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The university board was dismissed and even Harriet Wallberg, whod moved on to become the chancellor for all Swedish universities, lost her job. The transplants, performed on patients from the United States and other countries, were heralded as inaugurating a regenerative medicine revolution. Her colleague had sent an article that said the pope would not be in Rome, or even Italy, on the day of their wedding. In such dire circumstances, new treatments can be tried as a last resort. Dr. Paolo Macchiarini became a star by creating a bioartificial windpipe. Tennessee And investigations by both institute and the hospital found coverups regarding Macchiarinis work. Dr. Paolo Macchiarini at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in 2013. She received another implant at the University College Hospital in London in 2011, after which she was able to be discharged. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Some answers have emerged from the official inquiries into the Karolinska Institute and the Karolinska University hospital. However, Swedish TV reporters also decided to take a close look at Macchiarinis work. Talking about her spouse Paolo, he became infamous for research fraud and manipulative behavior. None other than Pope Francis would officiate, and his papal palace in Castel Gandolfo would serve as the venue. But because Macchiarini is apparently living in Spain, its unlikely to have much effect. Not only that, they later covered it up.. The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City cast member was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for defrauding the elderly. 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. Hes clearly bright and has accomplishments, but he cant contain himself. 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. Guided by several mentors, he delved into research and animal experiments, developing a transplant approach. Paolo proposed to her on Christmas Day in 2013. 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 considered backing out. Scientists can also suffer from false hope. Macchiarini had often boasted to Alexander of his famous friends. Talking about her spouse After being dismissed from the institute, he worked at the Kazan Federal University in Kazan, Russia. The first person to receive one of these was Andemariam Beyene, an Eritrean doctoral student in geology at the University of Iceland. After Macchiarini fitted Cetir with one of his artificial windpipes in 2012, her condition worsened. (LogOut/ They allowed Macchiarini to continue his work as a visiting professor with a research lab. 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. 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.. Though Macchiarini was in the public eye, he was able to sidestep the usual rules and regulations. He was eventually dismissed from Karolinska. An alarmingly wide gap has grown between what we expect from stem cells and what they deliver. 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. We have, for example, a growing list of scientific celebrities who have committed major stem cell fraud. She soon went into full-on investigative journalist mode, and learned that Paolo had, yup lied about everything. At the time, Macchiarini was working at Swedens Karolinska Institute, which awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine every year. Kentucky 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. So far he has not been prosecuted in any of those countries. In 2013, the hospital halted future operations with synthetic trachea and opted to not extend Macchiarinis contract. He performed a synthetic trachea transplant on, In 2013, he met documentary television producer. How climate change and forest management make wildfires harder to contain, Disparity in police response: Black Lives Matter protests and Capitol riot. But it did not work, and a court in Sweden has found him criminally liable for the harm The Italian surgeon and his Italian wife Emanuela Pecchia have one son and one daughter. According to Macchiarini and his colleagues, her artificial organ was well on the way to looking and functioning liked a natural one. Thats what Macchiarini told his fiancee. Her friends described him as "Mr. Big" from Sex and the City. Acquittal is therefore difficult to defend., But Gerdin says the verdict is not unexpected. Photographs document Ms. Seins trachea transformation: Her old windpipe looks raw and red, her new one smooth as porcelain. You can see this in the speed with which his breakthroughs were accepted. 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. She remained conscious and awake throughout most of them, but unable to breathe. All three patients later died. Read More: Where is Benita Alexander Now? His operation was on June 9, 2011, at the Karolinska University Hospital, where he received the upgraded plastic trachea made at University College London. Claudia Castillo with Dr Paolo Macchiarini. She received another 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. Alexander started a problem with the specialist at this time. Watch He Lied About Everything on ID GO now! Some of them have been successful, but theyre cumbersome in different ways and theyre not a trachea, Dr. Patterson said. Even the jewelry he had given her was I can breathe, she was amazed to discover. 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. Previously considered a pioneer for using both biological and synthetic scaffolds It is unclear whether Dr. Macchiarini is still practicing medicine, but his lawyer said in May that he had no income. There he reinvented his technique. Macchiarini, meanwhile, said he did not accept the findings of the disciplinary board. A 19-year-old Iowa college student allegedly defrauded over 400 donors after raising more than $37,000 by faking a triple cancer diagnosis. That meant the donor trachea was accompanied by a blood supply that Dr. Genden connected to Ms. Seins blood vessels. But Benita stood by her man and, she said, tried to help him through a tough time. Karolinskas leadership expected big things from their superstar, things that would bring prestige and funding to the institute. The court heard testimony in the case between 27 April and 12 May. One was a 2-year-old girl named Hannah Warren, on whom hed operated in Peoria, IL, in 2013, according to Vanity Fair. The court had to apply the intentional indifference standard for the assault charges, he says, which is difficult to prove. Thailand When Macchiarini accused one of them, Karl-Henrik Grinnemo, of stealing his work in a grant application, Hamsten found him guilty. Hundreds of Americans are estimated to die each year because techniques like stents, surgery or lasers cannot heal their damaged tracheas, and they suffocate when airways narrow dangerously or collapse. At any rate, some of his most powerful friends were themselves Nobel judges until, with his fall from grace, they fell too. He could see no real evidence that the windpipe scaffolds were becoming living, functioning airways in which case, they were destined to fail. 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 nine-centimeter transplant replaced all but two centimeters of her trachea. 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? 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. We will send you a maximum of two emails in, We will be in touch to remind you to contribute. 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. For other cases, though, doctors say the approach seems promising. Help News from Science publish trustworthy, high-impact stories about research and the people who shape it. They reopened the case in 2020, this time charging Macchiarini on lesser counts of aggravated assault and severe bodily harm. Last year, however, the dream soured, exposing an ugly reality. 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. He convinced the Karolinska Institute that this could make them famous, and they just let him do it. Only three are still alive as of September 2020. 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. Illinois And it needs a blood supply to connect to the patients vascular system. The donor was a young man (identifying details are being withheld to protect privacy). 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. If we've learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it's that we cannot wait for a crisis to respond. A good example is the NBC documentary A Leap of Faith. 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. China Paolo Macchiarinis income source is mostly from being a successful . Source: ABC Article continues below advertisement His relationship with Benita, 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. Colleagues accused him of manipulating his results, even warning of the harm caused by these so-called regenerative windpipes. None have been forced to hold full and independent inquiries. So did Karolinskas dean of research. There are also plenty of desperate patients who believe because theyve been told countless times that stem cells are the cure, and who cannot wait any longer for mainstream medicine. In September, a Swedish prosecutor indicted him on aggravated assault charges related to three trachea transplants. A genius is a revolutionary by definition, a risk-taker and a law-breaker. Even the jewelry he had given her was fake. They planned to marry in the Catholic Church in Italy. So in 2010, Paolo operated on her at the National Research Center of Surgery in Moscow. Virginia The coronavirus pandemic will most likely create more cases because many Covid-19 patients have needed weeks on ventilators. Ms. Seins trachea before, left, and her new transplanted trachea. Alexander admits that, at the time, she was in a vulnerable place. He says prosecutors should have pressed for manslaughter charges because Macchiarini had no evidence that the tracheas he implanted would develop into normally functioning organs. Their devastating documentary, which aired in January 2016, led KI officials to reopen the investigation. In the 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. Sorry we couldn't set a reminder for you this time. They exchange their vows in Italy. One of these is the hype surrounding stem cells. 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. The Vatican confirmed that he had never been the Pope's doctor. 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. We would have been planning my funeral, she said, but now were planning a birthday party.. Reports of their success always seemed like hot air to him. As of late March, 6.5 percent of cells in the donor trachea were hers, with the proportion increasing, he said. This was Macchiarinis first big success. 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." He should be given death penalty! In other countries, more of Macchiarinis patients died after receiving one of his artificial windpipes. Macchiarinis argument that KI fully supported and encouraged the surgeries likely swayed the judges as well, he says. Subscribe to News from Science for full access to breaking news and analysis on research and science policy. 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. 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. He additionally claimed that former patients also included Bill and Hillary Clinton, and thenPresident Obama. Paolo Macchiarini traveled to Illinois to operate on toddler Hannah Warren, who was born without a trachea in 2013. A review of public records in Italy found that Paolo was never divorced from Emanuela Pecchia, his wife of nearly 30 years. The procedure involved replacing a damaged trachea with a plastic replica that had been soaked in the patients stem cells. 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. Award-winning documentary-maker Benita Alexander was swept off her feet by renowned Italian doctor Paolo Macchiarini in 2013 while she was working on a story about his pioneering medical work. Benita Alexander Before their wedding, the His lawyer did not respond to emails from Science today. I didnt want Paolo to not be the man I believed him to be, she told Vanity Fair. His recovery put Macchiarini on the front page of the New York Times. At the time, Macchiarini was employed by the prestigious Karolinska Institute in Sweden. He traveled to Illinois to operate on a Korean toddler who was born without a trachea and who was going to be the youngest person to ever receive an artificial one. Anyone can read what you share. (LogOut/ Does the heat of stem cell research the high levels of funding, prestige and media coverage it enjoys somehow encourage fraud? Unfortunately, the scandal is much bigger than Karolinska, which accounts for only three of the patients who have received Macchiarinis regenerating windpipes. 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. 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. Macchiarini gave his regenerating windpipes to 17 or more patients worldwide. In court testimony, he defended himself as only trying to help desperately ill patients, and said he had the full support of KI and his colleagues. But colleagues suspected that Macchiarini was manipulating his results. They and their loved ones fall victim to false hope. 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. As Selena ran from the room, Yolanda Saldivar shot her in the back. Selena died in a hospital due to a loss of blood and cardiac arrest, two weeks before her 24th birthday. New York City 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. How did the GameStop stock spike on Wall Street happen? About 11 centimeters (4 inches) long, one side curves like a halfpipe, composed of cartilage rings and ligaments. Although the difference in his birthplace, he is known to be an Italian by his nationality. In fact, the surgeon was still married to his wife of nearly 30 years. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. In January 2016, Macchiarini received an extraordinary double dose of bad press. The different gender was important, allowing Dr. Genden to use chromosomal analysis to detect whether Ms. Seins cells populated the new trachea. Now his reputation lies in tatters. 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. This thing came to life, Dr. Genden marveled, and we were like, Holy smokes, weve done it.. He convinced the Karolinska Institute that this could make them famous, and they just let him do it. 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. Other witnesses contradicted that, arguing that with Andemariams slow-growing cancer, minor surgeries and other treatments could have kept him alive. Nearly all of those patients have died. 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. The mild sentence comes as a disappointment to Macchiarinis critics. 2023 Warner Bros. Its like when you get on a rocket ship., At times, he felt in a dreamlike state, he said. They shared a happy relationship. 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. Delaere was one of the earliest and harshest critics of Macchiarinis engineered airways. 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. Dr. Genden said some scientists told him Youre out of your mind because trying a transplant would risk his reputation. 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. And fooled almost everyone. He was one of the best con men I have ever come across. I dont want to live like this, she concluded. Largely confined to her Bronx apartment, she needed home health aides and had to quit her career as a social worker for pregnant women. The couple had traveled a lot, but there were some things 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. I have to expose him.". document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. From that moment on, she made a proposal to Paolo Macchiarini, and Dateline planned to publish the story. On May 13, Alexander left her job. Look out for a message in your inbox in. As studies have shown, the media often casts a positive light on stem cell tourism, suggesting that the treatments are effective and the risks low. Macchiarini, who denied the charges against him, wasnt directly accused of killing any of the three patients. Prosecutors dropped the case a few months later, however, saying they didnt have sufficient evidence to prove manslaughter. 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. All rights reserved. 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 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. The Macchiarini scandal claimed many of his powerful friends. Likewise the secretary-general of the Nobel Committee. COVID-19 Emanuela Pecchia is married to Paolo Macchiarini for over 30 years. The next morning, with the donor and Ms. Sein in adjacent rooms, a team of over 50 medical personnel assembled. Stem cell clinics have sprung up like weeds, offering to treat just about any ailment you can name. The story portrayed Macchiarini, who was already married at the time, as a serial fabulist who exaggerated or lied about degrees, academic appointments, and In 2015, the Karolinska Institute hired an independent investigator named Dr. Bengt Gerdin to look into the Macchiarini situation, per the Times. We were doing good research, but it didnt matter I thought I was going to lose my lab, my staff everything.. For the respect of privacy, his wifes identity is not revealed on the internet. In addition to his partner of over 30 years, he also had a special next woman. February 28, 2022 Emanuela Pecchia is famously known as the wife of popular Swiss-born Italian thoracic surgeon, Paolo Macchiarini. No one is more powerless than a patient with a disease, said Dr. Gerdin. Born in 1984, Zhadyra Iglikova suffered from tracheostomy following a car accident. 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. In their view, Macchiarini was certainly engaged in clinical research. In 2016, Vanity Fair published an expose on Paolo that uncovered even more damning evidence. She has since had the synthetic trachea removed. The idea is that scientific progress is driven by the genius of a few. 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. The verdict is the latest development in Macchiarinis stunning fall from grace. An advantage is that immunosuppressants are necessary only for several months, he said. Dr. Paolo Macchiarini became a star by creating a bioartificial windpipe. 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. If the Pope was planning to marry two divorcees, surely it would be huge global news? Please try again later. Most, including Andemariam Beyene, are now dead. (LogOut/ 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 operations were hailed at the time as a breakthrough in regenerative medicine, although some observers remained skeptical. It is fitting that Macchiarinis career unravelled at the Karolinska Institute. According to the magazine, in 2012 he was charged in Italy with attempted aggravated fraud related to alleged efforts to persuade very ill patients to undergo radical surgery at facilities where he had privileges. Jakarta 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. Or rather, his celebrity status helped him do so. Records show that even with his implant failing, Andemariam was able to complete his Ph.D. before his demise in January 2013. Remembering George Floyd: A year of protest. Alexander said that Macchiarini told her he was still married to his wife because they were Catholic but were separated. KI officials let him do this. Please make a tax-deductible gift today. 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. Macchiarini was fired in 2016 amid allegations of fraud and scientific misconduct after many of his transplant recipients died. 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. It is also unclear whether the verdict Thursday will have an impact in other jurisdictions where Dr. Macchiarini conducted windpipe operations. 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. 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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. Filipino MMA fighters 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. None of these institutions have faced the same kind of public scrutiny. A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 376, Issue 6600. But of 20 patients, including children, most ultimately died, and scientists said Dr. Macchiarini misrepresented data and exaggerated his techniques effectiveness. Border crisis: Whats happening at the US-Mexico border? Macchiarini shot to prominence back in 2008, when he created a new airway for Claudia Castillo, a young woman from Barcelona. The media began calling him "Dr. Frankenstein" and said that he committed "the world's biggest medical fraud.". 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? 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.