born without a trachea in 2013. COVID-19 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. Filipino MMA fighters Kentucky Nearly all of those patients have died. Back in New York, Benita found herself unable to stop thinking about Paolo's patients. At first, they just connected as friends. Philippines Paolo was a world-renowned surgeon who spoke six languages, mingled with the global elite, and resembled George Clooney. New York City The next morning, with the donor and Ms. Sein in adjacent rooms, a team of over 50 medical personnel assembled. 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. Alexander started a problem with the specialist at this time. Here are 13 more things about him: Categories: biographical data, crimes, Europe, fitness & health, Italy, Lifestyle, LISTS, Russia, Social Issues, Sweden, Tagged as: Basel, Benita Alexander, Emanuela Pecchia, Paolo Macchiarini. Selena died in a hospital due to a loss of blood and cardiac arrest, two weeks before her 24th birthday. The tube was necessary because her trachea the airway leading to the lungs had become damaged after she spent weeks on a ventilator for a severe asthma attack in 2014. 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. Watch He Lied About Everything on ID GO now! 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. Paolo then came across Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene, a man from Eritrea who was training to be a doctor when he got diagnosed with cancer. Or rather, his celebrity status helped him do so. However, the serious complications that Castillo suffered were, for a long time, kept very quiet. Macchiarinis argument that KI fully supported and encouraged the surgeries likely swayed the judges as well, he says. 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. Plus: NYC sixth-grader struck and killed by stray bullet; New Hampshire police search for person of interest in double homicide; Fyre Festival fraudster released early from prison; and manhunt continues for escaped Texas prisoner. Change). In the case of Cetir, he should have known the risk of complications was higher than the expected benefit, the judges ruled. Benita Alexander and Paolo Macchiarini in Venice, Italy [Investigation Discovery]. But because Macchiarini is apparently living in Spain, its unlikely to have much effect. The Karolinska Institute was seduced by Macchiarini, Gerdin told the newspaper. Now they were on the wedding guest list: the Obamas, the Clintons, Vladimir Putin, Nicolas Sarkozy and other world leaders. 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.CreditSarah Blesener for The New York Times. In September 2020, Swedish prosecutors announced charges against him for aggravated assault in connection to three surgeries that he had performed at the. For other cases, though, doctors say the approach seems promising. WebPaolo Macchiarini Net Worth. The mild sentence comes as a disappointment to Macchiarinis critics. The case is pending. With his methods still under fire in the West, he continues to work in Russia. 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She received another The different gender was important, allowing Dr. Genden to use chromosomal analysis to detect whether Ms. Seins cells populated the new trachea. 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. 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. Acquittal is therefore difficult to defend., But Gerdin says the verdict is not unexpected. So, as per the last reports, he is alive and well today. Emanuela Pecchia has been married to Paolo Macchiarini for over 30 years. Called Experimenten (The Experiments), it argued convincingly that Macchiarinis artificial windpipes were not the life-saving wonders wed all been led to believe. Born in 1977, this Colombian living in Spain woman suffered from tuberculosis-damaged airways. 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. Michigan Every year, it gives science a show-business makeover, picking out from the mass of medical researchers those individuals deserving of superstardom. 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. An independent investigator agreed. 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. Every patient had another, nonlethal option, Pierre Delaere, a trachea expert at KU Leuven and an early critic of Macchiarini, said in an email to Science. While there isnt enough data to actually prove this, we do have some key indicators. And in 2014, four Karolinska University Hospital doctors filed two separate reports claiming that Macchiarinis scientific papers described exaggerated the positive results of the operations and incorrectly describe[d] the postoperative status of the patients and the functionality of the implant, the timeline says. Therefore, on June 12, 2008, at Hospital Clinic Barcelona, she received a cadaver trachea graft implanted as a bronchus transplant. And Murphy found that Macchiarinis claims about the wedding were almost all untrue and that the surgeon was married and had been for nearly 30 years. She received another implant at the University College Hospital in London in 2011, after which she was able to be discharged. Dr. Paolo Macchiarini at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in 2013. Karolinskas leadership expected big things from their superstar, things that would bring prestige and funding to the institute. But the vice-chancellor of Karolinska Institute, Anders Hamsten, wasnt bound by this judgement. 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. No one is more powerless than a patient with a disease, said Dr. Gerdin. Benita Alexander and Paolo Macchiarini [Investigation Discovery]. 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. Starting in 2011, Macchiarini performed three transplantations of synthetic tracheas at Karolinska University Hospital, but one of those patients died in 2012, the timeline reports. Wasnt something of this idea behind the special treatment Karolinska gave Macchiarini? We would have been planning my funeral, she said, but now were planning a birthday party.. "I started thinking that if this man is lying to me at such an egregious level, theres no way hes not doing this in his medical life," she told CrimeFeed. 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. Thousands of people in the United States alone develop trachea problems each year from burns, birth defects, tumors and extended intubation on ventilators. They should be. The first person to receive one of these was Andemariam Beyene, an Eritrean doctoral student in geology at the University of Iceland. Talking about her spouse Paolo, he became infamous for research fraud and manipulative behavior. 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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. 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. Gerdin determined that Macchiarini committed scientific misconduct, but leadership at the Karolinska Institute ignored the findings and cleared Macchiarini. Also seduced by Macchiarini was former NBC News producer Benita Alexander, who met the surgeon in 2013 when she was working on A Leap of Faith, an NBC special about Macchiarini hosted by Meredith Vieira. Yet, for the vast majority of such treatments, there is little solid evidence that they work. Paolo Macchiarini was amazingly accomplished, stunningly successful, and fabulously rich. In the first couple of years at Karolinska, he put plastic airways into three patients. Jakarta Not just that, Paolo was also entangled in several other controversies. Sorry we couldn't set a reminder for you this time. Ciaran Lynch, born in 2000 in Ireland without a functional trachea, received a transplant on March 15, 2010, at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The court heard testimony in the case between 27 April and 12 May. 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. In Macchiarinis case, the hope was that patients could be treated with stem cells taken from their own bone marrow. This guy mutilated people., Between 2011 and 2014, Macchiarini implanted artificial windpipes in at least eight patients in Sweden, the United States, and Russia. Paolo, a visiting researcher at the prestigious Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, had shot to fame as the only doctor in the world who was able to use biological and synthetic scaffolds bathed in the patients' own stem cells for trachea transplants. Her global quest to find out the truth about the man who left her personal and professional life in shambles is documented in He Lied About Everything on Investigation Discovery. Even so, it wasnt until 2016 that the Karolinska Institute declined to renew his contract. The felony conviction means Macchiarini would have a hard time finding employment again in Sweden, Gerdin says. The transplants, performed on patients from the United States and other countries, were heralded as inaugurating a regenerative medicine revolution. In addition to his partner of over 30 years, he also had a special next woman. His recovery put Macchiarini on the front page of the New York Times. 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. 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. Dr. Paolo Macchiarini became a star by creating a bioartificial windpipe. (The big exception is blood stem cell transplantation, which has been saving the lives of people with leukemia and other cancers of the blood for decades.). As Grinnemo recalls, it nearly destroyed his career: I didnt receive any new grants. According to the Times, Macchiarini seen below in a 2017 interview on Swedens TV4 Nyheterna performed 20 tracheal regeneration procedures across Europe and in the United States but hid the fact that the transplants were failing. Benita was also growing increasingly concerned, because she had not yet been introduced to Paolo's children or even seen where she was meant to live with him in Barcelona. Anyone can read what you share. Border crisis: Whats happening at the US-Mexico border? The 18-hour procedure, conceived and led by Dr. Eric M. Genden Sr., chairman of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, is a milestone because unlike kidneys, hearts and lungs the trachea has defied decades of transplantation attempts. No one wanted to collaborate with me. Likewise the whole idea of a wedding: Macchiarini was still married to his wife of 30 years. KI fired Macchiarini in March 2016, 2 months after the Swedish documentary came out. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. But even if his days had been numbered, this didnt necessarily justify what Macchiarini put him through. In place of clinical data, there are gushing testimonials. Scientists can also suffer from false hope. With Macchiarinis exploits endorsed by management and breathlessly reported in the media, it was all too easy to jump on that bandwagon. But as the big day approached, Alexander saw these plans unravel, and finally realised that her lover had lied about almost everything. His lawyer did not respond to emails from Science today. 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. Abu Dhabi Gerdins report, released in May 2015, concluded Macchiarini was guilty of misconduct, but university administrators rejected that conclusion 3 months later, arguing Macchinarini and his co-authors had satisfactorily countered the issues Gerdin raised. In such dire circumstances, new treatments can be tried as a last resort. Likewise the secretary-general of the Nobel Committee. 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. The charismatic Italian surgeon who designed it foresaw a future where hearts and lungs could be made from plastic, and organ donations became a thing of the past. AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER. 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. All rights reserved. (LogOut/ California 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. But when Dr. Sander S. Florman, director of Mount Sinais Transplantation Institute, and LiveOnNY, a nonprofit organ donation organization, agreed to collaborate, his wife, Audrey, encouraged him. He was handsome, suave, and a charmer. Dressed in a white lab coat or in surgical scrubs, with his broad, handsome face and easy charm, he certainly looked the part. The theory was simple: let the body do most of the work. Guided by a high-powered microscope, he used surgical thread half the diameter of a human hair. Last year, however, the dream soured, exposing an ugly reality. Next month, she will turn 57. If we've learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it's that we cannot wait for a crisis to respond. In 2017, Paolo worked at a university in Russia, where he was given a federal grant for oesophagus research on primates, and operated on baboons rather than humans. Benita was loyal to and supported Paolo when his professional life took a dark turn. 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? Brazilian MMA fighters February 28, 2022 Emanuela Pecchia is famously known as the wife of popular Swiss-born Italian thoracic surgeon, Paolo Macchiarini. I could feel it in my lungs.. Colorado As Selena ran from the room, Yolanda Saldivar shot her in the back. According to the Karolinska Institutes timeline of the Macchiarini case, the institute recruited Macchiarini as a visiting professor of regenerative medicine/stem cell biology in 2010, and the associated Karolinska University Hospital gave him a part-time contract as a consultant and surgeon around the same time. The maximum prison sentence for causing bodily harm is 4 years. 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. Dr. Genden examines the new trachea by inserting a scope in a hole he left in her neck, which hell eventually close. The Vatican confirmed that he had never been the Pope's doctor. China Unfortunately, though, she reportedly succumbed to her underlying disease in January of 2012. 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. According to Macchiarini and his colleagues, her artificial organ was well on the way to looking and functioning liked a natural one. Macchiarini gave his regenerating windpipes to 17 or more patients worldwide. Nor did they impress the institutes ethics council when Delaere lodged a formal complaint. Photographs document Ms. Seins trachea transformation: Her old windpipe looks raw and red, her new one smooth as porcelain. LONDON It sounded like real-life science fiction a 3-D printed organ, a groundbreaking artificial windpipe, built in a laboratory and made to order. By the time the program aired, in mid-2014, the couple were planning their marriage. 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. Chatri Sityodtong The only question was how long it would take weeks, months or a few years. It won Dr. Macchiarini international news coverage and cemented his place as a celebrity scientist. Stem-cell scientist Dr. Paolo Macchiarini was accused of wrongdoing during operations on three people between 2011 and 2014. Prosecutors dropped the case a few months later, however, saying they didnt have sufficient evidence to prove manslaughter. It sounded unbelievable, but Paolo explained to her that he had treated Pope John Paul II in the past, and had become part of a highly classified group of doctors that treated the global elite. Her ex-husband John was dying of cancer. They recently published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine admitting that stem cell research has mostly failed to live up to its therapeutic promise. Discovery, Inc. or its subsidiaries and affiliates. They also questioned whether Macchiarini had obtained proper ethical permission for the surgeries and challenged a paper describing animal experiments with the technique. Dr. Paolo Macchiarini became a star by creating a bioartificial windpipe. Despite having a wife and a family, Paolo was in a public affair with the internet star Benita Alexandra. Donald Trump Then, in October of 2009, another woman, who had been operated on by Paolo twice before, received her airway transplant. Japan Powered by WordPress.com VIP. 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. Benita decided to get in touch with private investigator Frank Murphy. From that moment on, she made a proposal to Paolo Macchiarini, and Dateline planned to publish the story. On Friday Mr. Hurtig declined to comment on Paolos private affairs.. The verdict is the latest development in Macchiarinis stunning fall from grace. As the home of the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, one of its ambitions is to create scientific celebrities. Today, Ms. Sein, 56, dances and plays tag with her grandchildren and plans to resume working, possibly as an acupuncturist. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. I didnt want Paolo to not be the man I believed him to be, she told Vanity Fair. 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. He performed a synthetic trachea transplant on, In 2013, he met documentary television producer. (LogOut/ On May 13, Alexander left her job. 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. Gretchen Vogel is a contributing correspondent for Science magazine based in Berlin, Germany. Her transformation follows a groundbreaking experimental procedure she underwent in January: the first time, medical experts believe, a donor trachea has been successfully directly transplanted into another person. Most, including Andemariam Beyene, are now dead. We were doing good research, but it didnt matter I thought I was going to lose my lab, my staff everything.. The district court in Solna today found Paolo Macchiarini not guilty on other charges, including aggravated assault, relating to three patients he treated while working for the famed Karolinska Institute (KI). Alexander admits that, at the time, she was in a vulnerable place. You start to panic because you cant breathe., By early 2020, ethical approvals were in place, but the coronavirus pandemic held things up. I dont want to live like this, she concluded. 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. After several weeks in recovery, she is home. In June 2016, the public prosecutor's office began investigating Paolo on suspicion of manslaughter and grievous bodily harm based on the material leading to the deaths of the three patients operated on in Sweden. 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.