paolo macchiarini wife of 30 yearsis cary stayner still alive

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. This guy mutilated people., Between 2011 and 2014, Macchiarini implanted artificial windpipes in at least eight patients in Sweden, the United States, and Russia. She spent more than three years in intensive care and endured 200 surgical procedures, theTimes reports. Japan The first season of both the Peacock series and the Wondery podcast of the same name told the story of Christopher Duntsch, a former neurosurgeon now serving a life sentence for botched surgeries that left more than 30 patients maimed or dead. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. Thats what our experience of medical research leads us to suspect. They didnt. 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. So, how much is Paolo Macchiarini worth at the age of 64 years old? Articles in this area are retracted 2.4 times more often than the average for biomedicine, and over half of these retractions are due to fraud. I wasnt lying exactly, just Disgraced Italian surgeon convicted of criminal harm to stem cell patient. 2023 Warner Bros. Dr. Macchiarini received a conditional, or suspended, sentence, and was acquitted of assault charges related to two other patients who had also received the artificial organs from him at the Swedish facility. They planned to marry in the Catholic Church in Italy. You start to panic because you cant breathe., By early 2020, ethical approvals were in place, but the coronavirus pandemic held things up. 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. Its love of human interest stories makes it sympathetic to unproven therapies. Since this was radically new, Macchiarini and his colleagues should have tested it on animals first. There are also plenty of desperate patients who believe because theyve been told countless times that stem cells are the cure, and who cannot wait any longer for mainstream medicine. 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. Benita traveled to Paolo's Barcelona home with two friends and a video camera. 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. An unhappy result of this is the rise of pseudo-scientific therapies. (The patient who survived had the implant removed.). 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. US Capitol No, he was just caring for his patients who were, one and all, facing certain death with no other treatment options available and no time to waste. 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. It must be lined with cilia, hairlike projections like shag carpeting that move and clean the air we breathe in, he said. He was one of the best con men I have ever come across. With Macchiarinis exploits endorsed by management and breathlessly reported in the media, it was all too easy to jump on that bandwagon. Prosecutors asked for a five-year prison sentence for Macchiarinis liability in Cetirs bodily injury, but a Swedish court instead gave him a suspended sentence this June, deciding that he hadnt intended to cause the patients harm, according to BBC News. 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. Only four months after Macchiarini operated on Claudia Castillo, his results provisional but very positive were published online by the Lancet. If we've learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it's that we cannot wait for a crisis to respond. If the sins of Karolinska have been committed elsewhere, it is partly because medical research facilities share a common milieu, which harbours common dangers. Emanuela Pecchia Everything We Know On Paolo Macchiarini Filipino MMA fighters Its actually meaningless for him, Gerdin says. But according to reports, Paolo cheated on his Emanuela Pecchia. Swedish television broadcast a three-part expos of Paolo's work called Experimenten, which argued that the artificial windpipes did more harm than good and were actually rotting away inside his patients' bodies. COVID-19 The case is pending. KI commissioned surgeon Bengt Gerdin, a professor emeritus at Uppsala University, to investigate the issue. 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. Thereafter it was all over the news. That meant the donor trachea was accompanied by a blood supply that Dr. Genden connected to Ms. Seins blood vessels. Nor did they impress the institutes ethics council when Delaere lodged a formal complaint. But Benita stood by her man and, she said, tried to help him through a tough time. Metro He performed a synthetic trachea transplant on, In 2013, he met documentary television producer. The nine-centimeter transplant replaced all but two centimeters of her trachea. 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. 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. Paolo Macchiarini, in a 2013 photo, implanted synthetic windpipes into multiple patients; all but one died following complications with the implants. The idea is that scientific progress is driven by the genius of a few. He opened and cleaned out the donors esophagus, laying it against Ms. Seins esophagus. The next morning, with the donor and Ms. Sein in adjacent rooms, a team of over 50 medical personnel assembled. She visits Mount Sinai weekly for blood work. Support for Macchiarini remained strong, even as his patients began to die. The Italian surgeon and his Italian wife Emanuela Pecchia have one son and one daughter. Paolo Macchiarini was amazingly accomplished, stunningly successful, and fabulously rich. In the The only question was how long it would take weeks, months or a few years. Please try again later. Macchiarinis fame had won him well-placed backers. I didnt want the fairy tale to end., Alexander also hired a private investigator, a former Pennsylvania State Police detective named Frank Murphy. 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. But for now, lets focus solely on his medical patients, shall we? document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Florida She received another implant at the University College Hospital in London in 2011, after which she was able to be discharged. But of 20 patients, including children, most ultimately died, and scientists said Dr. Macchiarini misrepresented data and exaggerated his techniques effectiveness. Your tax-deductible contribution plays a critical role in sustaining this effort. In his case, his stem cells were seeded into the airway just hours before it was implanted into him, making it work perfectly fine. 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. He is still licensed to practice medicine in Europe. If she talked for over five minutes, she had to stop because I couldnt breathe.. The Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. Benita told CrimeFeed that Paolo always paid for everything and was "extremely generous." Reports of their success always seemed like hot air to him. In June 2016, the public prosecutor's office began investigating Paolo on suspicion of manslaughter and grievous bodily harm based on the material leading to the deaths of the three patients operated on in Sweden. In 2016, Vanity Fair published an expose on Paolo that uncovered even more damning evidence. Disgraced Italian surgeon convicted of criminal harm to stem cell His lawyer did not respond to emails from Science today. A 29-year old woman from New Brunswick, New Jersey, posed as a high school student and attended classes for four days before she was caught and arrested. This set a dangerous example. You cant justify doing experimental surgery and immunosuppression when you see something else that looks perfect, so you realize, wow, were out of business., As Dr. Macchiarinis work drew criticism, Dr. Genden revived his idea, but was uncertain about trying it. If the Pope was planning to marry two divorcees, surely it would be huge global news? A panel of judges unanimously ruled that the interventions were not in accordance with science and proven experience, according to a statement released today. Some of them have been successful, but theyre cumbersome in different ways and theyre not a trachea, Dr. Patterson said. However, its imperative to mention that the doctor has only been criminally found guilty of causing bodily harm to a single patient he operated on in Sweden back in 2011 two other charges of assault were dismissed. All rights reserved. His recovery put Macchiarini on the front page of the New York Times. Any replacement trachea must be rigid or itll collapse like a straw in a McDonalds milkshake, Dr. Genden said. New York 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. Last year, however, the dream soured, exposing an ugly reality. 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. Video Benita Alexander on attending Paolo Macchiarinis criminal A review of public records in Italy found that Paolo was never divorced from Emanuela Pecchia, his wife of nearly 30 years. Today, Ms. Sein, 56, dances and plays tag with her grandchildren and plans to resume working, possibly as an acupuncturist. This organ was prepared without the knowledge of authorities in a veterinary lab at the University of Bristol, but no one questioned it because of its initial success. The other patients were treated at hospitals in Barcelona, Florence, London, Moscow, Krasnodar, Chicago and Peoria. At any rate, some of his most powerful friends were themselves Nobel judges until, with his fall from grace, they fell too. Dr. Paolo Macchiarini at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in 2013. 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. In 2015, the Karolinska Institute hired an independent investigator named Dr. Bengt Gerdin to look into the Macchiarini situation, per the Times. 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. Benita Alexander and Paolo Macchiarini in Venice, Italy [Investigation Discovery]. Who Were Paolo Macchiarinis Victims? - The Cinemaholic Remembering George Floyd: A year of protest. In the months and years following their respective surgeries, all of them except Dmitri Onogda have passed away due to post-operative complications. However, Swedish TV reporters also decided to take a close look at Macchiarinis work. "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. Experts say this case is about what the definition of a resident is under Spanish law. Unfortunately, though, she reportedly succumbed to her underlying disease in January of 2012. 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. But, he added, Its an indirect technique. It takes time and can replace only the tracheas halfpipe side, so its not a complete tube.. 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. Emanuela Pecchia (Paolo Macchiarani's Wife), Bio, Age & More Benita Alexander with one of the custom-made gowns intended for her wedding [Investigation Discovery]. After several weeks in recovery, she is home. Few people at Karolinska, especially among those in power, knew enough about it to appreciate Delaeres claims. 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. In their view, he was grossly misrepresenting his results and the health of his patients. He convinced the Karolinska Institute that this could make them famous, and they just let him do it. Stem cell brain implants could 'slow ageing and extend life', study shows, offering to treat just about any ailment you can name, Pregnant women's stem cells could treat osteoporosis, say scientists. But even if his days had been numbered, this didnt necessarily justify what Macchiarini put him through. Her colleague had sent an article that said the pope would not be in Rome, or even Italy, on the day of their wedding. This argument didnt wash with those who later investigated the case. AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER. The different gender was important, allowing Dr. Genden to use chromosomal analysis to detect whether Ms. Seins cells populated the new trachea. 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. Meanwhile, Macchiarinis career soared. 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. Italian surgeon gets his sentence appealed in Sweden case Philippines Paolo then came across Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene, a man from Eritrea who was training to be a doctor when he got diagnosed with cancer. WebIn reality, Paolo had not worked with the Pope, and he was still married to his wife of 30 years. KI fired Macchiarini in March 2016, 2 months after the Swedish documentary came out. As per Likewise the secretary-general of the Nobel Committee. Chinese balloon photos Benita Alexander on attending Paolo Macchiarinis criminal trial in Sweden Alexander said she attended Macchiarini's trial for closure, seven years after she was unknowingly caught in a fraudulent romance with him, and for justice for his patients and for their families. July 21, 2022 Examined 9:54 Whats next for Russia? He says, Ive created this bioreactor and its stem cells and it makes tracheas. And its huge., Dr. Genden said that when he and colleagues questioned Dr. Macchiarini at a conference early on, in his bigger-than-life way he says, This is ridiculous, you dont know what youre talking about, it functions beautifully., Dr. Genden thought his work had become obsolete, so you basically shut down the lab, he said. 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. He hopes the immunosuppressant drugs, which can create health risks, can be reduced or even stopped if the entire graft becomes filled with Sonias cells.. Records show that even with his implant failing, Andemariam was able to complete his Ph.D. before his demise in January 2013. 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. Learn how your comment data is processed. All three patients later died. Next month, she will turn 57. Texas All rights reserved. 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? The mild sentence comes as a disappointment to Macchiarinis critics. Benita Alexander thought that she was living a real-life fairy tale when she met her fianc, Paolo Macchiarini. 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. Eduard Folayang As it turned out, Macchiarinis patients werent all at deaths door at the time he treated them. So did Karolinskas dean of research. Thailand Macchiarinis fall was swift, but troubling questions remain about why he was allowed to continue his experiments for so long. Michigan Talking about her spouse His operation was on June 9, 2011, at the Karolinska University Hospital, where he received the upgraded plastic trachea made at University College London.

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