By using a patients own cells, Dr. Macchiarini sought to rectify an age-old problem with transplants involving donated organs, which the body sometimes rejects as foreign tissue. Disgraced Italian surgeon convicted of criminal harm to stem cell Today, Ms. Sein, 56, dances and plays tag with her grandchildren and plans to resume working, possibly as an acupuncturist. There was another reason to be daunted too: historical assumptions that tracheas werent transplantable. Paolo Macchiarinis most notable patient is Claudia Castillo. Born in 1984, Zhadyra Iglikova suffered from tracheostomy following a car accident. Ive never in my experience witnessed a fraud like this, with this level of international flair, Murphy told Vanity Fair. The answer came only a couple of weeks later, when Swedish television began broadcasting a three-part expos of Macchiarini and his work. So in 2010, Paolo operated on her at the National Research Center of Surgery in Moscow. 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. Here are 13 more things about him: He married Pecchia in 1986. That meant the donor trachea was accompanied by a blood supply that Dr. Genden connected to Ms. Seins blood vessels. There Was Nothing Anybody Could Do for These Patients. Now There Is. This guy mutilated people., Between 2011 and 2014, Macchiarini implanted artificial windpipes in at least eight patients in Sweden, the United States, and Russia. Andemariam Beyene, for instance, had recurrent cancer of the windpipe but, aside from a cough, was still in good health. Claudia Castillo with Dr Paolo Macchiarini. Jakarta Four of Macchiarinis colleagues at KI, including Corbascio, filed official complaints in 2014 charging that several papers describing the surgeries deliberately left out serious complications in the patients. 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. One of these is the hype surrounding stem cells. Sonia Sein, outside her Bronx home, had irreparable damage to her trachea. Few people at Karolinska, especially among those in power, knew enough about it to appreciate Delaeres claims. Her friends described him as "Mr. Big" from Sex and the City. Alexander admits that, at the time, she was in a vulnerable place. She says she feels she has been given a chance of being alive one more time.. Unfortunately, due to complications, she passed away either around Christmas of that year or in the first few months of 2009. 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. Macchiarini told people that Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Vladimir Putin would attend the wedding, Andrea Bocelli would perform, and Pope Francis (a patient of his, or so he said) would officiate the ceremony, per Vanity Fair. Her ex-husband John was dying of cancer. 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. Castillo was soon back home, chasing after her kids. 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. 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science. This went on for three years until, just recently, Grinnemo was cleared of all wrongdoing. But the vice-chancellor of Karolinska Institute, Anders Hamsten, wasnt bound by this judgement. Even the jewelry he had given her was The nine-centimeter transplant replaced all but two centimeters of her trachea. Born in 1977, this Colombian living in Spain woman suffered from tuberculosis-damaged airways. 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. Benita was also growing concerned about the cost of the wedding. Not just that, Paolo was also entangled in several other controversies. Your tax-deductible contribution plays a critical role in sustaining this effort. How climate change and forest management make wildfires harder to contain, Disparity in police response: Black Lives Matter protests and Capitol riot. 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. In 2015, the Karolinska Institute hired an independent investigator named Dr. Bengt Gerdin to look into the Macchiarini situation, per the Times. The first successful direct transplant of a trachea is a medical milestone that could help thousands of people with airways damaged by ventilators and other causes. Brave CF You start to panic because you cant breathe., By early 2020, ethical approvals were in place, but the coronavirus pandemic held things up. In 2017, after another hospital said everything possible had been tried, she felt desperate. Instead of stripping the cells from donor windpipes, Macchiarini had plastic scaffolds made to order. 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. 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. They identified many problems with the way the twin organisations handled him. 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. If there is a moral to this tale, its that we need to be wary of medical messiahs with their promises of salvation. Euan Ward reported from London, and Christina Anderson from Bastad, Sweden. Other witnesses contradicted that, arguing that with Andemariams slow-growing cancer, minor surgeries and other treatments could have kept him alive. 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. However, the serious complications that Castillo suffered were, for a long time, kept very quiet. 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. February 28, 2022 Emanuela Pecchia is famously known as the wife of popular Swiss-born Italian thoracic surgeon, Paolo Macchiarini. But it was already too late. 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. 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. 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. 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. American Catherine Serou sent her mother a text that read, I hope Im not being abducted., Benita Found Her Dream Man But He Lied About Everything & Left Death In His Wake, 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 , Shakira Could Face 8 Years In Prison For Tax Fraud In Spain, What To Know About Reality Star Jen Shah's Wire Fraud Case, Tejano Music Queen Selena Was Shot To Death By The President Of Her Fan Club, 29-Year-Old Woman Arrested After Enrolling In New Jersey High School, American College Student In The Netherlands Stalked And Killed By Man She Met On Tinder, Iowa College Student Allegedly Faked Cancer Diagnosis, Scammed Hundreds, Italian Surgeon Accused Of Operating Inappropriately Gets Conditional Sentence, True Crime News Roundup: Elderly Man Missing For Months Found Dead In Trash Can Outside His Home, True Crime News Roundup: Prince Andrew Stripped Of Military Titles After Judge Allows Sex Abuse Case To Proceed, Student Studying Abroad In Russia Found Dead After Sending Her Mother Troubling Text, An Alabama Woman Disappeared After Her Boyfriend Dropped Her Off At Home, Have You Seen Semaj Goodwine? 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. ONE Super Series Its like when you get on a rocket ship., At times, he felt in a dreamlike state, he said. Anyone can read what you share. Washington (The patient who survived had the implant removed.). 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. And fooled almost everyone. AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER. From that moment on, she made a proposal to Paolo Macchiarini, and Dateline planned to publish the story. As it turned out, Macchiarinis patients werent all at deaths door at the time he treated them. Hwang, Obokata and Macchiarini were all attracted to the hottest regions of stem cell research, where hope for a medical breakthrough was greatest. Talking about her spouse The media began calling him "Dr. Frankenstein" and said that he committed "the world's biggest medical fraud.". 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. Paolo Macchiarini 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. When Macchiarini accused one of them, Karl-Henrik Grinnemo, of stealing his work in a grant application, Hamsten found him guilty. Investigations by the hospital and the Karolinska Institute revealed that issues with Dr. Macchiarinis work had been covered up. In 2017, prosecutors in Sweden charged Macchiarini with manslaughter in connection with the three patients who had received transplants at KI in 2011 and 2012, all of whom had died: Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene, a graduate student from Eritrea with a slow-growing cancer obstructing his windpipe; Christopher Lyles, a 30-year-old American with tracheal cancer; and Yesim Cetir, a teenager from Turkey whose trachea had been accidentally damaged during a previous surgery. He convinced the Karolinska Institute that this could make them famous, and they just let him do it. Called Experimenten (The Experiments), it argued convincingly that Macchiarinis artificial windpipes were not the life-saving wonders wed all been led to believe. His recovery put Macchiarini on the front page of the New York Times. 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. Dr. Paolo Macchiarini became a star by creating a bioartificial windpipe. The different gender was important, allowing Dr. Genden to use chromosomal analysis to detect whether Ms. Seins cells populated the new trachea. Dr. Genden said Dr. Macchiarinis rise and fall profoundly affected his own path. 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. Macchiarini shot to prominence back in 2008, when he created a new airway for Claudia Castillo, a young woman from Barcelona. He performed a synthetic trachea transplant on, In 2013, he met documentary television producer. 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. Thats something that was new to us, so we need to analyze that, Lundstrm-Kron says. Since this was radically new, Macchiarini and his colleagues should have tested it on animals first. If the Pope was planning to marry two divorcees, surely it would be huge global news? 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. In the case of Cetir, he should have known the risk of complications was higher than the expected benefit, the judges ruled. Although all three patients eventually died, Dr. Macchiarini was not directly accused of killing them. 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. 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. Macchiarinis fame had won him well-placed backers. A panel of judges unanimously ruled that the interventions were not in accordance with science and proven experience, according to a statement released today. Nevada If as a doctor you do stupid things, then you can be charged. But the not-guilty verdicts on the other two cases highlight how the law can leave vulnerable people unprotected, he says, for example when they are facing life-and-death decisions and holding less information than their doctor. WebIn reality, Paolo had not worked with the Pope, and he was still married to his wife of 30 years. Its kind of a marginal substitute, and many patients need further interventions to maintain their airways.. Acquittal is therefore difficult to defend., But Gerdin says the verdict is not unexpected.
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