Benita decided to get in touch with private investigator Frank Murphy. Help News from Science publish trustworthy, high-impact stories about research and the people who shape it. So, how much is Paolo Macchiarini worth at the age of 64 years old? 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. Ms. Seins trachea before, left, and her new transplanted trachea. 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. 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.. 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In 2017, after another hospital said everything possible had been tried, she felt desperate. Because immunosuppressant drugs are required to prevent rejection of the transplant, cancer patients would be eligible only if free of cancer for five years, Dr. Genden said. Los Angeles 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. 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. Benita Alexander Before their wedding, the She was wearing a blonde wig, and her nervous laughter is audible on the video they shot. But that day is always postponed. Paolo Macchiarini, in a 2013 photo, implanted synthetic windpipes into multiple patients; all but one died following complications with the implants. 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. The Vatican confirmed that he had never been the Pope's doctor. Talking about her spouse A 19-year-old Iowa college student allegedly defrauded over 400 donors after raising more than $37,000 by faking a triple cancer diagnosis. Florida Ive never in my experience witnessed a fraud like this, with this level of international flair, Murphy told Vanity Fair. He is from Italy. Delaere was one of the earliest and harshest critics of Macchiarinis engineered airways. "If I made a checklist of what I wanted a man to be, he had everything.". And investigations by both institute and the hospital found coverups regarding Macchiarinis work. Donald Trump All three patients later died. Paolo Macchiarinis most notable patient is Claudia Castillo. Their devastating documentary, which aired in January 2016, led KI officials to reopen the investigation. Only three are still alive as of September 2020. On Jan. 12, Dr. Genden got a call: An appropriate donor had died. When Macchiarini accused one of them, Karl-Henrik Grinnemo, of stealing his work in a grant application, Hamsten found him guilty. Guided by a high-powered microscope, he used surgical thread half the diameter of a human hair. 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. It must be lined with cilia, hairlike projections like shag carpeting that move and clean the air we breathe in, he said. 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. 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. New York In the document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. She soon went into full-on investigative journalist mode, and learned that Paolo had, yup lied about everything. Anyone can read what you share. 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). 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. They planned to marry in the Catholic Church in Italy. 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 convinced the Karolinska Institute that this could make them famous, and they just let him do it. His recovery put Macchiarini on the front page of the New York Times. 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. Philippines In other countries, more of Macchiarinis patients died after receiving one of his artificial windpipes. We have, for example, a growing list of scientific celebrities who have committed major stem cell fraud. Macchiarini, they claimed, wasnt really doing clinical research. Plus: A Chicago mother is arrested in connection to the murder of her 6-year-old son; the convicted killer Robert Durst dies at age 78; Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes sentencing date is set; and an LGBTQ+ rights movement hero is found dead in a Florida landfill. Georgia Teen Vanished In South Carolina, Search Continues For North Carolina Girl, 11, Whose Parents Didnt Report Her Missing For Weeks, Where Is Ella Goodie? AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER. 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. So in 2010, Paolo operated on her at the National Research Center of Surgery in Moscow. 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. The court heard testimony in the case between 27 April and 12 May. However, behind closed doors, Dr. Macchiarini was hiding a secret the procedures were not working. In 2019, an Italian court said he had forged documents and abused his position, charges unrelated to his trachea work. 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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. Its enough to worry officials from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In January 2016, Macchiarini received an extraordinary double dose of bad press. 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. 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. The other patients were treated at hospitals in Barcelona, Florence, London, Moscow, Krasnodar, Chicago and Peoria. New York City If we've learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it's that we cannot wait for a crisis to respond. In 2010, the Italian surgeon was recruited by KIhome of the committee that awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. For Ms. Sein, the procedure was a long-sought dream. Her ex-husband John was dying of cancer. As it turned out, Macchiarinis patients werent all at deaths door at the time he treated them. The theory was simple: let the body do most of the work. Benita said that, if she can take any lessons away from what happened to her, she hopes that her experience will help others. As Grinnemo recalls, it nearly destroyed his career: I didnt receive any new grants. 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. 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. For other cases, though, doctors say the approach seems promising. A good example is the NBC documentary A Leap of Faith. They also cited a loophole known as compassionate use. Its a problematic idea with unfortunate side effects. 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. Benita Alexander and Paolo Macchiarini in Venice, Italy [Investigation Discovery]. 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