Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife

I feel horrible for these families . I also have personal experience with the bad docs . However - the laws are built to protect docs and patients go unheard .

There are many patients out there with silent voices who are alive but harmed in many ways with no one to compensate them for their loss. Laws need to change to better protect patients . This is why medical malpractice patient boards or groups exist . Very few lawyers are interested in malpractice law for a reason depending on the state . It's because they know it's an uphill battle with very money return for them .

I agree with another reviewer about other docs knowing what was happening and saying nothing . It wasn't only him .

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.

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.

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.

I thoroughly enjoyed this mini documentary series and found it a well-made case study of a narcissistic psychopath.

I don't understand those reviewers who complain about there being too much focus on the women he duped. For me, that was all part of the tapestry of his character and his modus operandi. He acted in a similar way in both his professional and personal life, slowly weaving a web of lies with his narcissistic charm, and this was the point of the entire documentary.

I don't see that the journalist Benita glorified him in any way at all, she was just describing how she fell for the manipulations and lovebombing of a narcissist. This is, sadly, a very common thing, as narcissistic psychopaths can be extremely charming and fool people very well. That is the entire point.

All in all, an intriguing and well-balanced character study that is excruciatingly harrowing to watch. You can feel your gut wrench as the extent of his is scheming is slowly revealed, just like it probably was for his victims.