Two judges on the panel that awards the Nobel prize for medicine have been asked to resign:
Two judges have been asked to leave a panel that picks the Nobel prize for medicine in a scandal surrounding a disgraced Italian transplant surgeon. The decision to drop Harriet Wallberg and Anders Hamsten came after the Swedish government sacked the entire board of the prestigious Karolinska Institute, where the scientist worked.
Paolo Macchiarini was seen as a leading specialist on windpipe transplants. But two of his patients died and he was accused of falsifying his work record. Dr Macchiarini denies all the charges against him.
The two judges who lost their positions on the Nobel panel have both served as heads of the Karolinska Institute, and were among several individuals suspected of ignoring warnings about the Italian windpipe scientist.
Also at Reuters.
Related Stories
A surgeon who moved to Russia after being fired from a Swedish hospital has lost his Russian Science Foundation grant, following the retraction of a Nature Communications paper:
After Paolo Macchiarini's star fell in Sweden, the Italian surgeon still had a place to shine: Russia. The Karolinska Institute (KI) in Stockholm fired him in March 2016 for multiple ethical violations, including "breach of KI's fundamental values" and "scientific negligence." But Russia had long showered Macchiarini with funding and opportunities to perform his experimental surgeries to implant artificial tracheas, and it allowed him to stay. Now, a year later, his Russian refuge has ended as well.
On 30 March, it became clear that the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) would not renew its funding for Macchiarini's work, which now focuses on the esophagus rather than the trachea. The decision came 9 days after Nature Communications retracted a paper by Macchiarini [open, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15077] [DX] that documented successful esophagus transplantations in rats. Minutes of a meeting made public last week show that Kazan Federal University (KFU), Macchiarini's current employer, decided to end his research project there on 20 April, effectively firing him.
[...] Once considered a pioneer of regenerative surgery, Macchiarini aimed to give patients whose tracheas had been damaged a new windpipe. "Seeded" with stem cells, it was supposed to grow into a new, fully functional organ. (He initially used donor tracheas as a basis, but later switched to an artificial scaffold.) But he has been accused of painting a false picture of his patients in scientific papers, several of which have been retracted; operating without ethical approval; and lying on his CV. At least six of the eight artificial trachea recipients have died. In Sweden, where the case has plunged science into a crisis, investigations continue into allegations including involuntary manslaughter.
This isn't our first encounter with Dr. Macchiarini.
Disgraced surgeon is still publishing on stem cell therapies
Paolo Macchiarini, an Italian surgeon, has been fired from two institutions and faces the retraction of many of his papers after findings of scientific misconduct and ethical lapses in his research—yet this hasn't prevented him from publishing again in a peer-reviewed journal. Despite his circumstances, Macchiarini appears as senior author on a paper published last month investigating the viability of artificial esophagi "seeded" with stem cells, work that appears strikingly similar to the plastic trachea transplants that ultimately left most of his patients dead. The journal's editor says he was unaware of Macchiarini's history before publishing the study.
"I'm really surprised," says cardiothoracic surgeon Karl-Henrik Grinnemo, one of the whistle-blowers who exposed Macchiarini's misconduct at the Karolinska Institute (KI) in Stockholm. "I can't understand how a serious editorial board can accept manuscripts from this guy."
Macchiarini was once heralded as a pioneer of regenerative medicine because of his experimental transplants of artificial tracheas that supposedly developed into functional organs when seeded with a patient's stem cells. But his career came crashing down after the Swedish documentary Experimenten showed the poor outcomes of his patients, all but one of whom have now died. (The lone survivor was able to have his implant removed.) Macchiarini was subsequently fired from KI, both the university and a national ethics board found him guilty of scientific misconduct in several papers, and Swedish authorities are now considering whether to reopen a criminal case against him.
In vitro assessment of electrospun polyamide‐6 scaffolds for esophageal tissue engineering (DOI: 10.1002/jbm.b.34116) (DX)
Previously: Nobel Prize for Medicine Judges Asked to Resign for Involvement in Scandal
Thoracic Surgeon Loses Funding After Paper Retraction
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @01:39AM
Two patients died. Everyone who ever knew the surgeon is disgraced forever. Suicide is the only option.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @02:28AM
2 patients died, and then everyone tried to cover it up and pretend it didn't happen.
Those disgraced friends of his trying to sweep it under the rug despite warnings, need to be removed from the medical profession. They are the last people you want handing out top awards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @02:36AM
Did no one stop to think maybe there is risk of death involved in any major surgery?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @04:15AM
According to lawyers, unless you tell the person they could die, then death is legally an impossibility. If someone dies crossing the road their family could probably sue the government for not telling them that crossing the road can be lethal. Maybe they could go so far as to ban the specific kind of vehicle that was responsible for it, if they the victim was a minority group member, or if the driver was muslim.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @02:53PM
But what is the risk of death?
1 in 100?
1 in 1000?
What if you are told it's 1 in 1000, but really it's 1 in 50 and the deaths have been covered up.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday September 07 2016, @07:15PM
AFAICT, when a patient is given a statistical chance for a poor result by a doctor the statistic is invented on the spot by "gut feeling", and is biased toward getting you to act the way they want you to act. I have definitely observed direct lies based around getting the patient or family to behave in the desired manner. Usually there is really a good reason that they want you to act that way, but you can't trust them to tell you what the reason is, their "bedside manner" is designed to get you to act in the desired way rather than to convey true information.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @01:47AM
When are those judges going to be asked to resign. Considering how the world split firmly into two camps and armed itself to the teeth on Obama's Peace-Prize winning watch.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @02:04AM
<sarcasm>Obama totally wanted peace but he couldn't because Bush.</sarcasm>
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday September 07 2016, @07:18PM
Considering that Kissinger got the Peace Prize for his work in Viet Nam, I consider the Peace Prize committee so disgraced that no subsequent action could further disgrace it.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2016, @01:53AM
Probably because the Dr. is a white, christian, cis heterosexual male Italian, isn't it? Dog windpipes just hanging out there, he was probably not afraid to speak out. But now the SJWs have gotten to him. Soon, all will be gone, and there will be none to pipe wind for us.
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Wednesday September 07 2016, @06:56AM
You can read more about this story at the blog ( https://forbetterscience.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com] )of the science writer, Leonid Schneider. A substantial proportion of his posts for the last year or more have been about the Macchiarini affair.
I picked this link up from the Bad Science Forum: http://www.badscience.net/forum/index.php [badscience.net]