Disgraced surgeon on trial in Sweden for tracheal transplants
An Italian doctor who made headlines for groundbreaking tracheal surgery was brought to justice in Sweden on Wednesday, charged with assault for having performed the experimental procedure.
Paolo Macchiarini won praise in 2011 after claiming to have performed the world’s first synthetic tracheal transplants with stem cells while he was a surgeon at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet.
The procedure was hailed as a breakthrough in regenerative medicine.
But soon there were accusations that the risky operation had been performed on at least one person who was not critically ill at the time of the operation.
The 63-year-old appeared in court in a blue suit on Wednesday, where he listened to a translated sound when prosecutors listed the accusations of “aggravated assault” against three patients.
– “Ignoring science” –
Karolinska Institutet has confirmed that the three people have since died, but did not directly link the deaths to the operations.
“Macchiarini has carried out the operation with complete disregard for science and proven experience,” said prosecutor Karin Lundström-Kron in court.
When prosecutors presented their case, they referred to both external and internal reviews of the case, including a 2016 published by doctor Kjell Asplund, who said that Macchiarini should never have been employed by Karolinska in the first place.
“It is clear that this method has not worked,” said prosecutor Jim Westerberg, adding that Macchiarini had embellished the benefits of the procedure.
Macchiarini, who took notes without showing much emotion, has claimed that the operations were treatments and not experiments and denied that he was criminally responsible.
“He claims that he has performed health care, cured and helped,” Macchiarini’s lawyer Björn Hurtig told AFP during a break.
The prosecutor’s evidence is expected to continue for several days, so the defense will probably not be able to present its side until next week.
But Hurtig said they had “high hopes” that they would be able to respond to the prosecutor’s evidence.
“There are quite a few gaps in that evidence and there is a lot of evidence that we claim is favorable to our view of things,” he said.
– Diminished risks –
In 2013, Karolinska Hospital canceled all transplants and refused to extend Macchiarini’s contract as a surgeon.
A year later, several surgeons at the hospital filed a complaint claiming that Macchiarini had downplayed the risks of the procedure.
Macchiarini performed three operations at Karolinska University Hospital in 2011 and 2012, using an artificial trachea made of plastic and coating it with the patient’s own stem cells.
Together with his colleagues, he performed a total of eight such transplants between 2011 and 2014, the other five took place in Russia.
An external review in 2015 found Macchiarini guilty of research errors, but despite being fired, Karolinska Institutet repeatedly defended him until 2018, when it found him and several other researchers guilty.
The university’s rector dropped out due to the scandal, as did a number of other people.
In 2018, the medical journal The Lancet withdrew two articles written by Macchiarini.
The trial, which is being held in Solna District Court near Karolinska Institutet, is planned to last for 13 days.
jll / sgk / jv