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مسلسل Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife مترجم - Episode 1
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00:10Surgeons are kind of like superheroes because when things go badly wrong and we're in deep
00:18trouble they're the ones we look to to save us. Who else are you willing to trust with
00:24your life? A discovery right out of a movie script, a transplant of an organ that was in part grown
00:31in a lab. Paolo Macchiarini was kind of like a superhero. He's on a mission to save the world.
00:36He was the miracle man. We are trying to create new organs. We need to progress. We need new ways
00:43to do
00:44a transplantation. He actually believes that he can alleviate the world from suffering. It was said
00:51that Paolo was the private surgeon of the president of the United States, the Pope.
00:56If you had a checklist of all the things that you wanted in a man, he was it. He checked
01:02every single
01:03box. He's intelligent, worldly. He spoke all these different languages. But everything was a lie.
01:22Everybody had been fooled by this man. I was engaged to a monster. Paolo was an absolute fraudster.
01:30And that's why we have to stop him. Paolo Macchiarini treated people as human lab rats.
01:37She was coughing up pieces of her own flesh. The first liver transplant, the first kidney transplant,
01:43the first heart transplant. Did they go all well? No. I think that this is the future.
01:48The next patients, everything will be better. The question is, was he torturing people to death?
01:54It's the biggest con in medical history. This guy might be an imposter, but he might also be a genius.
02:01Maybe he is on the way to save mankind. Was this guy a superhero, a super surgeon,
02:08and the love of my life? Or was he a dangerous con man and a killer?
02:32In journalism, there's a kind of sacred rule. You don't get involved with the subject of a story.
02:41As a journalist, you're supposed to be objective. As you're telling a story, you spend a lot of time
02:46with people. And you spend a lot of time with them in intimate situations. And you certainly can't get
02:53involved personally with somebody in a relationship, because then your objectivity could go flying out
03:00the window. And there's a very good reason that this, you know, sort of invisible line exists,
03:05because it just helps maintain, you know, the integrity of journalism.
03:13But unfortunately, you know, it just didn't happen like that.
03:25I've wanted to be a journalist since I was very young. I was very shy growing up, painfully shy,
03:30actually. I never wanted to be the one, you know, in front of the camera. I much preferred being behind
03:36the camera. I was kind of at the height of my career. I loved my job at NBC. I was
03:44a single mother,
03:46and I wasn't focused on having, you know, a relationship. NBC wanted to do a story about
03:53regenerative medicine, which I had never heard of before. I didn't even know what this thing is.
03:59And so we start researching the story. It's this very exciting, promising field in medicine,
04:05where the goal is to get to the place where you can get replacement organs or body parts just like
04:13this,
04:13you know. The idea would be that you lose a limb or you have a diseased organ. You just go
04:19get a new
04:20one at the lab. And this one name keeps popping up. That's Dr. Paolo Macarini. He is said to be
04:31the
04:32pioneer of this field.
04:33From a landmark surgery to a discovery right out of a movie script, doctors are celebrating a medical
04:40first tonight, the transplant of an organ that was in part grown in a lab.
04:45Professor Paolo Macarini at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm performed the surgery
04:50with the help of an international team.
04:53Dr. Paolo Macarini- His nickname was The Super Surgeon. He was adored and adulated. He had almost
05:00like this godlike status. He had burst onto the world scene and into headlines by doing this very
05:07innovative procedure using stem cells. Surgeons in Sweden have carried out the world's first
05:13transplant of a synthetic organ. A 36-year-old man suffering from cancer received a new windpipe.
05:19The first reaction was just to look at me and say, well, you're crazy. And he said, well,
05:25and I said, yes, I am. But this is your only chance you have right now. But how much is
05:32the
05:32success rate? And I said, I don't know why. I never did it before.
05:40He was replacing the windpipe with a plastic windpipe. And they would bathe this plastic windpipe in the
05:48patient's own stem cells. And then the idea was that the stem cells would integrate into this plastic
05:54tube. And then this was being transplanted into the patient.
05:59In article after article, he's described as kind of the renegade. He is the one who's willing to take risks
06:06that nobody else will take. The more complex the surgery is, the more higher the chances of risk
06:12you take. The first liver transplant, the first kidney transplant, the first heart transplant,
06:18did they go all well? No. We don't have the magic crystal to show and to look in the future.
06:26I think that this is the future. I just thought, okay, this guy's bold. He wanted to do something
06:34that nobody else was doing to save people who had no other hope. I said, look, to my team, I
06:40said,
06:40this is the person we need to call. And so we had made arrangements to meet him. And I was
06:46with my
06:47colleague. And I look up, and he walks in, and he looks right at me. And our eyes just met,
06:54like locked.
06:55And he kind of gave me this little smile, this little smirk. And I instantly, I felt like a silly
07:04little schoolgirl. And this all happened so fast, just in a split second. And my first thought is,
07:11what the hell was that? And my second thought is, whatever the hell that was, don't think about it.
07:17You know, just like, I'm forcing myself. I'm in total work producer mode. I kind of like internally
07:25kind of pulled myself together. I was probably blushing, quite frankly. But something happened.
07:31Our eyes locked, and there was this spark. Immediately, I was a little thrown off.
07:40This next story is a remarkable one about how stem cell technology is changing the game and saving
07:45lives. Two-year-old Hannah Warren was born without a windpipe. There was one solution.
07:52At the time, Dr. Macchiarini was working on the case of this toddler, Hannah Warren,
07:59that would be the youngest person in the world to ever get one of his groundbreaking transplants.
08:05She couldn't eat. She couldn't swallow. She couldn't do anything that a normal little toddler can do.
08:12And had spent her entire life in the hospital. But she had all this personality.
08:18She had this infectious thing about her. Hannah was a magical child.
08:26She was like pure sunshine. Give daddy a kiss. Mwah. Mwah.
08:32Her parents were desperate. They had almost lost her so many times. They had almost given up on her.
08:40And then they found Dr. Paolo Macchiarini.
08:44I think one of the things that's so endearing about Paolo, he's not your typical surgeon.
08:53It really looked like he really cared.
09:08This feels like somebody that you can trust. This feels like somebody that has your best interest at heart.
09:17We had decided that we wanted to do the story about Hannah. And obviously Dr. Paolo Macchiarini is a
09:22huge part of the story. The surgery was going to be done in Illinois and Paolo was planning on spending
09:28about a month there.
09:33And so I had to make several trips to Illinois to do filming.
09:40When we were filming Paolo, we started joking that he had this George Clooney kind of thing going on
09:46because Paolo loves motorcycles. And he's on that motorcycle. And he's owning that motorcycle.
09:57There were a lot of women in the office that were kind of swooning like, ooh.
10:02And we wanted to get footage of Paolo on a motorcycle. So we rent him a motorcycle.
10:07And they filmed him, you know, riding around on the motorcycle.
10:12And then I think we had a few hours or something left on the rental. And he said,
10:16does anyone want to ride? I was sort of hesitant. And I sort of looked around and I said,
10:22does anyone else want to go? And they said, no, go. He puts the helmet on me. And he was
10:27very
10:28tenderly like strapping the thing and trying to fit it on my head because I was struggling with it.
10:33And I remember at that moment feeling a little bit of what I had felt that first time our eyes
10:38connected in the restaurant in Boston. It felt intimate in a way and it felt flirtatious. And I
10:45got on the back of that motorcycle with him. He said, you need to hold on to me tightly because
10:49I'm going to go fast. When you're on the back of a motorcycle, you've kind of got to snuggle into
10:57somebody. It was a beautiful day. The wind is whipping. I am holding him. And I remember joking
11:05afterwards to my friends, like, I rode on a motorcycle with George Clooney.
11:10We started going out to dinner in between shoots or at the end of a day. And I was so
11:18blown away by
11:19the fact that this man, this super surgeon, is so caring and so willing to just listen to me and
11:28has taken so much interest. Not long after he took me on the motorcycle, we went out one night to
11:36dinner.
11:38We were staying at this hotel in Illinois. I think we were about two floors apart.
11:43We were in the elevator. It was just the two of us. And his floor was first.
11:49And the door is open.
11:53He says, good night. And then he backs out of the elevator very slowly. And he was kind of
11:58holding the door open with his hand. And he's just kind of looking at me. And I'm like, looking at
12:02him.
12:03And the doors start to close. And he backs out. And I'm saying, good night. And then all of a
12:07sudden,
12:08he pushes the elevator with both hands. And he just leans in and he kisses me.
12:16It was such a surprise, but also so damn romantic. It was like out of a movie.
12:23And I just thought, shit, I'm falling for this man.
12:28My second thought was, oh, shit. Uh-oh. I'm not supposed to fall for this man.
12:36We're still filming him.
12:41Hey, give me a hug. Give me a kiss.
12:46I love you so much.
12:47Can I brush my teeth?
12:58My brother was very passionate about being a dad and being the best person he could for
13:05his daughter. I was nine years older than Christopher, so I enjoyed having him as a
13:13little brother. I really did. I loved him a lot. He has a little girl, Erin. And Erin looks just
13:23like him.
13:26Chris had just turned 30. We found out that he had a growth
13:34growth on his windpipe. And my heart dropped. It was a shock to us.
13:47And he was devastated. But soon afterwards, he became determined that he was going to beat this.
13:56He said he wanted to stay alive for Erin. He wanted to walk her down the aisle.
14:03Chris Lyles went to a specialist. Within 24 hours, the 30-year-old learned he had cancer.
14:09He soon learned the prognosis.
14:11Uh, I'll be dead in six months. You know, and, you know, I have a positive attitude about it. And
14:17it's every person I talk to that has cancer or has dealt with somebody that has cancer. You know,
14:21said that you got to stay positive. He immediately started radiation and chemotherapy.
14:29But every last person came back with the same answer of, I'm sorry, there's nothing else he can do.
14:38I felt like I had to do something.
14:45And one night I was sleeping and I woke up from a dream. Something just told me stem cells.
14:57My husband started just doing a search.
15:04We found an article and then some video of Dr. Macchiarini with Diane Sawyer from ABC News.
15:15Now in medical news, a breakthrough, a report that a doctor has found a way to grow a new
15:20windpipe for patients with cancer. It was just shocking to even watch it.
15:27It's considered the Holy Grail in its field, a transplant of the trachea. And last month,
15:33Dr. Paolo Macchiarini did it twice.
15:37My husband decided to send a message.
15:48Dr. Macchiarini responded.
15:53I think I can help your brother. Those words were the first words we ever heard from anyone,
16:03from anyone,
16:08that said that they could help.
16:13There was my hope. Maybe Chris was gonna live.
16:19If you can take out the tumor completely, then it is curative. So you can expect to have
16:27a very long survival.
16:29He and Chris started having their own personal talks, discussions through Skype.
16:37Chris initially thought that they just connected really immediately, like it was this instant
16:46of trust. He really came out of that conversation with, yeah, I definitely want to do this.
16:55I'm gonna be gone for a little while, right?
16:57I'm gonna be gone for one. You know why? You remember why? What did I say? You remember that
17:05I was telling you your daddy was sick?
17:07Yes.
17:08Yes.
17:08Yes.
17:08We knew that it was experimental surgery for sure. We knew that because the US government wasn't even
17:17allowing that to be done in our country. If you have a patient that is dying and you think that
17:25it might help him, then what is ethical? To leave him alone or to try to help him?
17:34What was most important is that we knew that Dr. Macchiarini was on staff at the Karolinska
17:41Institute in Sweden, which is known to be one of the best hospitals in the world. And that's where
17:47the medical Nobel Prize is given out. So we just thought we can't get any better. He's like the best
17:56of the best.
18:03We actually sit on the plane now and I just wanted to say hi to everybody.
18:10It's my morning. We will be in Sweden.
18:23We will be in Sweden.
18:24Paolo was more like a god, a messiah for organ regeneration. I was part of Paolo Macchiarini's team at
18:34Berlinska and a surgeon. There is no other situation that I can think of where you actually
18:44are asleep and you cannot do anything and you put life in the hands of a surgeon.
18:52The first time I actually met Paolo, he had some sort of aura of mystique, one can say. You don't
18:59really understand exactly who is this guy. I was in a meeting. We were sitting around the room. He
19:06was standing in the corner, but deserved all the attention of the room. And that's quite a feature
19:13actually to pull off. When Paolo arrived, I mean, he was a star. He was a superstar. His vision was
19:20to
19:21reiterate new windpipes from plastic material covered by the patient's own stem cells. And if this works
19:30at Karolinska, they want to make a clinic around Paolo. The idea was to have a center where people from
19:38the entire world would come here for these organ transplantations and the Karolinska would make a
19:44lot of money. He was able to make us all feel that we were part of this team that will
19:52make the future
19:53happen now. We need to progress otherwise there will be no new ways to do a transplantation.
20:03For me, he was a person really to look up to. Paolo once said to me, there is no person
20:12above me
20:13except God. And then I said, so the Pope is not as high as you are. No, he's not.
20:25Paolo said he needed to replace Chris's windpipe using his own stem cells. And that was just amazing.
20:38Any surgery is risky, but this was super risky. Once you take out a part of the airway,
20:47you need to know that you are able to reconstruct the airway. If you are unable, the patient's dies
20:55in the operating room.
20:59Chris joked about it to Paolo the night before his surgery. He said, tell me, doc, I'm a guinea pig,
21:09right? And Paolo didn't want to hear that. He didn't want Chris to feel that way. And I believe that
21:21he's world renowned. He's the best.
21:32I was assisting Paolo on this operation.
21:42So I was holding the sutures. I was exposing the tissues for Paolo Maccarini, exposing vessels,
21:52airway, and so forth, and so forth, helping him implant this plastic tube.
22:05After 15 hours of surgery,
22:10Paolo finally appeared at the door. And he had a smile on his face.
22:18And he said it was successful.
22:24I had prayed for a miracle. And Paolo was that miracle for us.
22:34I got scars going down up and down on my chest. But, uh, as you can see, I'm here.
22:44I'm still, I'm still kicking and breathing. I mean, it's kind of difficult though, but,
22:53two thumbs up.
23:07One of the things that made Paolo intriguing is he's this world traveler who works all around the world.
23:13He's Italian. He's dashing. He's charming. He's gorgeous. He speaks five or six languages.
23:20He works at the place that awards the Nobel Prize in medicine.
23:23He has a beautiful house in Barcelona. And he's always running from Barcelona to, you know,
23:29all these other parts of the world. And he lives this very exciting life.
23:35I'm not a big fan of long distance relationships. I think they're really difficult to sustain.
23:41But with Paolo, somehow it wasn't. At the beginning, we were being very careful because of the
23:46professional thing. And I was trying to figure out what to do about it. But Paolo just wanted to go,
23:51you know, to hell with everything, you know. He was in constant contact. I mean, he was texting me
23:57all day long.
24:02Gushing, romantic messages.
24:05I just wanted to send you a few loving good morning words and a lot of kisses
24:16to my princess. Passionate, tender and loving kisses.
24:21If he was gone for a long time, he would just sort of go out of his way to make
24:28me feel loved and special.
24:40There was a constant, consistent level of excitement to our whole romance. It was never dull.
24:47The very first trip we ever went on, Paolo said, I want to surprise you.
24:53And my love, my love still doesn't know where we are going.
25:01He takes me to one of the most romantic cities in the world.
25:08Venice, Italy. I've never been to Venice. The whole trip was just magic.
25:16The romance on overdrive. And it was the beginning of him sweeping me off my feet.
25:23And I mean really sweeping me off my feet.
25:31On that first trip we went on to Venice, he introduced me as his wife. I remember nudging him
25:38and kicking him under the table. I'm like, what are you doing? You know, and he just thought it was
25:41so funny.
25:44There was something definitely that I noticed early on. He liked to be the center of attention.
25:50And he just liked sort of playing with people a little bit. And if that meant
25:54bending the truth a little bit, it, he got some sort of kick out of that.
25:59He liked to exaggerate. It went hand in hand with all these grand gestures.
26:08Being with Paolo was literally like being in a fairy tale. Everything was so extravagant and over
26:13the top. And every single trip there was a surprise. Look for the lights.
26:21Oh my god. Wow. Love you.
26:28Money was an absolute non-issue. He not only paid for everything, but everything was the best hotel
26:36rooms. The most expensive restaurants, the most expensive wine, shopping sprees.
26:44I mean, he flew me all over the world. Turkey, Russia, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Greece.
26:51Here, the waste of the sea. I love you, my love.
26:56Love you.
26:57There were so many magical trips.
27:04One of the things about Paolo, and it's something my friends still talk about, is not only does a man
27:10speak five or six languages, he had five or six phones. And it was kind of ridiculous because
27:15sometimes he would lay them all out in front of him. I'd say, well, this is the Barcelona phone.
27:21This is a US phone. This is a Russia phone. This is a Swedish phone.
27:25I mean, talk about James Bond. I mean, who the hell walks around with four or five phones? And
27:29who can even keep track of four or five phones? But he would pick up one, and he's speaking in
27:34one
27:34language. And he'd pick up another one, and he's speaking in another language. He said he needed
27:39a different phone for every place he worked, that it was just easier. Later, I would have other
27:45theories about his many phones. But at the beginning, it just sort of added to his appeal.
28:03After the surgery, we didn't see Paolo that much. He was flying this place, he was flying that place.
28:11He had one of his assistants look after Chris. Is it okay, Chris? Yeah. Don't try to hold it.
28:21Yeah. Very soon after surgery, Chris Laius gained an infection in the airways. So he started to cough
28:28enormously hard. This, you know, really, really deep cough. He got mucous clots in the airways.
28:36Yeah, it is. What also happened was he got an infection in the wound. So he had a quite dramatic
28:45postoperative, early postoperative period. We took care of it very urgently. We directly actually could
28:54take him to the operating room and remove the mucous clots and so forth. But it was a little bit
29:00unusual that you get the infection so early on after surgery. He had to stay longer than what we
29:07initially thought he would be in Sweden. Eventually, my brother was demanding to come back home because
29:15he needed to see his daughter.
29:29He was recovering so he could go back to the States. I was really, really happy for Chris.
30:01I know that's right.
30:05Thank you, Chris.
30:06Thank you, Chris.
30:12Within a week or so, he had to go back to the hospital.
30:19On March 5th, my phone rang in the middle of the night.
30:28And when I answered the phone, my mom was, um, was screaming.
30:44And she just yucked out. Chris is dead. Chris is dead.
30:59He was gone. He fought so hard. He was gone.
31:10A sad farewell for a Maryland man who helped change cancer treatment worldwide.
31:15Lyles remained optimistic and hopeful till the very end.
31:20At that time when Chris Lyles was operated, I truly believed in Paolo.
31:26I truly believed in this, uh, uh, method. It could have just been, you know, bad luck with
31:33post-operative infection that caused this.
31:36Even though he had passed,
31:40we still believed that, that people were going to benefit from it.
31:45I continued to support Dr. Macchiarini's efforts in regenerative medicine.
31:52And, uh, yes.
32:09When Hannah's transplant was completed, there were press conferences.
32:14And Paolo saying that you can see the new cells growing on, on Hannah's windpipe.
32:18It basically seemed like a miracle.
32:20Paolo had done the impossible.
32:29All this is a journey of 25 years.
32:33And, uh, I cannot express what it means to me as a scientist,
32:37as a man.
32:39But it didn't take very long before it became clear that something was wrong.
32:44Hannah wasn't doing well, and there was concern.
32:50And then I get this text saying she passed away, and I burst into tears.
33:02Obviously, the immediate question is, well, okay, what happened?
33:05Did something go wrong?
33:06Does this mean that the windpipe failed, that it didn't work?
33:09But Paolo was absolutely insistent that her death had nothing to do with the windpipe
33:15itself failing, and that her death was caused by other complications.
33:21Hannah's family very bravely put this beautiful tribute on Facebook calling Hannah a pioneer,
33:28that her death was not in vain because Paolo and his team would learn from her death and her case,
33:34and that it would help somebody else down the road.
33:39Well, now we had a huge dilemma.
33:42We were struggling with what to do with the story.
33:45We didn't have the beautiful, happy ending that we had hoped to have, and we almost killed the whole story.
33:51But maybe there was a way to salvage the story by piggybacking on the message that Hannah's parents
33:55were putting out there, that her death was not in vain. And so, at that point, we pivoted.
34:06We decided if we talked more about some of Paolo's other patients and how he was learning from each
34:13one of these cases, that that way we could still do a story about the hope of this very promising
34:19field.
34:31We reached out to Christopher Lyles family. I knew they were big supporters of Paolo in spite of
34:38having died. And so we wanted to interview them with Paolo.
35:03He came in and he met Chris's daughter and he was so sweet with her.
35:10I miss him. I just want to be up there, like with him, wherever he goes.
35:19He's with you. Come here. Give me a hug.
35:28I'm sorry.
35:29I know.
35:32He's a good man. He was a good man.
35:34Christopher did not die for nothing. And Hannah, too. So we need to move forward.
35:41We don't have the right to stop.
35:47Paolo Macchiarini think totally different from most audience. He thinks that each time he's doing
35:53anything. He's doing something spectacular. But now there were some questions. Is this a successful
36:02method, actually? And I was starting to doubt of what to think and what to believe.
36:11The more people started to question, actually, Paolo Macchiarini, the more annoyed he got.
36:17I think he looks at himself that he is the closest person to God, actually.
36:39Fast forward Christmas 2013. Paolo came to stay in New York with me. It was very casual.
36:47He cooked a big, elaborate meal. We had Christmas music playing. And we're sitting on the couch exchanging
36:54gifts. And he handed me this little box. Then I opened the box.
37:04And it's this beautiful diamond ring. Oh, my gosh. I just, I kind of froze.
37:18You got it. And then I said to him, is this what I think it is? And he just smiled.
37:23And he nodded.
37:24I just, wow, you know. I was completely floored.
37:37It was such a simple proposal. It was really beautiful. We also knew that we weren't going to
37:44share this with many people yet, because we were still waiting for the story to air.
37:50I kept asking Paolo, what are we going to do for New Year's Eve? And he was a bit evasive.
37:54He kept
37:54saying, I might have a surgery. And he didn't give me much information. But he, I think a day or
38:01two before, he just said, I'm really sorry, but I have to go. We had just gotten engaged, and I
38:06was
38:07basking in the glow. I didn't want him to leave. I said, really? You know, on New Year's? And he
38:13was just
38:14insistent. It's an important surgery. I have to go. So I was kind of peppering him with questions
38:20about, really, who do you have to operate on on New Year's Eve? And he kind of, like, hemmed and
38:25hawed, and he was a little bit reluctant. And then he said, you know, I have to tell you something,
38:29and you're not really supposed to know this, but I have some very high-profile patients. I said,
38:36what do you mean? And he said, well, I have some celebrity clients and some people who are world
38:43leaders and dignitaries. He just said, look, you know, these people don't want their private
38:47matters made public. And he told me that he was part of a kind of secret network of doctors that
38:54takes care of these people. And he finally told me that he was going to see Bill and Hillary Clinton.
39:03I remember I was stunned. He said that he and Bill were friends and that they had a kind of
39:09special
39:10camaraderie and that Bill had specifically asked that he come and check Hillary out.
39:16After that, every few months or so, there'd be an emergency surgery. People like the Emperor of Japan,
39:23there were important people in Russia that he attended to. Because it was so secretive, even in our private
39:29personal texts, he used initials for everybody. So Bill Clinton was BC. He's in Japan, and one day
39:39pops up a message about BO. At first, I didn't even make the connection. I'm thinking, who BO? Who's that?
39:50And he kind of was teasing me back and forth. I don't know who that is.
40:00Are you talking about Barack Obama? He was. I thought, wow, okay, you know,
40:08now you're taking care of the president, too? It seemed to make sense that Paolo ran in these circles
40:14that most people don't understand, you know, that he's taking care of world leaders and celebrities
40:19because of his stature. He's at that level. He's the super surgeon. It kind of made me proud of him,
40:26and proud to be next to him.
40:41My name is Busi Lindqvist, and I'm an investigative journalist at Swedish Public Service Television.
40:48When I first came to hear about Paolo Maccherini, my boss said, oh, you should take a look at this
40:55piece of paper. It's a disgruntled professor at the Karolinska who has come with this to us. It's a
41:03letter of accusation where they basically accused a colleague, which was Paolo, for more or less having
41:11killed his patients and committed fraud in science. And I said, well, yes, I could take a look at it,
41:20but it's completely impossible that this is true. These things simply do not happen at the Karolinska.
41:26I was pretty sure it was slander. So the first thing I did was to see what I could find.
41:36And there was lots. I found several documentaries on the net that had already been done about his work.
41:43Fantastic programs that showed what a good guy he was and how he saved the lives of his patients.
41:49Benita's film for NBC stood out. As the program progresses, Maccherini's patients die.
41:57But what the program makers say and what Maccherini says is, well, I mean, this is really difficult.
42:04It's hard. It's a method that is being developed, but the hope is there. And we shouldn't be small
42:10minded when we look at Maccherini's work.
42:16I picked up a phone and called Karolinska switchboard and they put me through to Paolo's answering machine.
42:24And in two days' time, I had a call from him. He said that you're very lucky
42:30because I'll be passing from New York to Moscow Wednesday. If you can be at the Institute between
42:38three and five, I'm at your disposal. Bring a cameraman. We are not wasting time.
42:46When I came to Karolinska, I was a bit surprised because Paolo's PhDs and
42:53medical assistants were not behaving the way they usually did. They were more sort of like
42:57private secretaries somehow than normal PhDs. And then he entered a bit like not Bill Gates,
43:04more like Bono, having this air of coming straight from Paris, New York, Rome or somewhere.
43:12Paolo made clear very early on that he had had difficulties and that there were adverse outcomes
43:19and that patients were doing poorly. But according to him, this was because these patients had
43:27multiple diseases or were infirm. So that was clouding his results.
43:35Paolo made clear. If you test a new surgical method on a person with life-threatening conditions,
43:42obviously it will be harder to know what the actual effect is of your method.
43:48With a lab rat, you would select a perfectly healthy lab rat,
43:54so that you wouldn't have anything that would cloud your results.
43:59So what he really wanted was comparatively healthy patients to try out his plastic tracheas,
44:05his plastic windpipes on.
44:17Paolo is the kind of person that likes to have a number of balls
44:21in the air the whole time. So at the same time that he was doing the first plastic implants in
44:28Sweden,
44:28he was negotiating in Russia to get permission to do proper clinical trials there.
44:37He was given permission by the Russian authorities and he had the opportunity to
44:43actually select among quite healthy patients as his subjects. Young, healthy and strong. Those were the criteria.
44:54And by the summer of 2012, he was ready to do the first trials.
44:59One of the things that touched me the most when I was researching Paolo is there's a documentary about him
45:07in Russia, in Krasnodar, with Yulia, this Russian dancer mom.
45:19We might need to take a part of the muscle. The first option is to do an incision here, an
45:27incision here.
45:28She was this absolutely beautiful, young, former dancer and mother in Russia. I mean, she's gorgeous.
45:38And she was in a tragic car accident. And as a result of this, her windpipe was damaged and she
45:45had a hole in her throat. And for Yulia, who's this very vivacious, beautiful young woman with her
45:53whole life ahead of her, this was devastating. And they actually in Russia had a lottery,
45:58equivalent to a lottery, to basically win the opportunity to have famous surgeon Dr. Paolo
46:05Macchiarini give you a new windpipe. And she made a video pleading, you know, with Paolo,
46:12so please let me be the one. Please help me.
46:16My name is Tulik Yulia.
46:19On August 16th of 2008, I was in a very difficult car accident.
46:24During the heart operation, I had a tracheostomy.
46:29Now, I have a tube, and it's a tube, and it's very painful to speak, to breathe, to sleep, to
46:36sleep, to whatever.
46:37I've lost a lot. I've lost a lot of health, a beauty.
46:43Here's what I've been saying to my daughter.
46:45My daughter is happy. This is my kid. I'm very happy that he's here.
46:53He's never happy that he can sing to me. He can't écrit with my songs.
46:57As you can see, I'm a quite normal,
47:01nice young girl. I would like to live to life like all normal people.
47:09she didn't actually need this transplant she was not at death's door but she wanted to be
47:16back to normal very understandable as I was scouring the net for documentaries about
47:23power Macchiarini one of the stories was made by the German broadcaster which showed in close
47:30detail his surgeries in Russia where they followed his work on the Julia to leak
47:48Suction
47:53Julian
48:07good good congratulations to everybody
48:11.
48:30The film is incredibly moving.
48:33He's giving her back the gift of 100% normal life.
48:38Giulia had been fearful, but she had at the same time been sure
48:42that Maccherini was the guy who would make her life perfect again.
48:58This is Giulia.
49:00When I met Giulia, she was not able to play with her child.
49:06It was a very emotional moment for me.
49:10And I immediately said, this is the right patient.
49:13And I still do not believe that a few days ago she couldn't breathe
49:18and talk normally.
49:20So she's a little bit afraid of you.
49:24So please be very sweet.
49:30And continue to breathe in a minute.
49:36I died behind the scenes, and I hope you already finished in a while.
49:46And in the past, I'll be able to give her a few minutes.
49:52And I'm ashamed to know what she was hearing.
49:53That's great.
49:55And I can't wait to know what she was talking about.
49:56It's very emotional.
49:58Paolo is a gift of God to mankind.
50:02He's really helping this young lady.
50:04So I thought that's fantastic.
50:06I mean, the program says that it was a big success.
50:09That might mean that Paolo's methods,
50:13maybe they're not 100% perfect,
50:17but apparently they works in some places.
50:20So this is really essential.
50:22I should get hold of Julia and ask her how she's doing.
50:26And then a couple of days later,
50:29our colleague Johannes Valström managed against Olavs
50:32to locate her mother.
50:44I managed to track down Julia's mother,
50:47who is a lady living in a suburb outside of St. Petersburg,
50:51and I call her and I ask if it's possible to speak to her.
50:56And the mother responds that,
50:58yeah, you can speak to my daughter,
51:00but in order to do that you need to die,
51:02because she's already dead.
51:05I'm taken aback,
51:07because I've just seen her on the screen,
51:09just a few hours earlier.
51:13And I don't really know what to make out of that.
51:19I basically ask her what happened.
51:22And the mother says that it was all, you know,
51:26it was all fake.
51:28And her daughter went through pure horror until her death.
51:33And this was just, you know, a big scam and torture and murder.
51:40She was coughing up pieces of her own flesh.
51:44That's the way that she retells it on the telephone.
51:46But it's a short conversation that we have.
51:48But I realize that right there and then,
51:52that the story that I have seen just a few hours earlier
51:55is a lie.
51:58But you know,
52:27it's a very unique story.
52:56Transcription by CastingWords
53:26Transcription by CastingWords
53:50Transcription by CastingWords
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