A Swedish appeals court on Wednesday increased a prison sentence for an Italian surgeon over experimental stem cell windpipe transplants on three patients who died.
Dr. Paolo Macchiarini made headlines in 2011 for carrying out the world’s first stem cell windpipe transplants at Sweden’s leading hospital and had been sentenced to no prison by a lower court.
On June 16, the Solna District Court cleared Macchiarini of two charges of assault and gave him a suspended sentence in the third case.
In its ruling, the appeals court said that Pacchiarini “acted with intent of indifference.”
“The patients have been caused bodily harm and suffering,” the appeals court said of the two men and one woman. The patients, it concluded, “could have lived for a not insignificant amount of time without the interventions.”
The court found him guilty of causing bodily harm to one patient in May, ruling that the procedures were not consistent with “science and proven experience”.
But it cleared him of assault charges on two other patients, arguing that their health was in such a dire state that the procedures were “justifiable”.
Both the prosecution and the defense appealed the lower court’s ruling, and on Wednesday the Svea court of appeal found him guilty of three counts of aggravated assault.
The court assessed that his acts “were not impulsive actions but planned interventions and that there has thus been room for consideration," Chief Judge Maria Holcke said in a statement.
Maccharini said he felt he was being treated like “a war criminal.”
“We did the transplant in good faith,” Macchiarini said and added that he had not read an English version of the verdict to fully understand what was in it.
His lawyer, Bjorn Hurtig, said they would appeal.
“We have not given up, this match is not over,” he was quoted as saying by His lawyer, Swedish media.
