Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife
This one really hit hard because I distinctly remember the articles about Dr. Macchiarini's "miraculous" trachea surgeries. Because of my background, I happen to have studied an enormous amount about stem cell research and regenerative medicine, and when I read that he "successfully" used a cadaver trachea seeded with stem cells to create a transplant, it sounded too good to be true, but at least theoretically possible. It was being reported on as a huge success and revolutionary and I was like "huh...I wouldn't expect that to work, there must have been some huge breakthrough with how they're handling stem cells now to make this work...neato.."
However when the next articles came out about how he was doing the same thing but with plastic tracheas "bathed" in stem cells, I was like "n'ah...that makes absolutely no sense to me."
It flew in the face of everything I was actively studying at the time. I was eyeballs deep in the world of bio-scaffolding and guided tissue regeneration. I knew most of the big companies in the world and had a steady stream of the latest research coming to me and not once had I seen a published article from any country in any language talking about research like this, and nothing with his name on it.
It sounded impossible, the fact that it was being reported as successful made me question everything I knew about tissue scaffolding. I couldn't figure out what the fuck I was missing and it really bothered me.
So when it came out a few years later that there was no research to support it, that he had ZERO theoretical justification for this approach, that the plastic tubes did exactly what one would expect plastic tubes sewn into throats would do, and that he was just murdering people in the most horrific way possible, I was horrified, but not at all surprised.
But this miniseries on him?
Holy fucking fuck.
I have never hated someone I have never met so much. Is this what parasocial relationships feel like? Because I feel like I know him and I fucking HATE HIM.
I won't spoil anything, I haven't said anything so far that wasn't highly publicized already, but this guy is so profoundly loathesome, it's actually hard to fathom.
He targeted patients who weren't dying, who would have lived full lives had he not intervened with a totally unproven treatment that he promised was safe and promised would improve their quality of life. After he murdered them, which often took weeks, months, or years of unspeakable torture to happen, he targeted their families and got extremely close to them including aggressively seducing the mother of one of his victims while under investigation for the son's death!!
I literally hate this man. I'm not even through 3 episodes and I find myself needing to take breaks because I can't stomach his smug, psychopath face for very long. They were doing a documentary about him at the time because he was so world-renowned because his successes were so miraculous (aka impossible), so there's A LOT of footage of him and it's stomach-turning, especially when put in context.
If this guy was written as fiction, no one would find the character believable.
ETA: oh good god...the latter half of episode 3 is...um...upsetting, and speaks to my personal disdain for scientific and medical media coverage and the huge issues I have with reporting on science.
