The deadly legacy of a stem cell charlatan
Paolo Macchiarini misled the world over his breakthroughs in regenerative medicine, but why did most of the institutions that supported him bear no responsibility for hosting a rogue stem cell surgeon? It’s time for them to launch full and independent investigations, argue John Rasko and Carl Power By 2008 it looked like a medical revolution was under way. Before us lay a new world, where any injured organ could be replaced with one custom-made in the laboratory. Leading us there was the charismatic Italian surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, who’d begun replacing damaged windpipes with tissue eng...