Where Is Paolo Macchiarini Now? What to Know About the Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife Subject

Paolo Macchiarini was famous, then became infamous.

The disgraced Swiss-born surgeon was celebrated for his development of artificial replacement tracheas, which he implanted in patients along with their own stem cells. A medicine and media darling, Macchiarini, now 65, charmed NBC News producer Benita Alexander, who was covering his windpipe procedures for a special called Leap of Faith.

According to Alexander, she fell madly in love with Macchiarini thanks to his generous spending on trips and gifts, as well as his compassion for her as she coped with her then-husband's brain cancer diagnosis. He also regaled her with stories of his celebrity patients, who he claimed included everyone from Pope Francis to then-President Barack Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton. They planned a lavish wedding and a future together.

All the while, many of Macchiarini's patients were dying, his colleagues were suspicious of his research methods and he'd been married for decades.

Macchiarini's scandals are the subject of the new Netflix docuseries Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife and Peacock's upcoming Dr. Death season 2, starring Mandy Moore as Alexander and Édgar Ramírez as Macchiarini.

Find out where Paolo Macchiarini and Benita Alexander are now.

What did Paolo Macchiarini do?

Macchiarini developed the world's first artificial windpipe in 2011 using a plastic replica of a trachea that was soaked in a patient's stem cells to prevent the body from rejecting the transplanted replacement organ, per The New York Times.

Working with Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, Macchiarini became a star — but several of his patients ended up dying, according to biomedical researcher Leonid Schneider, and many more had complications following their procedures, which he performed in Sweden, Italy, Russia, Spain and the United States. What's more, The Guardian reported that Macchiarini didn't perform any safety reviews, animal tests or trials on his artificial tracheas before transplanting them into living human beings. Macchiarini and his team also allegedly never sought a government permit for the artificial windpipes, chemicals or stem cells used in the transplants, nor did they submit the procedure for approval from Stockholm's ethical review board.

One of Macchiarini's surviving patients, Yesim Cetir, was reportedly in an intensive care unit at the Karolinska University Hospital for three years and had to undergo nearly 200 surgeries, according to The New York Times. Two separate investigations from the Karolinska Institute and the Karolinska University Hospital showed that Macchiarini's patient deaths and complications may have been covered up deliberately, and several of Macchiarini's peers accused him of research misconduct.

The Karolinska University Hospital ended Macchiarini's contract in 2013, but he reportedly remained affiliated with the Karolinska Institute until 2016.

Macchiarini was also accused of exaggerating on his C.V., including claiming he'd been a "full professor" at the University of Pisa in Italy and Germany's Hannover Medical School when he had only associate and adjunct credentials. He also reportedly claimed that he did a thoracic surgery fellowship and earned a master's of biostatistics from the University of Birmingham in Alabama. According to Vanity Fair, Macchiarini only had a six-month non-surgical fellowship in hematology and oncology at the University of Birmingham, not the 36 months required for a full clinical fellowship.

In 2019, Macchiarini was also sentenced to 16 months in prison after an Italian court found him guilty of forging documents and abusing his office, though the Supreme Court overturned this conviction.

Who is Benita Alexander?

In 2013, Macchiarini met NBC News producer Alexander, who was working on a piece about the surgeon's then-purported medical breakthroughs for Meredith Vieira. Alexander and Macchiarini grew close and began a romantic relationship despite Macchiarini being married. He eventually told Alexander he and his wife divorced, and they got engaged. Their wedding was set to be a star-studded affair officiated by Pope Francis, who Macchiarini said was his patient, with Andrea Bocelli singing during the ceremony. Then-President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, the Clintons, Russell Crowe, John Legend and Elton John were among the celebrities on the guest list, Vanity Fair reported.

Alexander quit her job at NBC News in May 2015 and withdrew her daughter from her school ahead of their move to Europe for her to be with Macchiarini, Alexander recalled to Vanity Fair. The next day, one of Alexander's friends emailed her a link to an article about Pope Francis visiting South America that July, when he was supposed to be officiating her and Macchiarini's wedding. When Alexander confronted Macchiarini about it, the surgeon tried to assure her that the Pontiff would end his South America jaunt early to perform their wedding ceremony, but she didn't believe him.

Both the Vatican and Bocelli's wife, Veronica Berti, denied to Vanity Fair they'd ever had any involvement with Macchiarini or his hypothetical wedding to Alexander. Alexander hired a private investigator to look into Macchiarini and found that even the jewelry he'd gifted to her wasn't real.

Alexander had two of her friends confront Macchiarini and his wife, Emanuela Pecchia, with whom he shares a son and a daughter, and the former producer said he wouldn't make eye contact with them.

Where is Paolo Macchiarini now?

In June 2022, Macchiarini was cleared of two of three aggravated assault charges and given a suspended sentence for the third. Days later, Swedish prosecutors announced they'd appeal Macchiarini's sentence, saying in a statement to the Associated Press, "In all cases, the interventions were contrary to science and best practice. It seems clear to me that these have been completely unlawful human experiments and the penalty should be a long prison sentence, given the nature of the crime and the high penal value."

A year later, a Swedish court sentenced Macchiarini to 2.5 years behind bars. He and his attorney at the time initially said they'd appeal the decision, and Macchiarini maintains his innocence.

Since December 2023, 11 of Macchiarini's research papers have been retracted, including four from medical journal The Lancet. Vanity Fair reported in 2016 that at the time, it appeared he was still married to Pecchia.

Where is Benita Alexander now?

Today, Alexander calls herself a "love con expert" on her LinkedIn and states that her mission is to raise awareness for being what she calls "love conned" and has spoken about her relationship with Macchiarini extensively.

Alexander was the subject of a prior documentary on Investigation Discovery titled He Lied About Everything and has been featured on 20/20 and The Con on ABC, as well as the Dr. Death season 3 podcast Dr. Death: Miracle Man on Wondery and BBC's Outlook podcast. She served as a correspondent on Dr. Oz and is currently the producer and showrunner of Investigation Discovery's Crimes Gone Viral. She also serves as CEO of Berraca Productions, which includes her podcast Benita & The Berracas, which elevates the voices of women victims of fraud.