But the vice-chancellor of Karolinska Institute, Anders Hamsten, wasnt bound by this judgement. A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 376, Issue 6600. I didnt want Paolo to not be the man I believed him to be, she told Vanity Fair. 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.. The first person to receive one of these was Andemariam Beyene, an Eritrean doctoral student in geology at the University of Iceland. Paolo was in the house, but he was not alone after Benita's friends were asked to leave, they noticed a blonde woman coming out of the house, with two young children. However, the serious complications that Castillo suffered were, for a long time, kept very quiet. They allowed Macchiarini to continue his work as a visiting professor with a research lab. He took the medical world by storm when he built and transplanted the worlds first bioartificial windpipe two years earlier. Scientific pioneer, superstar surgeon, miracle worker thats how Paolo Macchiarini was known for several years. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. For the respect of privacy, his wifes identity is not revealed on the internet. COVID-19 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. The Karolinska University Hospital suspended Dr. Macchiarinis contract as a surgeon in 2013, but the affiliated Karolinska Institute kept him on until 2016 even as the scandal over his work spread, according to a timeline on the institutes website. Unfortunately, though, she reportedly succumbed to her underlying disease in January of 2012. WebPaolo Macchiarini Net Worth. But because Macchiarini is apparently living in Spain, its unlikely to have much effect. 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. 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. Please make a tax-deductible gift today. 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. Benita fell for Macchiarini while a producer for NBC, working on a story on him in 2013. Even so, it wasnt until 2016 that the Karolinska Institute declined to renew his contract. The other side is flat and mobile to move air to the lungs. 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. We were doing good research, but it didnt matter I thought I was going to lose my lab, my staff everything.. Brazil This thing came to life, Dr. Genden marveled, and we were like, Holy smokes, weve done it.. That was a very smart idea to help maintain the fragile blood supply of the airway by leaving the esophagus in place behind it, Dr. Patterson said. The court ruling Thursday was in a case involving a Turkish woman named Yesim Cetir, who was the longest surviving of his patients at Karolinska. But in October 2017, the attorney general's office announced that a crime could not be proven, because the patients might have died anyway. Washington But it did not work, and a court in Sweden has found him criminally liable for the harm 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. 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. A good example is the NBC documentary A Leap of Faith. The story portrayed Macchiarini, who was already married at the time, as a serial fabulist who exaggerated or lied about degrees, academic appointments, and It is fitting that Macchiarinis career unravelled at the Karolinska Institute. But according to reports, Paolo cheated on his Emanuela Pecchia. This was the start of a whirlwind romance that included five-star hotels, travel to far-flung locations, and extravagant shopping sprees. In the case of Cetir, he should have known the risk of complications was higher than the expected benefit, the judges ruled. The scandal meant theres an amazing amount of scrutiny, he said. In part, this is because the field of windpipe repair is a niche area. Why dont the Electoral College and popular vote always match up? China We have, for example, a growing list of scientific celebrities who have committed major stem cell fraud. Called Experimenten (The Experiments), it argued convincingly that Macchiarinis artificial windpipes were not the life-saving wonders wed all been led to believe. She remained in intensive care for more than three years at Karolinska University Hospital and underwent more than 200 surgical procedures. Donald Trump Unfortunately, due to complications, she passed away either around Christmas of that year or in the first few months of 2009. A review of public records in Italy found that Paolo was never divorced from Emanuela Pecchia, his wife of nearly 30 years. We will send you a maximum of two emails in, We will be in touch to remind you to contribute. 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.. Remembering George Floyd: A year of protest. As Selena ran from the room, Yolanda Saldivar shot her in the back. When Macchiarini accused one of them, Karl-Henrik Grinnemo, of stealing his work in a grant application, Hamsten found him guilty. Florida Stem cell clinics have sprung up like weeds, offering to treat just about any ailment you can name. Talking about her spouse In 2013, the hospital halted future operations with synthetic trachea and opted to not extend Macchiarinis contract. For other cases, though, doctors say the approach seems promising. By this year, Dr. Genden said, her condition had deteriorated so that if we delay further, its not going to work out.. Stem cell research is a hot field of science and, according to statistics, also a rather scandal-prone one. Next month, she will turn 57. Benita Alexander Before their wedding, the He is still licensed to practice medicine in Europe. And fooled almost everyone. Benita Alexander on attending Paolo Macchiarinis criminal trial in Sweden Alexander said she attended Macchiarini's trial for closure, seven years after she was The court had to apply the intentional indifference standard for the assault charges, he says, which is difficult to prove. 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. 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. 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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. However, he eventually found out about his previous associations. Philippines Alexander started a problem with the specialist at this time. 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 September 2020, Swedish prosecutors announced charges against him for aggravated assault in connection to three surgeries that he had performed at the. Border crisis: Whats happening at the US-Mexico border? Los Angeles He understood how difficult her life had become. 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. The case is pending. Therefore, of all the medically ill individuals Paolo has ever provided a biological or synthetic implant to, at least 8 of them allegedly died due to his misconduct in research, failure to provide proper post-operative care, and/or his disregard for ethical practices. 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. There was another reason to be daunted too: historical assumptions that tracheas werent transplantable. Any woman would swoon for such a catch! Paolo was a world-renowned surgeon who spoke six languages, mingled with the global elite, and resembled George Clooney. But it was already too late. And it needs a blood supply to connect to the patients vascular system. We now know that wasnt true. A 19-year-old Iowa college student allegedly defrauded over 400 donors after raising more than $37,000 by faking a triple cancer diagnosis. 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. 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. Abu Dhabi 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. Karolinskas leadership expected big things from their superstar, things that would bring prestige and funding to the institute. An advantage is that immunosuppressants are necessary only for several months, he said. So far he has not been prosecuted in any of those countries. Benita Alexander had no way of knowing that, by the end of her love story, her heart would be broken and many of Paolos patients who received the miracle transplants would be dead. Yet because of the ensuing complications, she had to receive a tracheoplasty in April 2011 and another cadaveric trachea graft in 2018. As Grinnemo recalls, it nearly destroyed his career: I didnt receive any new grants. 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. But some of Alexander's friends began to become suspicious. She says she feels she has been given a chance of being alive one more time.. 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 donor was a young man (identifying details are being withheld to protect privacy). 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. As it turned out, Macchiarinis patients werent all at deaths door at the time he treated them. Sonia Sein, outside her Bronx home, had irreparable damage to her trachea. The trachea has been characterized as a simple tube, but its very complex, Dr. Delaere said. 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. The couple had traveled extensively, but there were a If we've learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it's that we cannot wait for a crisis to respond. It would be a star-studded event. As it was built from Claudias own cells, she didnt need to be on any risky immunosuppressant drugs. But it did not work, and a court in Sweden has found him criminally liable for the harm inflicted on a patient. According to Macchiarini and his colleagues, her artificial organ was well on the way to looking and functioning liked a natural one. You can see this in the speed with which his breakthroughs were accepted. If she talked for over five minutes, she had to stop because I couldnt breathe.. All but one died following severe complications with the implants. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. According to The New York Times, Macchiarini is an Italian surgeon who was found criminally liable this June for causing felony bodily injury to a Turkish woman named Yesim Cetir, a patient who had received one of his 3D-printed windpipes and later died. Macchiarini had often boasted to Alexander of his famous friends. Why are people hesitant to trust a COVID-19 vaccine? The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City cast member was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for defrauding the elderly. February 28, 2022 Emanuela Pecchia is famously known as the wife of popular Swiss-born Italian thoracic surgeon, Paolo Macchiarini. Michigan 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. 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. Look out for a message in your inbox in. Wasnt something of this idea behind the special treatment Karolinska gave Macchiarini? It is thus likely she has since passed away. To some extent, they believed Macchiarini because he told them what they wanted to hear. 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She received another implant at the University College Hospital in London in 2011, after which she was able to be discharged. 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. In their view, he was grossly misrepresenting his results and the health of his patients. Paolo stated in an interview with a TV station in Iceland that he has always acted in the patients' best interest, and believes that his procedures should be seen as successful. 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. Benita Alexander and Paolo Macchiarini in Venice, Italy [Investigation Discovery]. Because mucus would clog her tube, she was constantly suctioning, constantly worried about her airway, and it becomes overwhelming, Dr. Genden said, like being held down in a swimming pool. But as the big day approached, Alexander saw these plans unravel, and finally realised that her lover had lied about almost everything. Emanuela Pecchia is married to Paolo Macchiarini for over 30 years. 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. Born in 1984, Zhadyra Iglikova suffered from tracheostomy following a car accident. He could see no real evidence that the windpipe scaffolds were becoming living, functioning airways in which case, they were destined to fail. Watch He Lied About Everything on ID GO now! For their efforts, the whistleblowers were punished. Ms. Sein speaking with Dr. Eric M. Genden Sr., left, who developed the pioneering procedure, and Dr. Sander S. Florman, director of Mount Sinais Transplantation Institute. 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. 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. After several weeks in recovery, she is home. Macchiarini, they claimed, wasnt really doing clinical research. Anyone can read what you share. After being dismissed from the institute, he worked at the Kazan Federal University in Kazan, Russia. Learn how your comment data is processed. Singapore 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. 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. She pushed through his appointment despite the fact that he had some very negative references and dubious claims on his rsum. In 2016, Vanity Fair published an expose on Paolo that uncovered even more damning evidence. They also questioned whether Macchiarini had obtained proper ethical permission for the surgeries and challenged a paper describing animal experiments with the technique. "I have to tell people. 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. 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). 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. Selena died in a hospital due to a loss of blood and cardiac arrest, two weeks before her 24th birthday. 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. An independent investigator agreed. They didnt even seek the approval of Stockholms ethical review board, which is based at Karolinska. But as time went on, she could not resist her connection to the dashing surgeon and she violated the number one rule of journalism: Never get involved with a person you're reporting on. She was wearing a blonde wig, and her nervous laughter is audible on the video they shot. Investigations by the hospital and the Karolinska Institute revealed that issues with Dr. Macchiarinis work had been covered up. 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. Few people at Karolinska, especially among those in power, knew enough about it to appreciate Delaeres claims. Benita Alexander with one of the custom-made gowns intended for her wedding [Investigation Discovery]. As of late March, 6.5 percent of cells in the donor trachea were hers, with the proportion increasing, he said. Tokyo 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. The nine-centimeter transplant replaced all but two centimeters of her trachea. The next morning, with the donor and Ms. Sein in adjacent rooms, a team of over 50 medical personnel assembled. A High-Flying Italian Surgeons Fall From Grace, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/world/europe/macchiarini-windpipe-surgeon-deaths.html. The answer came only a couple of weeks later, when Swedish television began broadcasting a three-part expos of Macchiarini and his work. Paolo Macchiarini, in a 2013 photo, implanted synthetic windpipes into multiple patients; all but one died following complications with the implants. 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. 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.

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