Paolo Macchiarini biography: 13 things about Italian thoracic surgeon born in Basel, Switzerland

Paolo Macchiarini is a Swiss thoracic surgeon. He is 8 years older than documentary television producer Benita Alexander.

In 2013, Macchiani and Alexander met when NBC News assigned her to produce a documentary-type program for “Dateline”. Shortly afterwards, he started a romantic relationship with her and became engaged with her.

Macchiani told her Alexander he and his wife were divorced, which was a lie. Here are 13 more things about him:

1. He was born in Basel, Switzerland to Italian parents.
2. His wife Emanuela Pecchia is Italian.
3. Before becoming known for his research fraud and manipulative behavior, he was regarded as a pioneer in the field of regenerative medicine using both biological and synthetic scaffolds seeded with patients’ own stem cells as trachea transplants.
4. He was convicted of research-related crimes in Italy and Sweden.
5. He and Pecchia have one son and one daughter.
6. Between 1999 and 2004, he was head of the department of thoracic and vascular surgery at the Heidehaus Hospital of Hannover Medical School in Hanover, Germany.
7. From 2006 to 2009, he was an investigator at the Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques-Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas in Barcelona, Spain. 
8. Between 2008 and 2014, he operated on 20 patients from different countries including Eritrea, Spain, Russian, Iceland, Britain and the United States and provided them with an artificial windpipe.
9. From 2009 to 2014, he had an honorary appointment as a visiting professor at University College London in London, England.
10. In 2010, he joined the University Hospital Careggi in Florence, Italy as a consultant and project manager and e was appointed as a visiting professor at the Karolinska Institute in Solna, Sweden.
11. In 2013, Karolinska Institute terminated its clinical relationship with him but allowed him to continue as a researcher.
12. In February 2016, Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine secretary Urban Lendahl resigned due to his involvement in recruiting him to the Karolinska Institute in 2010.
13. On August 22, 2023, he turned 65.

TIMELINE

1986

• He married Pecchia.
• He earned his medical degree from the University of Pisa in Pisa, Italy.

1989

• He took a course on statistics in clinical research at University of Alabama at Birmingham in Birmingham, Alabama, USA.

1991

• He earned his master’s degree in surgery from the University of Pisa.

1994

• He obtained a master’s degree certificate in organ and tissue transplantation from the University of Franche-Comté in Besançon, Franche-Comté, France.

1997

• He obtained a doctorate degree certificate in organ and tissue transplantation from the University of Franche-Comté in Besançon.

2008

• In June 2008, he performed a trachea transplant on Claudia Lorena Castillo Sanchez using a donor organ seeded with stem cells in Barcelona, Spain.

2010

• In February 2010, he conducted a master class in regenerative surgery in Russia at the invitation of Science for Life Extension Foundation president Mikhail Batin.

2011

• In June 2011, he performed a synthetic trachea transplant on Andemariam Beyene in Stockholm, Sweden. (In January 2014, Beyene died.)
• In September 2011, he performed a synthetic trachea transplant on Keziah Shorten in London. (In January 2012, Shorten died.)
• In November 2011, he performed a synthetic trachea transplant on Christopher Lyles in Stockholm. (In March 2012, Lyles died.)

2012

• In June 2012, he performed a synthetic trachea transplant on Julia Tuulik and Alexander Zozulya in Krasnodar, Russia.
• In August 2012, he performed a synthetic trachea transplant on Yasim Cetir in Stockholm.
• In September 2012, he was arrested in Florence, Italy for blackmail and extortion of patients and their families.

2013

• In April 2013, he performed a synthetic trachea transplant on Hannah Warren in Peoria, Illinois, USA. (In July 2013, Warren died.)
• In July 2013, he performed a synthetic trachea transplant on Cetir again. (In March 2017, Cetir died.)
• In August 2013, he performed a synthetic trachea transplant on Sadiq Kanaan in Krasnodar and on Tuulik again. (In September 2014, Tuulik died. Kanaan also died in 2014 but the exact date is unknown.)
• In November 2013, he performed a synthetic trachea transplant on Zozulya again. (In February 2014, Zozulya died.) 

2014

• In June 2014, he performed a synthetic trachea transplant on Dmitri Onogda in Krasnodar.
• In December 2014, he removed the graft from Onogda because it started collapsing. (Onogda survived and lives with tracheostomy.)

2015

• Karolinska Institute vice-chancellor Anders Hamsten cleared him of scientific misconduct. (In February 2016, Hamsten resigned.)

2016

• Karolinska Institute announced in February 2016 that it would not renew his research contract, which was due to expire in November 2016, then terminated the contract in December 2016. 

2017

• In January 2017, he joined the Kazan Federal University in Kazan, Russia. 
• On March 21, 2017, Nature Communications retracted his paper that documented successful esophagus transplantations in rats.
• On Marc 30, 2017, the Russian Science Foundation announced it would not renew its funding for his work.
• On April 20, 2017, the Kazan Federal University terminated his research project and fired him.
• On October 12, 2017, Swedish prosecutors said they found no legal evidence he caused the death of three patients so they were ending without charges an investigation into him.

2018

• In December 2018, Sweden’s public prosecution director Mikael Björk reopened the investigation involving him, obtained new written evidence and interviewed individuals in five different countries.

2019

• In November 2019, he was handed a 16-month prison sentence in Italy for forging documents and abuse of office.

2020

• On September 29, 2020, Swedish prosecutors announced charges against him for aggravated assault in connection to three surgeries that he had performed at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm.

2021

• In August 2021, the third season of the “Dr. Death” podcast started publishing episodes consisting a six-episode season about him.

2022

• On June 16, 2022, he was found guilty of causing harm through negligence but not of carrying out an intentional assault and he received a probationary sentence.

2023

• On June 21, 2023, his sentence was increased to 2 years and 6 months imprisonment after an appeals court in Stockholm found him guilty of gross assault against three of his patients. His lawyers lodged an appeal to the Supreme Court of Sweden.
• On October 30, 2023, the Supreme Court of Sweden declined to consider his lawyers’ appeal.
• On November 29, 2023, “Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife”, a documentary about him, premiered on Netflix.