Cancerous Statistics, by Alla Astakhova

Russian officials found an ingenious way to cure cancer and to impress their autocratic president Putin: they simply rig statistics. More people die of cancer than actually officially suffer from it. Elsewhere, dead patients disappear or, according to statistics, live forever. This was reported by the Russian independent health journalist Alla Astakhova on her site, Status Praesens, based on an open letter by the oncologist Vakhtang Merabishvili she published. My site now brings you a translation of a related Astakhova article, which covered last year’s lecture by Merabishvili about the rigged Russian cancer statistics.

And these are truly impressively false. While Europe shows for stage IV cancer sufferers a one-year mortality rate of between 30 and 40 percent (in some countries over 50%), Russia achieved a medical sensation: less than 20% die! Also for stages I and II cancer patients, Russian bureaucrats were able to show excellent health improvements. The current Minister of Health Veronika Skvortsova proudly announced to Putin that the early cancer detection rate in Russia is amazing 70%. Yet even the rigged official data shows actually 55% on average (and is higher in more corrupt regions of Russia). In reality, once one does the counting properly, according to international standards, the early cancer detection rate lies between 30 and 35 percent. Same minister Skvortsova recently promised to raise the life expectancy of Russians to 120, which is impressive given that the current one is around 70. Maybe just for Putin (65), to make sure someone watches over Russia for the next 50 years. It is also a quite convenient excuse for the Russian government to raise the entry into pension age. If you are promised to live till 120, don’t complain if you are told to work till 70 or longer (Russian life expectancy with men is 67).

Russian officials, while promoting their so-called “family values” in a desperate attempt to raise the rapidly declining child births, pretend in their cancer statistics that the population is not ageing at all. Which is convenient, because if you don’t expect an increase of age-related cancers, you do not have to invest in oncology care.

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Macchiarini victim Zhadyra Iglikova is dead

English version below

Умерла еще одна жертва Маккиарини – Жадыра Игликова

Еще одна из пациенток, которым Маккиарини в прошлом проводил трансплантацию трахеи, умерла 9 июля 2018. Об этом сообщила российский медицинский журналист Алла Астахова, упомнув в качестве источника аккаунт в Instagram одного из членов семьи пациентки. Аккаунт содержит много ценной информации. Жадыра Игликова получила от Маккиарини обесклеченную трахею посмертного донора в декабре 2010 года. Эта операция была шоу своего рода и должна была привлечь чудо-хирурга в российский проект мегагрантов. Результатом стали до 6 смертельных трансплантаций пластиковой трахеи . Трансплантат был получен в больнице Careggi во Флоренции, где Маккиарини работал в то время, и доставлен в Россию. Операция была проведена в московской Национальном научном центре хирургии имени Петровского. Ведущим хирургом наряду с Маккиарини был Владимир Паршин . Сразу же после этого последовали осложнения, трансплантат развалился и сгнил, как сообщает Дземешкевич 2015 .

К 2018 году состояние Жадыры критически ухудшилось, у нее была хроническая пневмония, трахеопищеводный свищ и весила она менее 39 кг. В феврале 2018 ее семья отправилась с ней из Казахстана в Москву искать помощи в клинике МГМУ имени Сеченова. Совпадение или нет, но руководит отделением торакальной хирургии в этой клинике Паршин, выполнивший первую операцию по пересадке трахеи Жадыре в 2010 году. Continue reading “Macchiarini victim Zhadyra Iglikova is dead” →

The one who asked questions: interview with Johannes Wahlström, by Alla Astakhova

Below I am re-publishing an interview which the Russian health journalist Alla Astakhova conducted with the Swedish journalist Johannes Wahlström. Wahlström’s work for the Swedish television SVT, together with Bosse Lindquist, was decisive in uncovering the patient abuse by the fallen star surgeon Paolo Macchiarini (see here the full list of trachea transplant patients). Without the dedicated work of the Swedish journalists, Macchiarini would probably still be experimenting on humans with his cadaveric and plastic tracheas, generating even more death and suffering in the process. In the interview with Astakhova, Wahlström tells about his research for the famous SVT film Experimenten, and how the SVT team found out about the four Karolinska Institutet whistleblowers Oscar Simonson, Karl-Henrik Grinnemo, Matthias Corbascio and Thomas Fux (see my reports about them here, here and here).

For Wahlström, the scandal is not just about Macchiarini. The central figures here are the abused patients, most, if not almost all of them no longer alive. And Macchiarini is not the only one guilty. Wahlström explains how everyone else orbiting that grandiose thorax surgeon was co-responsible, by looking away, covering things up or contributing their small share to the grand horror. The multilingual Swedish journalist specifically criticises the irresponsible dishonesty of Macchiarini’s Russian surgeon partners Vladimir Parshin and Igor Polyakov in the face of the catastrophe they participated in, or the bizarre attitude of Macchiarini’s biographer and Megagrant-manager Elena Kokurina, who seems to have been deliberately avoiding learning the real fate of his patients. Wahlström also questions the ethics of German TV producers who decided to air their Macchiarini-extolling documentary Supercells! in Germany and France despite knowing that its protagonist, Yulia Tuulik, was not cured at all. She was miserably dying. Continue reading “The one who asked questions: interview with Johannes Wahlström, by Alla Astakhova” →

Macchiarini’s trachea transplant patients: the full list

This article lists all known (including those not officially declared) patients of the scandal surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, who received from him a cadaveric or plastic trachea. All these grafts were “regenerated” with bone marrow and epithelial cells, in some cases a bioreactor was used to incubate cells on the trachea carcass, in some cases a “bionic” method was applied, where cells were brought straight into the open patient, together with growth factors like EPO. Not all patients are named in my list, though names of all are available, certainly at the hospitals where they were treated. One of my sources is a patients list from the Careggi Hospital in Florence, Italy, which the Corriere Fiorentino journalist Alessio Gaggioli sent me. Some of the patients I already described in an earlier article.

This now is a full list, and it will be updated whenever I receive any new evidence. All Macchiarini trachea transplant patients are listed in the chronological order of their operation. The 2003 operated patient (story here), who received from Macchiarini (together with Heike and Thorsten Walles) a small “regenerated” tracheal patch of pig intestine, is not included here, as it was not a trachea transplant as such. There is a total of 20 patients, only 3 are known to be alive. Only one of them still has the graft.

Last update: 26.07.2018

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Macchiarini leaves Russia: federal grant denied and Kazan lab shut down

Paolo Macchiarini is leaving Russia, his research and surgery stint there is over. The fallen star surgeon was able to find a professorship with the Federal University of Kazan (KFU), after his plastic trachea transplants at the Kuban State Medical University in Krasnodar left 3 patients dead, and one with a lucky escape (see details here). His new research focus was on artificial oesophagus, which he apparently already started to test on hapless baboons. In March 2017, the Russian state decided that Macchiarini’s federal grant on oesophagus research will not be renewed, the Kazan University announced in regard to their professor’s further employment to follow the instructions from the Russian Science Foundation. The professorship contract expires by December 2017. On April 20^th, Kazan University made the official decision to shut down Macchiarini’s research programme. A Russian opposition party, Yabloko, demanded of the Ministry for Research and Education to investigate Macchiarini’s Megagrant funding and the use of that money, especially in view of the fact that no final report was published. All this information was revealed by the Russian health and medicine journalist Alla Astakhova on her website. Continue reading “Macchiarini leaves Russia: federal grant denied and Kazan lab shut down” →

Macchiarini and his Russian megagrant

Below I am publishing the most recent dossier authored by the four whistle-blowers from the Karolinska Institutet (KI) in Sweden: Oscar Simonson, Karl-Henrik Grinnemo, Matthias Corbascio and Thomas Fux. Two of their earlier notifications of research misconduct to KI by their former colleague Paolo Macchiarini are available in full on my site, here and here.

This time it is about Macchiarini’s trachea transplants in Russia, and the so-called Megagrant funding he received from the Russian government for his work at the Kuban State Medical University in Krasnodar. The accusation goes that the KI star surgeon misrepresented the true outcomes of his two first disastrous human experiments with a plastic trachea, performed at KI on the patients Andemariam Beyene and Chris Lyles, both of who died. Also, the whistle-blowers criticise that KI failed to investigate these failed transplants and patient deaths and did not report those to the Russian authorities, which might have helped avoid the unnecessary deaths of at least two Russian patients, Yulia Tuulik and Alexander Zozulya. Continue reading “Macchiarini and his Russian megagrant” →

Karolinska in denial, by Johan Thyberg

This is a guest post by Johan Thyberg, a 1947-born Swedish biologist and a well-known activist against science fraud. His 2009 published book “Scientific Fraud or Legal Scandal?” meticulously narrates several fraud scandals in Swedish science, one of which I referred to when introducing a guest post of another concerned Swedish academic. Until his academic retirement, Thyberg used to be professor for cell and molecular biology at Karolinska Institutet (KI) in Stockholm, the showplace of probably the biggest medicine scandal of recent times, that of the trachea transplant surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. Continue reading “Karolinska in denial, by Johan Thyberg” →

For Better Science

Science journalism by Leonid Schneider, on research integrity and academic publishing in life sciences and biomedicine

Tag: Russia