Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife

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.

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.

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.

Doctor Paolo Macchiarini has devised a new live changing, life saving surgery for people needing artificial windpipes, stem cell infused transplants, unfortunately all is not as it seems.

I'll be honest, I didn't exactly get captivated by the first twenty or so minutes of episode one, it seemed like it was going to be a domestic ding dong, however I'd urge you to stick with it, when the actual story breaks, it's a shocking watch.

Episode three was absolutely shocking, as was the operation on Julia, I found that video actually quite upsetting, what a monster.

I'm not quite sure how you'd describe Paolo, a sociopath perhaps? A man with a definite god complex, definitely a convincing and very dangerous man.

You have to feel sorry for his intended wife, although choosing a journalist wasn't perhaps the brightest move, Benita was always going to uncover the truth.

Very well made, and well put together, I liked that it was three episodes long, and that they didn't drag it out.

8/10.

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.