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But in October 2017, the attorney general's office announced that a crime could not be proven, because the patients might have died anyway. Paolo Macchiarini rode groundbreaking surgeries to global fame, but patients died anyway. Thailand Yet because of the ensuing complications, she had to receive a tracheoplasty in April 2011 and another cadaveric trachea graft in 2018. 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. You start to panic because you cant breathe., By early 2020, ethical approvals were in place, but the coronavirus pandemic held things up. Colorado In early 2014, four Karolinska doctors defied the reigning culture of silence by complaining about Macchiarini. 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. The transplants, performed on patients from the United States and other countries, were heralded as inaugurating a regenerative medicine revolution. 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. There was another woman from the Czech Republic with mucoepidermoid carcinoma who received such a transplant. Sonia Sein, outside her Bronx home, had irreparable damage to her trachea. I could feel it in my lungs.. 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. The procedure involved replacing a damaged trachea with a plastic replica that had been soaked in the patients stem cells. But Benita stood by her man and, she said, tried to help him through a tough time. We would have been planning my funeral, she said, but now were planning a birthday party.. Macchiarinis fall was swift, but troubling questions remain about why he was allowed to continue his experiments for so long. The grant ended in spring 2017. An advantage is that immunosuppressants are necessary only for several months, he said. 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. 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. Her ex-husband John was dying of cancer. Castillo was soon back home, chasing after her kids. The Karolinska Institute declined to comment for this article, noting only that Dr. Macchiarinis sentence may be appealed. Some answers have emerged from the official inquiries into the Karolinska Institute and the Karolinska University hospital. How we can build a clean and renewable future. 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. None have been forced to hold full and independent inquiries. It did much the same for Macchiarinis windpipe replacements. She says it may mean the judges thought he and the patients believed time was short and options were few. Philippines 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. A review of public records in Italy found that Paolo was never divorced from Emanuela Pecchia, his wife of nearly 30 years. Theres a void in his personality that he seems to want to fill by conning more and more people.. Indonesia Remembering George Floyd: A year of protest. 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. So, how much is Paolo Macchiarini worth at the age of 64 years old? As Grinnemo recalls, it nearly destroyed his career: I didnt receive any new grants. Benita Alexander with one of the custom-made gowns intended for her wedding [Investigation Discovery]. Most protagonists on medical dramas are modern-day heroes. Countless news stories declared it a medical breakthrough. Guided by a high-powered microscope, he used surgical thread half the diameter of a human hair. One of these is the hype surrounding stem cells. Benita fell for Macchiarini while a producer for NBC, working on a story on him in 2013. Kentucky He officially cleared Macchiarini of scientific misconduct, allowing merely that hed sometimes acted without due care. In place of clinical data, there are gushing testimonials. So far he has not been prosecuted in any of those countries. 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. Its kind of a marginal substitute, and many patients need further interventions to maintain their airways.. Experts say this case is about what the definition of a resident is under Spanish law. If the Pope was planning to marry two divorcees, surely it would be huge global news? Despite having a wife and a family, Paolo was in a public affair with the internet star Benita Alexandra. 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. 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. Any replacement trachea must be rigid or itll collapse like a straw in a McDonalds milkshake, Dr. Genden said. Now his reputation lies in tatters. The other side is flat and mobile to move air to the lungs. US Capitol Last year, however, the dream soured, exposing an ugly reality. Acquittal is therefore difficult to defend., But Gerdin says the verdict is not unexpected. There was another reason to be daunted too: historical assumptions that tracheas werent transplantable. A 19-year-old Iowa college student allegedly defrauded over 400 donors after raising more than $37,000 by faking a triple cancer diagnosis. For their efforts, the whistleblowers were punished. Its like when you get on a rocket ship., At times, he felt in a dreamlike state, he said. Wasnt something of this idea behind the special treatment Karolinska gave Macchiarini? In the months and years following their respective surgeries, all of them except Dmitri Onogda have passed away due to post-operative complications. 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. But for now, lets focus solely on his medical patients, shall we? Hwang, Obokata and Macchiarini were all attracted to the hottest regions of stem cell research, where hope for a medical breakthrough was greatest. Los Angeles The official report into the matter dubbed this the bandwagon effect. Macchiarinis argument that KI fully supported and encouraged the surgeries likely swayed the judges as well, he says. But on Thursday, the surgeon, Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, was found criminally liable by a Swedish court for causing felony bodily injury to a patient he had fitted with one of the windpipes at a medical university in Sweden. Kevin Belingon Records show that even with his implant failing, Andemariam was able to complete his Ph.D. before his demise in January 2013. 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 plastic trachea that Yesim Cetir received disfigured her and made her last three years in life basically like torture, Bosse Lindquist, the documentarian behind the Swedish TV series The Experiment, told the Times. 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. His recovery put Macchiarini on the front page of the New York Times. Ohio There are people who go to jail for 5 years for not paying their taxes. 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. Get more great content like this delivered right to you! The popular press also has a lot to answer for. 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. 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. The first was a Vanity Fair article about his affair with Benita Alexander, an award-winning producer for NBC News. That's when, Benita said, it hit her: She had given up a good job and spent $50,000 on a "bogus fantasy wedding" to a man who already had at least two families. 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. But after Alexander learned that Pope Francis was scheduled to visit South America at the time of their wedding, she confronted Macchiarini about his claims. Eduard Folayang Tennessee Thats something that was new to us, so we need to analyze that, Lundstrm-Kron says. Photographs document Ms. Seins trachea transformation: Her old windpipe looks raw and red, her new one smooth as porcelain. Anyone can read what you share. 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. 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. KI officials let him do this. The different gender was important, allowing Dr. Genden to use chromosomal analysis to detect whether Ms. Seins cells populated the new trachea. Most, including Andemariam Beyene, are now dead. The donor was a young man (identifying details are being withheld to protect privacy). 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. The operations were hailed at the time as a breakthrough in regenerative medicine, although some observers remained skeptical. They didnt. They also questioned whether Macchiarini had obtained proper ethical permission for the surgeries and challenged a paper describing animal experiments with the technique. According to the judgment in Macchiarinis case, hospital staff said that Cetir had around 40 near-death experiences and was conscious but unable to breathe for many of them. But owing to her cancer returning and the formation of a fistula, she too passed away. Japan If she talked for over five minutes, she had to stop because I couldnt breathe.. Macchiarini, they claimed, wasnt really doing clinical research. Scientific pioneer, superstar surgeon, miracle worker thats how Paolo Macchiarini was known for several years. California 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. We now know that wasnt true. 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.. 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.. Michigan Paolo Macchiarini was amazingly accomplished, stunningly successful, and fabulously rich. She considered backing out. She became close to Paolo as she opened her heart to him about how hard it was for her daughter, then nine years old, to lose her father. Over the years, this possibility has generated great excitement and a huge amount of research. 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 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. 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. Talking about her spouse 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. Delaeres damning criticisms appeared in major medical journals, including the Lancet, but werent taken seriously by Karolinskas leadership. But because Macchiarini is apparently living in Spain, its unlikely to have much effect. 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. 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. I have to expose him.". Sonia Sein, outside her Bronx home, had irreparable damage to her trachea. Anyone can read what you share. I can breathe, she was amazed to discover. He took the medical world by storm when he built and transplanted the worlds first bioartificial windpipe two years earlier. 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. But the judges decided that, because the initial prognoses for Andemariam and Lyles were so grim without surgery, Macchiarini could not be held criminally responsible in those cases. So did Karolinskas dean of research. Other witnesses contradicted that, arguing that with Andemariams slow-growing cancer, minor surgeries and other treatments could have kept him alive. 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. They identified many problems with the way the twin organisations handled him. Andemariam Beyene, for instance, had recurrent cancer of the windpipe but, aside from a cough, was still in good health. Filipino MMA fighters On May 13, Alexander left her job. Since this was radically new, Macchiarini and his colleagues should have tested it on animals first. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/health/trachea-transplant-genden.html. She was wearing a blonde wig, and her nervous laughter is audible on the video they shot. Benita decided to get in touch with private investigator Frank Murphy. None other than Pope Francis would officiate, and his papal palace in Castel Gandolfo would serve as the venue. 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. The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City cast member was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for defrauding the elderly. Here are 13 more things about him: He married Pecchia in 1986. Macchiarini, who denied the charges against him, wasnt directly accused of killing any of the three patients. Brazilian MMA fighters 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. But that day is always postponed. Euan Ward reported from London, and Christina Anderson from Bastad, Sweden. In other countries, more of Macchiarinis patients died after receiving one of his artificial windpipes. It won Dr. Macchiarini international news coverage and cemented his place as a celebrity scientist. Colleagues accused him of manipulating his results, even warning of the harm caused by these so-called regenerative windpipes. After Macchiarini fitted Cetir with one of his artificial windpipes in 2012, her condition worsened. 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. It is thus likely she has since passed away. Even so, it wasnt until 2016 that the Karolinska Institute declined to renew his contract. Dr. Genden also transplanted the cricoid, cartilage cuffing the trachea, supplanting Ms. Seins completely destroyed cricoid. 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. In the first couple of years at Karolinska, he put plastic airways into three patients. 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. 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. Another was a Russian mother named Julia Tuulik, per BBC News. From that moment on, she made a proposal to Paolo Macchiarini, and Dateline planned to publish the story. While there isnt enough data to actually prove this, we do have some key indicators.