Macchiarini Scandal
Macchiarini’s 2008 and 2011 incredible medical breakthroughs brought him into the limelight of the world. He had performed the world’s first synthetic organ transplant by replacing the trachea of the patient with an artificial windpipe. The operation had the prospects of reshaping organ transplantation. Patients would no longer have to wait on long lists, only for their bodies to reject the transplants. Synthetic tracheas, and possibly other organs would be produced more safely, quickly and made to measure the patients. The story was a befitting achievement for the star-studded surgeon and the reputation of the prestigious Karolinska Institute, whose professors yearly sat on a panel that decided the Nobel prize winners.
But five years on, curtains are finally falling on the star surgeon. The headline-making pioneer work at the Karolinska Institute and its sister the Karolinska Hospital has brought home no glory. Seven of the nine patients who received the fatal treatment in Sweden, the United States and elsewhere in the world have died. The remaining two patients have had their tracheas replaced by donor’s windpipes.
Independent reports have sharply criticized the synthetic tracheal transplants at the Karolinska University Hospital. The media that was once at the forefront in highlighting his success is leading the onslaught. Macchiarini was accused by the Italian papers in 2012 of asking for money from his patients to expedite their procedures. His colleagues and coauthors in 2014 accused him of gross scientific misconduct, falsifying claims into his research and gross negligence. Furthermore, an extensive documentary ran by the Swedish public media house SVT has shed more light into the controversial surgeries.
Ethical probes found that the scientific foundation for his publications was weak, and condemned the apparent failure to carry out extensive risk analysis before the patients received the transplants, or seeking the necessary ethical approval.
The information put forward by his critics rose curiosity around the world, with more media houses wanting to carefully examine how the issues surrounding Macchiarini were treated. Part of the information that surface postulates new pivotal points on the scientific misconduct of Dr. Macchiarini on the previous articles he had reported. Macchiarini apparently exaggerated the success of his transplants in published reports.
After the allegations, the Karolinska University Hospital took measures to address the situation including the appointment of Nina Nelson Follin to scrutinize his work. The claims, together with pressure from external sources prompted the Karolina Institute to open an internal investigation into his tissue engineering projects. Furthermore, he was immediately relieved of the privileges at the Karolinska Institute.
Research Questions
The sheer picture emerging from the reports and the scramble action of the KI is a doctor persisting with a medical technique that showed little signs of effectiveness and ability to gamble with the lives of his patients through extraordinary risk and a medical institution that became so attached to the star surgeon that they were blinded to see the mounting volumes of evidence of his poor judgement. As the star of Dr. Macchiarini rose, the parallel process where accountability mechanisms were put out of function one after another, and the control mechanisms became weaker, eventually leading to terrifying consequences. Thus the study will seek to address:
- Was Macchiarini’s savior technique useful?
- Were there animal models of his studies before clinical trials?
- Did Dr. Macchiarini conduct scientific misconduct? (did he gamble with the lives of his patients? Did he obtain informed consents before the surgeries? Did he demand money from his victims?)
- Was the information in his publications falsified?
- Was the leadership of the KI reluctant to see the surmounting misconduct and evidence of poor judgment?
Methodology
The research will entail an extensive examination of the new information regarding Macchiarini’s misconduct, the role of the media in his fame and the shortcomings of the leadership of the Karolinska Institute in handling the worsening transgressions. The multitude of instances that Macchiarini has been accused of forging, systematically misrepresenting and manipulating data to gain publication in high impact journals will also be examined. Detailed investigations into his other allegations will be reviewed, with a firm conclusion on the ground for suspicion of research misconduct in the face of insurmountable evidence at the Karolinska Institute.