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(LogOut/ Emanuela Pecchia has been married to Paolo Macchiarini for over 30 years. However, behind closed doors, Dr. Macchiarini was hiding a secret the procedures were not working. But as the big day approached, Alexander saw these plans unravel, and finally realised that her lover had lied about almost everything. In their view, he was grossly misrepresenting his results and the health of his patients. Dr. Genden said some scientists told him Youre out of your mind because trying a transplant would risk his reputation. And fooled almost everyone. Ground-breaking work on synthetic organ transplants made Paolo Macchiarini one of the most famous doctors in the world. 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. Thailand Today, Ms. Sein, 56, dances and plays tag with her grandchildren and plans to resume working, possibly as an acupuncturist. One of these is the hype surrounding stem cells. Meanwhile, Macchiarinis career soared. 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. The scandal meant theres an amazing amount of scrutiny, he said. He is still licensed to practice medicine in Europe. Benita Alexander Thought Paolo Macchiarini Was Her Dream Man The Italian surgeon and his Italian wife Emanuela Pecchia have one son and one daughter. At first, they just connected as friends. 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. Ohio Macchiarini, who denied the charges against him, wasnt directly accused of killing any of the three patients. Benita Alexander thought that she was living a real-life fairy tale when she met her fianc, Paolo Macchiarini. Paolo was a world-renowned surgeon who spoke six languages, mingled with the global elite, and resembled George Clooney. Any woman would swoon for such a catch! As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. He reportedly lied on his CV and research papers to trick patients, causing almost all those who received his inventive trachea transplants (using their own bone marrow cells for organ functionality) to lose their lives. Dr. Genden said Dr. Macchiarinis rise and fall profoundly affected his own path. 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. Mieke Oorts alleged killer used a GPS tracking device to stalk her and would drive up and down the road where she lived to intimidate her. Only three are still alive as of September 2020. Its love of human interest stories makes it sympathetic to unproven therapies. For Ms. Sein, the procedure was a long-sought dream. Macchiarini has consistently claimed he is innocent. In September 2020, Swedish prosecutors announced charges against him for aggravated assault in connection to three surgeries that he had performed at the. The operation, performed at one of the worlds most prestigious medical universities, part of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, was hailed as revolutionary. Remembering George Floyd: A year of protest. Macchiarini gave his regenerating windpipes to 17 or more patients worldwide. 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. 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. Now his reputation lies in tatters. The Macchiarini scandal claimed many of his powerful friends. Over the years, this possibility has generated great excitement and a huge amount of research. (LogOut/ 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. 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. Records show that even with his implant failing, Andemariam was able to complete his Ph.D. before his demise in January 2013. Not just that, Paolo was also entangled in several other controversies. His lawyer did not respond to emails from Science today. Tennessee Any woman would swoon for such a catch! But for now, lets focus solely on his medical patients, shall we? He understood how difficult her life had become. WebPaolo Macchiarini Net Worth. Disgraced Italian surgeon convicted of criminal harm to stem cell He officially cleared Macchiarini of scientific misconduct, allowing merely that hed sometimes acted without due care. Paolo Macchiarini: Surgeon convicted for fatal Swedish - BBC Some of them have been successful, but theyre cumbersome in different ways and theyre not a trachea, Dr. Patterson said. 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. 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. 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. Her global quest to find out the truth about the man who left her personal and professional life in shambles is documented in He Lied About Everything on Investigation Discovery. Los Angeles The case is pending. And after hiring a private investigator, Ms Alexander found that Dr Macchiarini, pictured, was a man of more modest means living in Barcelona and that he was still married to his wife of 30 years Ms Alexander told Vanity Fair: 'I just didn't want to put two and two together. 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. Only four months after Macchiarini operated on Claudia Castillo, his results provisional but very positive were published online by the Lancet. 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? In 2016, Vanity Fair published an expose on Paolo that uncovered even more damning evidence. 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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. But in October 2017, the attorney general's office announced that a crime could not be proven, because the patients might have died anyway. Gretchen Vogel is a contributing correspondent for Science magazine based in Berlin, Germany. "I started thinking that if this man is lying to me at such an egregious level, theres no way hes not doing this in his medical life," she told CrimeFeed. The court had to apply the intentional indifference standard for the assault charges, he says, which is difficult to prove. And it needs a blood supply to connect to the patients vascular system. I cant do this anymore, Sonia Sein told herself, her family and her doctor. Dr. Genden also transplanted the cricoid, cartilage cuffing the trachea, supplanting Ms. Seins completely destroyed cricoid. Help News from Science publish trustworthy, high-impact stories about research and the people who shape it. 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). Benita was loyal to and supported Paolo when his professional life took a dark turn. A genius is a revolutionary by definition, a risk-taker and a law-breaker. For the respect of privacy, his wifes identity is not revealed on the internet. 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. This argument didnt wash with those who later investigated the case. Paolo grew close to Alexander's daughter [Investigation Discovery], He was incredibly charming, worldly smart, sophisticated, and seemed very gentle," Benita told CrimeFeed. Born in 1984, Zhadyra Iglikova suffered from tracheostomy following a car accident. 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. The Karolinska Institute declined to comment for this article, noting only that Dr. Macchiarinis sentence may be appealed. 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 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. 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. TikToker Says Her Celebrity Surgeon Ex Conned Her Out of $50K All but one died following severe complications with the implants. 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. And then there are the surgeons on Dr. Death. Paolo Macchiarini was amazingly accomplished, stunningly successful, and fabulously rich. COVID-19 Therefore, on June 12, 2008, at Hospital Clinic Barcelona, she received a cadaver trachea graft implanted as a bronchus transplant. They will especially examine the judges decision that Macchiarini couldnt be held responsible for what happened to Andemariam and Lyles because he acted in distress, according to the courts statement. But it did not work, and a court in Sweden has found him criminally liable for the harm inflicted on a patient. 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. If we've learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it's that we cannot wait for a crisis to respond. They and their loved ones fall victim to false hope. Benita traveled to Paolo's Barcelona home with two friends and a video camera. The only question was how long it would take weeks, months or a few years. 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. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. 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. 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. They planned to marry in the Catholic Church in Italy. Discovery, Inc. or its subsidiaries and affiliates. They exchange their vows in Italy. 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. The court said the penalty was a suspended sentence, but did not specify how long the sentence would be if imposed. George Floyd Ive never in my experience witnessed a fraud like this, with this level of international flair, Murphy told Vanity Fair. Paolo Macchiarini traveled to Illinois to operate on toddler Hannah Warren, who was born without a trachea in 2013. Ms. Seins trachea before, left, and her new transplanted trachea. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Even the jewelry he had given her was That meant the donor trachea was accompanied by a blood supply that Dr. Genden connected to Ms. Seins blood vessels. They shared a happy relationship. Delaeres damning criticisms appeared in major medical journals, including the Lancet, but werent taken seriously by Karolinskas leadership. With Macchiarinis exploits endorsed by management and breathlessly reported in the media, it was all too easy to jump on that bandwagon. 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. A good example is the NBC documentary A Leap of Faith. Donald Trump In early 2014, four Karolinska doctors defied the reigning culture of silence by complaining about Macchiarini. ONE Championship Death season three hopes telling her story will protect There he reinvented his technique. Border crisis: Whats happening at the US-Mexico border? A High-Flying Italian Surgeons Fall From Grace, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/world/europe/macchiarini-windpipe-surgeon-deaths.html. Gerdin determined that Macchiarini committed scientific misconduct, but leadership at the Karolinska Institute ignored the findings and cleared Macchiarini. China Talking about her spouse 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 tube was necessary because her trachea the airway leading to the lungs had become damaged after she spent weeks on a ventilator for a severe asthma attack in 2014. What's next for abortion rights in America? His recovery put Macchiarini on the front page of the New York Times. Dr. Paolo Macchiarini became a star by creating a bioartificial windpipe. 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. According to Macchiarini and his colleagues, her artificial organ was well on the way to looking and functioning liked a natural one. In 2017, after another hospital said everything possible had been tried, she felt desperate. None of these institutions have faced the same kind of public scrutiny. Stem cell clinics have sprung up like weeds, offering to treat just about any ailment you can name. 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. 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. Another was a Russian mother named Julia Tuulik, per BBC News. 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. Singapore Instead of stripping the cells from donor windpipes, Macchiarini had plastic scaffolds made to order. Thats what Macchiarini told his fiancee. Yet because of the ensuing complications, she had to receive a tracheoplasty in April 2011 and another cadaveric trachea graft in 2018. 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. Most, including Andemariam Beyene, are now dead. You can see this in the speed with which his breakthroughs were accepted. Delaere feels the sentence is too light for what he considers a serious crime. I didnt want the fairy tale to end., Alexander also hired a private investigator, a former Pennsylvania State Police detective named Frank Murphy. 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. 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. He is from Italy. She pushed through his appointment despite the fact that he had some very negative references and dubious claims on his rsum. He convinced the Karolinska Institute that this could make them famous, and they just let him do it. 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. Seven of the eight patients Paolo inserted tracheas into have died. 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. The donor was a young man (identifying details are being withheld to protect privacy). 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. Miss Universe 2021 The other side is flat and mobile to move air to the lungs. Paolo Macchiarinis income source is mostly from being a successful . 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. 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. No one is more powerless than a patient with a disease, said Dr. Gerdin. I have to expose him.". Anyone can read what you share. It must be lined with cilia, hairlike projections like shag carpeting that move and clean the air we breathe in, he said. Benita was also growing increasingly concerned, because she had not yet been introduced to Paolo's children or even seen where she was meant to live with him in Barcelona. (The big exception is blood stem cell transplantation, which has been saving the lives of people with leukemia and other cancers of the blood for decades.). Guided by several mentors, he delved into research and animal experiments, developing a transplant approach. Brazilian MMA fighters They also cited a loophole known as compassionate use. A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 376, Issue 6600. BRAVE Combat Federation The 18-hour procedure, conceived and led by Dr. Eric M. Genden Sr., chairman of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, is a milestone because unlike kidneys, hearts and lungs the trachea has defied decades of transplantation attempts. Or rather, his celebrity status helped him do so. Paolo Macchiarini is a thoracic surgeon. At the trial, Macchiarini and his lawyer argued that the patients, with no other options, had been treated under compassionate care standards. This guy mutilated people., Between 2011 and 2014, Macchiarini implanted artificial windpipes in at least eight patients in Sweden, the United States, and Russia. Called Experimenten (The Experiments), it argued convincingly that Macchiarinis artificial windpipes were not the life-saving wonders wed all been led to believe. 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.