2023-06-27 16:12:00
Surgeon Paolo Macchiarini was sentenced in Sweden after his stem cell treatments led to the deaths of three of his patients. According to the accusations, the doctor was aware of the risks and had no evidence that his treatment would actually work.
The Stockholm court sentenced the surgeon to two years and six months in jail. Initially, five years in prison had been requested, but the appeal of his lawyers reduced the sentence.
Macchiarini performed the three surgeries in 2011 and 2012, when he was working at the Karolinska Institute. He implanted synthetic tracheas seeded with stem cells from patients’ own bone marrow, hoping the cells would multiply over time and provide a durable replacement. But all the implants failed, and the patients died.
One of them died just four months after surgery. Another died 2 1/2 years later, and the third died nearly five years after his surgery. The last two patients suffered from painful complications in their last months.
The judges ruled that Macchiarini “acted with criminal intent,” even though he hoped the technique would work. The evidence persuaded them that he was fully aware “of the risk that the procedures would cause physical injury and suffering to patients and that he was indifferent to the realization of these risks.”
The surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. Foto: TT News Agency / Alamy Stock Photo
According to the court, all of the patients would have lived a significant amount of time, had it not been for Paolo Macchiarini’s surgeries. They also found that two of the patients were not in urgent danger, so they did not need the experimental surgery.
Once the patient’s own trachea was removed, Macchiarini “knew that if he couldn’t replace it, the patient would die. And he had no evidence that he could replace them, other than his kind of divine or magical belief that the stem cell technique should work,” said Bengt Gerdin, a surgeon and professor emeritus at Uppsala University who investigated some of the initial allegations of misconduct against Macchiarini.
Pierre Delaere, a trachea expert at KU Leuven, commented that Macchiarini “used people as guinea pigs not to help them, but to promote his name and fame in the scientific community and beyond.”
However, the doctor denies that he intended to harm any of his patients. “Intent to harm is the most terrible accusation that can be leveled at a doctor,” he said at a news conference. He also questioned that he is the only one sentenced since the rest of his colleagues at the medical center approved the surgical interventions.
Macchiarini still does not have a prison date, as his lawyers are still trying to appeal his sentence. (YO)
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