By 2014, four Karolinska doctors started to question Macchiarini’s transplantation of plastic tracheas and raised the alarm at Karolinska University Hospital and Karolinska Institute. They suspected that Macchiarini had been lying in his scientific papers and that patients’ lives were being put at risk by a technique which had not been properly tested or investigated beforehand. But still his employer, the Karolinska Institute, defended him and claimed nothing was amiss.
Paolo Macchiarini hade skapat rubriker världen över när han opererade in den första luftstrupen av plast. Karolinskas stjärnkirurg verkade vara på väg att lösa en av medicinens stora gåtor: att skapa organ på löpande band. Men något var fel. Plaststruparna fungerade inte som de skulle. Patient efter patient dog och inne på Karolinska började några läkare undra vad som pågick.
