[ad_1]
A Swedish court has sentenced an Italian surgeon to life in prison for a serious bodily injury during an experimental embryo cell transplant.
Paolo Macchiarini, previously considered the ‘pioneer’ of transplant surgery, escaped two other criminal charges.
Three patients treated by him in Sweden have died.
Prosecutors had requested that Macchiarini serve five years in prison but the court concluded that he had no intention of injuring the patients.
The doctor has repeatedly denied the allegations.
Macchiarini was internationally acclaimed in 2011 when he performed the first synthetic organ transplant at Karolinska’s Swedish University Hospital.
His work with embryonic cells in plastic tracts helped many people who no longer had to wait for donors.
Just a year earlier he had been employed by Italy, although there were no positive references from his previous employers.
Andemariam Beyene, a recent Eritrean graduate student who underwent her first transplant in 2011, died two years later after a series of infections. His synthetic trachea had gone out of place. Shortly before the operation, he told the BBC: “I was very scared about the operation, but it was for life or death.”
Two other patients had received Machiarini transplant at Karolinska Hospital and consequently lost their lives.
Christopher Lyles from the US who performed the plastic trachea transplant in 2011 died a few months after surgery. Yesim Cetir, just over 20, underwent surgery in 2011 and died in 2017. Other patients treated abroad, including Russian mother Julia Tuulik, also lost their lives.
Macchiarini was subsequently suspended from the prestigious Karolinska Hospital. A later television documentary revealed the alarming practices he used during the proceedings and consequently the prosecution opened an investigation.
The Solna prosecutor’s office near Stockholm filed charges of aggravated assault and bodily harm, but was not charged with killing patients.
Judge Bjoern Skaensberg said the court had agreed with prosecutors that the surgery was performed without the necessary experience and science.
Macchiarini mophon that he has violated the procedures by arguing that with the transplants he was trying to save the lives of the patients.
His sentence means that after two years he will be reconsidered for his license.
top channel
[ad_2]
Source link
