Bad Surgeon: Liebe unter dem Messer

Imagine a child who was taught by those around him to believe that who or what he is is unacceptable, repulsive and deserving of deep unrelenting shame. He fashioned for himself an alternate reality and alter ego where he is the hero, flawless and beyond reproach. Grossly overcompensating for his innate sense of defectiveness, his sole aim in life is to evade his belief that he is deeply unlovable by striving to achieve the adulation and recognition of others by all means necessary, even if it means costing lives and leaving a trail of destruction. One could say that Macchiarini is in a psychic prison of his own making, unable to break free from being a wretched automaton driven by his insatiable ego because he cannot stand to face his mistakes and therefore has to commit to his own con or risk utter obliteration.

There are millions of Paolo Macchiarinis walking amongst us. As much as this Paolo Macchiarini would love to think that he is an exceptional human being and just short of godliness, he is not. As egregious and intelligent as he was to make it as far as he did, he also had help from those around him who saw him as a fast ticket to fame and fortune. A Paolo Macchiarini who was not fatally shamed in childhood could have used his intellect for good. Instead he has destroyed lives and continues to live in his fantasy world. He might have only received a sentence of 30 months in prison, but he has already been sentenced to a lifetime of self-hatred and self-delusion. The documentary would have been more complete with a look into his formative years and testimonies from those who knew him before the ignominious events at the Karolinska Institute.

9 stars for exposing this story.

This is a story about a man who is a sociopath, a highly skilled con man, who is also a surgeon. He has delusion of grandeur and his arrogance is off the scale. To summarize this all - he is mentally deviated.

Now, the main question is how his fellow surgeons and assistants and nurses and other staff had remained oblivious of the true nature of his surgeries. Not a word is said about stem cell collection and its subsequent application to the plastic tracheas. Stem cells collection is not a simple process. So was it done or not? Documentary is silent about it. That is why it is unclear how the entire team of medical professionals at Karolinska (and in Russia) went along with assisting the implantation of plastic tubes, as if they were operating on dummies, not living and breathing human beings. I refuse to believe they didn't know what was happening.

As for the women, nothing is new here.

"Bad Surgeon" does one thing above all - shock.

Throughout the entire documentary, you ask yourself how Paolo Macchiarini was able to kill patients negligently for so long with a clear conscience and shamelessly lie to their faces, and how he was able to manipulate the people around him so that he was still highly praised for his "innovative medicine".

The picture of Paolo Macchiarini, who is nothing more than a narcissist who was completely indifferent to the lives of his patients, is painted very nicely here.

Even after his cruel deeds were exposed, Paolo was not aware of any guilt and always took the position that innovations in medicine would require sacrifices.

For my taste, however, they spent too long on Paolo's private life. Yes, it is certainly important to emphasize that Paolo not only deceived people in his job as a surgeon, but also lied to and manipulated people in his private life, but I don't need to know the entire course of his relationships for that.

However, other aspects, such as how Paolo achieved this high status in medicine or how he concealed and falsified everything, are neglected.

Nevertheless, the documentary series is good and serves its purpose.

I'll start by saying that the romance fraud was actually laughable, particularly for an intelligent, world class journalist who met the Paolo doing a story on him. She should be ashamed that she let her journalistic integrity fly right out the window because he threw romantic magic dust at her and she was in such a trance that she was unable to do even the minimum amount of background checking to see if he was who he claimed to be;not even a Google search. Yet, she thinks the real story is about her romantic entanglement with a married man and a doctor of fraudulent and criminal conduct;a murderer. Interestingly, when the New York Times story emerged concerning his scientific misconduct, her mind went to pondering whether she was still getting married.

Once the story progressed beyond Benita's shallow perspective, I realized that what at first seemed like the backstory story was really the suck, criminal and immoral tale of a mad scientist. I'm so sorry for the families who lost loved ones only to later have the pain amplified by the unconscionable acts of a mad scientist.

The heroes were obviously the scientists and doctors who called out his work and the journalists who researched and told this sordid tale. Well done.

I live in Denmark and have seen the swedish documentary that is mentioned in episode 3. And to be honest, that one is so much better. I don't understand the overwhelming focus on him cheating and lying to the women. Is it awful? Yes. But that happens every single day...

This is a surgeon who disregarded every single.. He.. I don't even have the words for what he did.

The Karolinska institute who is responsible for the Nobel price, chooses to back him up. Why is that not investigated more? Why don't they dive into that?

What was he doing before he "invented" this groundbreaking device? What were his accolades? Why did everybody just trust him?

But no.. Out of the three hours they used on this documentary, they spend half of it on his girlfriends.

They could have done SO much with this. I still want people to watch it, but if you have access to the Swedish one, watch that one instead.