Swedish appeals court ups surgeon’s sentence for ‘harm’ during experimental windpipe transplants

STOCKHOLM (AP) — A Swedish appeals court has upped a prison sentence for an Italian surgeon for causing bodily harm during experimental stem cell windpipe transplants on three patients who eventually died. Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, who made headlines in 2011 for carrying out the world’s first stem cell windpipe transplants, was given 2 1/2 years in jail by Sweden’s Svea Court of Appeal for causing “bodily harm” of the three people between 2011 and 2014. The court said there was no emergency for two of them, while “an emergency situation existed” for the third patient — but the intervention was “unjustifiable.” Macchiarini was credited with creating the world’s first windpipe partially made from a patient’s own stem cells. He said he felt he was treated like “a war criminal.”