Previously considered a pioneer for using both biological and synthetic scaffolds If as a doctor you do stupid things, then you can be charged. But the not-guilty verdicts on the other two cases highlight how the law can leave vulnerable people unprotected, he says, for example when they are facing life-and-death decisions and holding less information than their doctor. She says it may mean the judges thought he and the patients believed time was short and options were few. US Capitol Philippines As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Its actually meaningless for him, Gerdin says. And difficult to jump off. She remained in intensive care for more than three years at Karolinska University Hospital and underwent more than 200 surgical procedures. To some extent, they believed Macchiarini because he told them what they wanted to hear. In 2015, the Karolinska Institute hired an independent investigator named Dr. Bengt Gerdin to look into the Macchiarini situation, per the Times. 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. On Friday Mr. Hurtig declined to comment on Paolos private affairs.. One was a 2-year-old girl named Hannah Warren, on whom hed operated in Peoria, IL, in 2013, according to Vanity Fair. The coronavirus pandemic will most likely create more cases because many Covid-19 patients have needed weeks on ventilators. Colorado 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. In their view, Macchiarini was certainly engaged in clinical research. After being dismissed from the institute, he worked at the Kazan Federal University in Kazan, Russia. You can see this in the speed with which his breakthroughs were accepted. Talking about her spouse 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. 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. Florida He was one of the best con men I have ever come across. A Swedish filmmakers investigative documentary raised further questions, as did a Vanity Fair article detailing how the beguiling surgeon became romantically involved with an NBC producer working on a feature about him and apparently conned her into believing he was divorced and would marry her in a ceremony officiated by the pope and attended by the Clintons, Obamas, John Legend and Elton John. The only question was how long it would take weeks, months or a few years. Macchiarini was fired in 2016 amid allegations of fraud and scientific misconduct after many of his transplant recipients died. Which left a big, burning question in the air: if Macchiarini was a pathological liar in matters of love, what about his medical research? The surgeons defense attorney, Bjrn Hurtig, said his client was considering an appeal. Was he conning his patients, his colleagues and the scientific community? But even if his days had been numbered, this didnt necessarily justify what Macchiarini put him through. 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Some of them have been successful, but theyre cumbersome in different ways and theyre not a trachea, Dr. Patterson said. 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. Los Angeles "If I made a checklist of what I wanted a man to be, he had everything.". Next month, she will turn 57. 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. He performed a synthetic trachea transplant on, In 2013, he met documentary television producer. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/health/trachea-transplant-genden.html. But that day is always postponed. On May 13, Alexander left her job. But because Macchiarini is apparently living in Spain, its unlikely to have much effect. This organ was prepared without the knowledge of authorities in a veterinary lab at the University of Bristol, but no one questioned it because of its initial success. But as the big day approached, Alexander saw these plans unravel, and finally realised that her lover had lied about almost everything. A genius is a revolutionary by definition, a risk-taker and a law-breaker. In Macchiarinis case, the hope was that patients could be treated with stem cells taken from their own bone marrow. Change). 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. Gerdin determined that Macchiarini committed scientific misconduct, but leadership at the Karolinska Institute ignored the findings and cleared Macchiarini. The nine-centimeter transplant replaced all but two centimeters of her trachea. The case is pending. Each new scientific discovery brings a flood of stories about how it will revolutionise medicine one day soon. Learn how your comment data is processed. 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. (LogOut/ Surgeon Paolo Macchiarini was hailed for turning the dream of regenerative medicine into a reality until he was exposed as a con artist and false prophet. Scientific pioneer, superstar surgeon, miracle worker thats how Paolo Macchiarini was known for several years. He said yeah, so I said Lets go for it., After extracting the donors organs, you go next door and you open up Sonia and you remove the diseased trachea, and there is no going back, Dr. Genden said. A High-Flying Italian Surgeons Fall From Grace, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/world/europe/macchiarini-windpipe-surgeon-deaths.html. Paolo proposed to her on Christmas Day in 2013. But according to reports, Paolo cheated on his Emanuela Pecchia. Apparently, her graft detached soon after, causing an infection, and because of difficulties in breathing, she had to be admitted into emergency a total of 13 times. In place of clinical data, there are gushing testimonials. Alexander admits that, at the time, she was in a vulnerable place. 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. Benita Alexander on attending Paolo Macchiarinis criminal trial in Sweden Alexander said she attended Macchiarini's trial for closure, seven years after she was So in 2010, Paolo operated on her at the National Research Center of Surgery in Moscow. New York And because it was built from Castillos own cells, she didnt need to be on any risky immunosuppressant drugs. KI officials let him do this. Macchiarini was also charged with but acquitted of assault charges related to the deaths of two more of his artificial windpipe patients, an Eritrean man named Andemariam Beyene and an American man named Christopher Lyles, according to BBC News. She considered backing out. In the Macchiarini, meanwhile, said he did not accept the findings of the disciplinary board. They identified many problems with the way the twin organisations handled him. Indonesia 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. Only three are still alive as of September 2020. 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 first was a Vanity Fair article about his affair with Benita Alexander, an award-winning producer for NBC News. 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. 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. Sonia Sein, outside her Bronx home, had irreparable damage to her trachea. An unhappy result of this is the rise of pseudo-scientific therapies. Other trachea replacement attempts include transplanting part of a donors frozen, preserved aorta, the bodys main artery, and fabricating tracheas from patients own chest muscles and rib cartilage. Help News from Science publish trustworthy, high-impact stories about research and the people who shape it. We will send you a maximum of two emails in, We will be in touch to remind you to contribute. 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.. He reportedly lied on his CV and research papers to trick patients, causing almost all those who received his inventive trachea transplants (using their own bone marrow cells for organ functionality) to lose their lives. The couple set a date: July 11, 2015. In the case of Cetir, he should have known the risk of complications was higher than the expected benefit, the judges ruled. A review of public records in Italy found that Paolo was never divorced from Emanuela Pecchia, his wife of nearly 30 years. Besides which, compassionate concerns dont override the basic principles of patient safety and informed consent. Swedish television broadcast a three-part expos of Paolo's work called Experimenten, which argued that the artificial windpipes did more harm than good and were actually rotting away inside his patients' bodies. He convinced the Karolinska Institute that this could make them famous, and they just let him do it. They also cited a loophole known as compassionate use. 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.