This documentary series investigates the Italian surgeon Paolo Macchiarini’s claims to have invented a groundbreaking method to create new organs. His method using plastic tracheas sown with stem cells has been operated on patients in USA, Russia, Sweden and in Great Britain. So far, unfortunately, the track record of his plastic organs is not very good. Almost all patients are dead. The series provides a unique in-depth story of what actually took place. Is Macchiarini a genius, or a fraud? The director Bosse Lindquist got to follow Paolo Macchiarini and his work for a year. Slowly but surely he uncovers the facts about this new surgical method, and its victims. Episode one, ‘The Star Surgeon’, deals with the time the patients began to die and the critique grew against Paolo Macchiarini. Is he the man behind a medical scandal, with victims in many countries? Or is he the researcher who will solve one of the big enigmas in modern medicine? The impact of this series was enormous, with repercussions in Sweden as well as internationally. The world-famous Karolinska Institutet had up till now supported Paolo Macchiarini and his research, but in the heat following the broadcast Macchiarini was eventually fired in late March.
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