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Japan Ms. Seins trachea before, left, and her new transplanted trachea. 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. 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. 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. Michigan Photographs document Ms. Seins trachea transformation: Her old windpipe looks raw and red, her new one smooth as porcelain. Thereafter it was all over the news. Macchiarini, meanwhile, said he did not accept the findings of the disciplinary board. The answer came only a couple of weeks later, when Swedish television began broadcasting a three-part expos of Macchiarini and his work. Minnesota Its fascinating to rewatch as a lesson on how not to report on medical science. But hes lost his reputation, and thats more important.. Anyone can read what you share. Likewise the whole idea of a wedding: Macchiarini was still married to his wife of 30 years. Alexander admits that, at the time, she was in a vulnerable place. Scientists can also suffer from false hope. Last year, however, the dream soured, exposing an ugly reality. You can see this in the speed with which his breakthroughs were accepted. In such dire circumstances, new treatments can be tried as a last resort. She told CrimeFeed that, looking back, it seemed odd to her she had not met many of Paolo's close friends in Barcelona. The Vatican confirmed that he had never been the Pope's doctor. 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. The university board was dismissed and even Harriet Wallberg, whod moved on to become the chancellor for all Swedish universities, lost her job. Dr. Genden examines the new trachea by inserting a scope in a hole he left in her neck, which hell eventually close. In 2019, an Italian court said he had forged documents and abused his position, charges unrelated to his trachea work. Macchiarini, they claimed, wasnt really doing clinical research. But as the big day approached, Alexander saw these plans unravel, and finally realised that her lover had lied about almost everything. 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? Benita traveled to Paolo's Barcelona home with two friends and a video camera. 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. Countless news stories declared it a medical breakthrough. Then, in October of 2009, another woman, who had been operated on by Paolo twice before, received her airway transplant. She remained conscious and awake throughout most of them, but unable to breathe. The maximum prison sentence for causing bodily harm is 4 years. And because it was built from Castillos own cells, she didnt need to be on any risky immunosuppressant drugs. Its enough to worry officials from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The nine-centimeter transplant replaced all but two centimeters of her trachea. Miss Universe 2021 So, how much is Paolo Macchiarini worth at the age of 64 years old? The court heard testimony in the case between 27 April and 12 May. Wasnt something of this idea behind the special treatment Karolinska gave Macchiarini? Benita Alexander thought that she was living a real-life fairy tale when she met her fianc, Paolo Macchiarini. But it did not work, and a court in Sweden has found him criminally liable for the harm inflicted on a patient. As Grinnemo recalls, it nearly destroyed his career: I didnt receive any new grants. 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. Prosecutors dropped the case a few months later, however, saying they didnt have sufficient evidence to prove manslaughter. The official report into the matter dubbed this the bandwagon effect. Gerdin determined that Macchiarini committed scientific misconduct, but leadership at the Karolinska Institute ignored the findings and cleared Macchiarini. Chatri Sityodtong Alexander said that Macchiarini told her he was still married to his wife because they were Catholic but were separated. 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. For their efforts, the whistleblowers were punished. His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. 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. 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. If there is a moral to this tale, its that we need to be wary of medical messiahs with their promises of salvation. 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. There are people who go to jail for 5 years for not paying their taxes. COVID-19 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. Macchiarini is known for his research fraud and manipulative behavior. In the months and years following their respective surgeries, all of them except Dmitri Onogda have passed away due to post-operative complications. An alarmingly wide gap has grown between what we expect from stem cells and what they deliver. But it did not work, and a court in Sweden has found him criminally liable for the harm By the time the program aired, in mid-2014, the couple were planning their marriage. 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 couple had traveled extensively, but there were a She says it may mean the judges thought he and the patients believed time was short and options were few. His operation was on June 9, 2011, at the Karolinska University Hospital, where he received the upgraded plastic trachea made at University College London. After being dismissed from the institute, he worked at the Kazan Federal University in Kazan, Russia. Not just that, Paolo was also entangled in several other controversies. Discovery, Inc. or its subsidiaries and affiliates. 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. Dr. Paolo Macchiarini became a star by creating a bioartificial windpipe. Illinois Virginia Unfortunately, the scandal is much bigger than Karolinska, which accounts for only three of the patients who have received Macchiarinis regenerating windpipes. Although all three patients eventually died, Dr. Macchiarini was not directly accused of killing them. We have estimated Paolo Macchiarini's net worth , money, salary, income, and assets. Stem cell research is a hot field of science and, according to statistics, also a rather scandal-prone one. Instead, they found him guilty of negligence and the lesser charge of causing bodily harm. Even the jewelry he had given her was fake. He is still licensed to practice medicine in Europe. I have to expose him.". Scientific pioneer, superstar surgeon, miracle worker thats how Paolo Macchiarini was known for several years. Andemariam Beyene, for instance, had recurrent cancer of the windpipe but, aside from a cough, was still in good health. In addition to his partner of over 30 years, he also had a special next woman. They should be. Its like when you get on a rocket ship., At times, he felt in a dreamlike state, he said. Why are people hesitant to trust a COVID-19 vaccine? On the contrary, they seemed to do more harm than good something that Macchiarini had for years concealed or downplayed in his scientific articles, press releases and interviews. Read More: Where is Benita Alexander Now? Yet, for the vast majority of such treatments, there is little solid evidence that they work. Next month, she will turn 57. In early 2014, four Karolinska doctors defied the reigning culture of silence by complaining about Macchiarini. She was wearing a blonde wig, and her nervous laughter is audible on the video they shot. They also cited a loophole known as compassionate use. Gerdin says the conviction on one count still shows that health care doesnt stand above the law. Paolo proposed to her on Christmas Day in 2013. Macchiarini had often boasted to Alexander of his famous friends. A review of public records in Italy found that Paolo was never divorced from Emanuela Pecchia, his wife of nearly 30 years. 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. Only four months after Macchiarini operated on Claudia Castillo, his results provisional but very positive were published online by the Lancet. California 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. As it turned out, Macchiarinis patients werent all at deaths door at the time he treated them. There was another woman from the Czech Republic with mucoepidermoid carcinoma who received such a transplant. This was the start of a whirlwind romance that included five-star hotels, travel to far-flung locations, and extravagant shopping sprees. He opened and cleaned out the donors esophagus, laying it against Ms. Seins esophagus. And then there are the surgeons on Dr. Death. I could feel it in my lungs.. But that day is always postponed. AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER. A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 376, Issue 6600. The media began calling him "Dr. Frankenstein" and said that he committed "the world's biggest medical fraud.". 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. Stem-cell scientist Dr. Paolo Macchiarini was accused of wrongdoing during operations on three people between 2011 and 2014. 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.. None have been forced to hold full and independent inquiries. 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. In their view, he was grossly misrepresenting his results and the health of his patients. Benita told CrimeFeed that Paolo always paid for everything and was "extremely generous." It is thus likely she has since passed away. Was he conning his patients, his colleagues and the scientific community? 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. At first, they just connected as friends. It is unclear whether Dr. Macchiarini is still practicing medicine, but his lawyer said in May that he had no income. 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. Dr. Genden said some scientists told him Youre out of your mind because trying a transplant would risk his reputation. How did the GameStop stock spike on Wall Street happen? 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. 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. There he reinvented his technique. Brave CF But some of Alexander's friends began to become suspicious. Macchiarini gave his regenerating windpipes to 17 or more patients worldwide. According to Macchiarini and his colleagues, her artificial organ was well on the way to looking and functioning liked a natural one. The Karolinska Institute was seduced by Macchiarini, Gerdin told the newspaper. 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. They shared a happy relationship. Beyenes death two and a half years after the operation, caused by the failure of his artificial airway, was a grueling ordeal. In the case of Cetir, he should have known the risk of complications was higher than the expected benefit, the judges ruled. The first person to receive one of these was Andemariam Beyene, an Eritrean doctoral student in geology at the University of Iceland. Support for Macchiarini remained strong, even as his patients began to die. Seven of the eight patients Paolo inserted tracheas into have died. Benita first met Paolo at the bar at Bostons Mandarin Oriental hotel in February 2013, when she was helping coordinate an interview for an NBC special on regenerative medicine. 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. She received another Here are 13 more things about him: He married Pecchia in 1986. They reopened the case in 2020, this time charging Macchiarini on lesser counts of aggravated assault and severe bodily harm. As per 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. We will send you a maximum of two emails in, We will be in touch to remind you to contribute. China So did Karolinskas dean of research. Benita was loyal to and supported Paolo when his professional life took a dark turn. Look out for a message in your inbox in. At the trial, Macchiarini and his lawyer argued that the patients, with no other options, had been treated under compassionate care standards. Chief judge Bjoern Skaensberg said the court agreed that Macchiarinis operations were not consistent with science and proven experience, but the court determined that two of the interventions were justifiable.. Also, in such a highly competitive environment, people are keen to show allegiance to their superiors and wary of criticising them. Help News from Science publish trustworthy, high-impact stories about research and the people who shape it. 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. But they found prosecutors didnt prove Macchiarini was indifferent to the injuries or suffering that the surgeries might cause, the standard required for aggravated assault. 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. Today, Ms. Sein, 56, dances and plays tag with her grandchildren and plans to resume working, possibly as an acupuncturist. Born in 1984, Zhadyra Iglikova suffered from tracheostomy following a car accident. 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. That meant the donor trachea was accompanied by a blood supply that Dr. Genden connected to Ms. Seins blood vessels. Most, including Andemariam Beyene, are now dead. 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. So, as per the last reports, he is alive and well today. In 2015, the Karolinska Institute hired an independent investigator named Dr. Bengt Gerdin to look into the Macchiarini situation, per the Times. Alexander started a problem with the specialist at this time. Benita fell for Macchiarini while a producer for NBC, working on a story on him in 2013. Macchiarinis argument that KI fully supported and encouraged the surgeries likely swayed the judges as well, he says. If the Pope was planning to marry two divorcees, surely it would be huge global news? Yet because of the ensuing complications, she had to receive a tracheoplasty in April 2011 and another cadaveric trachea graft in 2018. But Benita stood by her man and, she said, tried to help him through a tough time. 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. Claudia Castillo with Dr Paolo Macchiarini. 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 Macchiarinis case, the hope was that patients could be treated with stem cells taken from their own bone marrow. (LogOut/ Remembering George Floyd: A year of protest. 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. We now know that wasnt true. The other side is flat and mobile to move air to the lungs. 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. They exchange their vows in Italy. There was another reason to be daunted too: historical assumptions that tracheas werent transplantable. 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. Dressed in a white lab coat or in surgical scrubs, with his broad, handsome face and easy charm, he certainly looked the part. 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. Ive never in my experience witnessed a fraud like this, with this level of international flair, Murphy told Vanity Fair. 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.. The Karolinska Institute declined to comment for this article, noting only that Dr. Macchiarinis sentence may be appealed. A review of public records in Italy found that Paolo was never divorced from Emanuela Pecchia, his wife of nearly 30 years. The first was a Vanity Fair article about his affair with Benita Alexander, an award-winning producer for NBC News. But of 20 patients, including children, most ultimately died, and scientists said Dr. Macchiarini misrepresented data and exaggerated his techniques effectiveness. Macchiarinis fall was swift, but troubling questions remain about why he was allowed to continue his experiments for so long. Macchiarini shot to prominence back in 2008, when he created a new airway for Claudia Castillo, a young woman from Barcelona. However, the serious complications that Castillo suffered were, for a long time, kept very quiet. 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. Sadly, she passed away soon after her second implant. New Jersey What comes next after Texas school shooting? Texas He could see no real evidence that the windpipe scaffolds were becoming living, functioning airways in which case, they were destined to fail. So in 2010, Paolo operated on her at the National Research Center of Surgery in Moscow. 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. Selena died in a hospital due to a loss of blood and cardiac arrest, two weeks before her 24th birthday. The couple had traveled a lot, but there were some things Some of them have been successful, but theyre cumbersome in different ways and theyre not a trachea, Dr. Patterson said. Macchiarini, who denied the charges against him, wasnt directly accused of killing any of the three patients. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Watch He Lied About Everything on ID GO now! Kevin Belingon 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. Benita Alexander Before their wedding, the Even so, it wasnt until 2016 that the Karolinska Institute declined to renew his contract. But because Macchiarini is apparently living in Spain, its unlikely to have much effect. 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. You start to panic because you cant breathe., By early 2020, ethical approvals were in place, but the coronavirus pandemic held things up. This argument didnt wash with those who later investigated the case. Tokyo 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. Though Macchiarini was in the public eye, he was able to sidestep the usual rules and regulations. After realizing other treatment methods wouldnt help, he concluded that Ms. Sein had a logical, thoughtful grasp of transplantations risks and of her health condition. So I called and called till I got an appointment., Dr. Genden said Ms. Sein beseeched him for the transplant, saying, You need to do this for me or Im going to end my life.. In January 2016, Macchiarini received an extraordinary double dose of bad press.