Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife is a three-part documentary series directed by Ben Steele. It is executive produced by Nicola Moody and Jane Root for Nutopia, David Herman also serves as a co-executive producer. The episodes have a runtime of about 48-58 minutes and delve into the rise and fall of super surgeon Paolo Macchiarini.
Paolo Macchiarini was once celebrated for his creation of the world’s first synthetic organs, but now faces accusations of fraud and deception. Featuring interviews with the families of his victims, his former fiancée, and whistleblowers, this series chronicles the fight to bring Macchiarini to justice.
The documentary features Benita Alexander, Erica Greene, Dorne Lyle, Kalle Grinnemo, Oscar Simonson, Bosse Lindquist, Johannes Wahlstrom, Matt Alexander, Sarah Alexander, Matthias Corbascio, Ana Paula Bernardes Pedrosa and others.
Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife Review
One of the biggest parts of the series is how an NBC journalist, Benita Alexander, fell in love with Paolo Macchiarini – to the point of leaving everything for him but eventually learning everything to be a horrific lie. She introduces the audience to the thoracic surgeon and she comes across him while working on a story. In the year 2013, Macchiarini had already created a name for himself in the medical world with his plastic-made organs. He claimed that if they cultured the plastic tubes in the shape of a human windpipe, with the stem cells of an individual, it would grow/bind into a functioning synthetic organ.
Having performed 2-3 successful surgeries already, he was about to perform the same on a toddle named Hannah. Essentially the patients had some issues with their windpipe (hole, tumour etc) and Macchiarini would replace their part of the Trachea with the plastic ones, created in the lab. Creating a documentary on regenerative medicine, Benita found him to be a perfect subject to shoot and bring in front of the screens. After all, he was performing a miracle by giving people at their wit’s end, another chance at life.
What Benita didn’t expect was that she would be completely swept off her feet and become a part of Macchiarini’s dense web of lies. Their relationship went on for the next 2 years, along with his increasing fame and they were even about to get married when the castle of lies fell apart. While all of his thoracic surgeries would end well with the patients thanking Macchiarini publicly, for his miraculous experimental surgeries. What people and media didn’t witness was the torturous aftermath that led to death in almost all cases.
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His ex-lovers and acquaintances share how Macchiarini is an enigmatic man with a flair to win anyone over. His confident aura doesn’t leave any space for doubt and that’s how he was able to fool so many people, including fellow surgeons. It is shown in the documentary how Macchiarini would be at the patient’s service anytime until the procedure day. However, nobody could get a hold of him after, the real complications would start. All of his patients would start to have some complications after days or weeks of transplant surgery, needing more surgeries to stabilise the growing conditions.
But Macchiarini would be long gone to some other country, to perform on someone else. He would never tend to his recovering patients and eventually, they would lose their lives, after much struggle. It was later revealed he had fabricated all the data about his scientific discovery. In order to perform any experimental procedure on humans, it has to be tested on animals with positive outcomes. On the other hand, he seemed to have completely skipped the step and treated his patients as guinea pigs.
On top of that, the synthetic organ was nothing like it was boasted of. The idea was that the patient’s stem cells would cover the plastic pipe, growing into a ready-to-use organ. But it was another lie as Macchiarini was simply using a piece of plastic in place of human organs. You don’t need a medical degree to know that any foreign material in the human body would cause problems and that’s exactly what happened. The patients would contract infections, the plastic would start rotting and it would lead to a tragic end.
Despite knowing everything, Macchiarini went on to perform eight such experimental transplants between 2011 and 2014. While he was riding high on his fame and claiming to be God to people in need, his love life was no different. Benita Alexander definitely dodged a bullet as her wedding was cancelled due to rising fraud and malpractice allegations against her lover. This turn of events led her to investigate more about the man she was about to marry and move to another country for.
Discovering another girlfriend with a baby in Italy and a family with two kids in Barcelona. Not only was he scamming in his professional life, he was a love swindler as well. With the excuse of tending to patients in different countries, he pursued different women in each one as well. He even spun lies about having high-profile clients, including the Clintons, the Royal Family and even the Obamas – to make an excuse for travelling.
What’s really enraging is how he wasn’t even given any punishment for killing innocent people. Initially, he was convicted of 3 counts of aggravated assault but the Swedish court found him guilty of only 1 charge – causing bodily harm to a patient. He was given a suspended sentence, which means he could still work in another country. Ultimately in 2023, an appeals court sentenced him to two years and six months in prison.
Final thoughts: Cases like these really prove that if are confident enough with an egoistical personality, then people would just believe anything you say. It’s really baffling that all the medical professionals etc failed to recognise the malpractices while being in the same operating room. How did no one fact-check his claims and clinical trials? Media glorification has to be the main factor that built his positive image and provided more opportunities than he might have gotten.
Rating: 3/5
Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife is available for streaming on Netflix.
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