True Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Stories Part VI

Paolo Macchiarini

Paolo Macchiarini (born 22 August 1958) is a thoracic surgeon and former regenerative medicine researcher who became known for research fraud and manipulative behavior. He has been convicted of research-related crimes in Italy and Sweden.

Previously considered a pioneer for using both biological and synthetic scaffolds seeded with patients' stem cells as trachea transplants, Macchiarini was a visiting professor and director on a temporary contract at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet (KI) from 2010. Macchiarini has been convicted of unethically performing experimental surgeries, even on relatively healthy patients, resulting in fatalities for seven of the eight patients who received one of his synthetic trachea transplants. Articles in Vanity Fair and Aftonbladet further suggested that he had falsified some of his academic credentials on résumés.

Urban Lendahl, the secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, resigned in February 2016, owing to his involvement in recruiting Macchiarini to KI. Shortly afterward KI's vice-chancellor, Anders Hamsten, who in 2015 had cleared Macchiarini of misconduct, also resigned. KI terminated its clinical relationship with Macchiarini in 2013 but allowed him to continue as a researcher; in February 2016, the university announced that it would not renew his research contract, which was due to expire in November, and terminated the contract the following month. After being dismissed from KI, Macchiarini worked at the Kazan Federal University in Russia until that institution terminated his project in April 2017, effectively firing him.

After a one-year medico-legal investigation, the Swedish Prosecution Authority announced in October 2017 that Macchiarini had been negligent in four of the five cases investigated due to the use of devices and procedures not supported by evidence, but that a crime could not be proven because the patients might have died under any other treatment given. Macchiarini was convicted of causing bodily harm, but not assault. He received a suspended sentence in June 2022. However, a year later his sentence was increased to two years and six months imprisonment by an appeals court. Following an appeal to the Supreme Court, the Court declined to consider the appeal in October 2023.

Sweden's Expert Group on Scientific Misconduct also found evidence of research fraud by Macchiarini and his co-authors in six papers and called for them to be retracted. As of 2023, Macchiarini has had 11 of his research papers retracted, four others have received an expression of concern, and three others have been corrected.

Education and career

Macchiarini obtained his medical degree (equivalent to MD) at the Medical School of the University of Pisa (UniPi) in 1986 and a Master of Surgery in 1991. He was an assistant professor at UniPi from 1990 to 1992. He claimed he was a fellow for approximately two years in the Department of Thoracic Surgery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1989, though this was refuted later by the university as they did not have a department of thoracic surgery, nor do they have one currently. He was, however, a fellow for 6 months in their Hematology/Oncology department. Macchiarini obtained degree certificates—a master's in organ and tissue transplantation dated 1994 and a doctorate in the same dated 1997—from the University of Franche-Comté in France. According to Germany's Hannover Medical School, he never had a salaried position there, but was head of the department of thoracic and vascular surgery at the Heidehaus Hanover hospital between 1999 and 2004. Macchiarini was an investigator at the Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques-Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas in Barcelona, Spain, from 2006 to 2009; he was affiliated with but not an employee of the University of Barcelona and was an employee at the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona during this time. He had an honorary appointment as a visiting professor from 2009 to 2014, at University College London. He was a consultant and project manager at University Hospital Careggi (AOUC) starting in 2010.