The CULT of Superstar Doctors 

Thanks for watching this more in-depth video. I think it's an important topic. If you want to help me make more videos like this then subscribing, sharing, liking all that jazz is hugely appreciated. But if you want to get something for yourself too and really support the channel, visit curiositystream.com/medlife and use the code 'medlife' to get a year of CuriosityStream AND Nebula for under $15. If you don't think that's a good deal, maybe you do need a head transplant after all. Cheers all!

To be fair, both corpses retained the same control over their bodies as they had prior to the head transplants.

It's very upsetting to hear what happened to the whistleblowers at the Karolinska institute and the fact that they still are suffering from it seems like a significant injustice

A few years ago there was an Italian man who performed plastic surgery in Romania. The female patients started complaining that their breasts were a mess after surgery. His colleagues only started speaking out after it was uncovered that his diploma was fake and he only graduated eighth grade.

Organ Transplant without the word Ciclosporin makes me nervous. I Survived a Bone Marrow Transplant for Myelodysplastic Syndrome (2013), and the importance of Ciclosporin was stressed every Monday, Wednesday and Friday check up. "Have you been taking your Ciclosporin?" was almost always the first question asked. Which of course I did. 350mg a day. Over six months it was reduced until I didn't need it. Nine years in remission now. Thank God for the people who found/invented that medicine. Incredible people.

We need to talk about this "Dr who" guy, I'm not even sure he has a medical licence

There should be some kind of protection for whistle-blowers in these situations. Doctors who choose to go out of their way to expose the lies should get less punishment for whatever involvement they initially had. If we punish the whistle-blowers the same as if they hadn't done the public service of exposing the lies, that means there's a disincentive to coming clean and people are more likely to collude. Anyone who is in a position to be a whistle-blower probably had some involvement in the lie because otherwise they wouldn't know enough to be able to prove it false.

The fact that we elevated Sigmund Freud to superstar status, should be enough proof that maybe we shouldn't idolise doctors

My friend is a neurosurgeon and I asked him about head transplantation and he said it was currently impossible due to a number of factors. You cannot grow neurons fast enough to allow connections between the spinal chord or brain stem or wherever he planned to cut to in order the engraftment to occur. The patient would likely die of being intubated for too long way before even the most basic biological processes could be controlled by the new brain. Furthermore it's difficult to tell if structural differences between the donor and recipient would actually allow for the right signals to be sent to the right areas of the body. Even if you somehow got everything to heal and connect within 24 hours the patient would most likely be completely paralysed

I heard that "Jesus M.D." will be airing on Fox starring Hugh Laurie playing Sherlock Holmes with long hair and a beard. He walks around the hospital like he's the son of god and berates people who don't believe in miracles. And instead of saying, "It's never lupus", he says "It's never Satan" because let's be real, Satan has better things to do than make people sick.

Love the shoutout to Henrik Widegren! I was a student at Karolinska while the scandal unraveled, which was… interesting. Especially worthy of note was how, when the word got out that Karolinska was considering recruiting Macchiarini, some of his former collaborators reached out to the university to basically say “don’t do it, mate”. Not that anyone listened…

I was working at the UCLH at the time of the BBC documentary series came out and I was horrified about the actions of Paolo Macchiarini. But what horrified me the most is the support that my colleagues showed him (I can name names if you like), often saying "well, every surgeon has a secret graveyard" or "well, those people would've died regardless". I'm very deeply saddened by the level of human cruelty

For a class suggestion: how to read and interpret academic papers in medicine, particularly the way the statistics are presented. Even as a biology student who is familiar with reading scientific papers, the statistics in medicine are presented differently to what I have been taught how to interpret. Since there are so many people now trying to "do their own research", it might be beneficial to provide some tools so people are at less risk of wildly misinterpreting the papers they're trying to read.

I loved your "I'm not a racist Some of my best friends are italian medical researchers" (please take this with all the harmless sarcasm it is intended)

I was surprised that the guy survived 2½ years with their Fisher Pryce-brand trachea. That seems like a long time!

Update: After receiving a suspended sentence from Solna district court shortly after the publication of this video, the case went to the court of appeals. In June of this year they found Macchiarini guilty of 3 cases of aggravated assault, and he was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months in prison which he is now likely serving out.

Shoot, I was going to go forward with my groundbreaking research on surgically implanting a synthetic head covered in cardiac stem cells on a corpse, but I think I should reconsider

As an Italian scientist myself, I have only one thing to add to this video: no need to use olives in the analogy, Italy is also one of top producers of apples 😁 much more seriously, thanks a lot for your great videos!

Cultish behavior is inevitable for any issue that fascinates a lot of people. The head of whatever movement ends up POWER OVERWHELMING and going nuts, even if it may have started off innocent. Or is just a delusional cesspool from beginning to end like these cases. Except us, because we're immune to that kind of groupthink. All hail Dr. M. Crisis.

Imagine the spine being a bundle of 1800 pairs of telephone wires each broken down into sub bundles of 25 pairs bound together to make up the 1800 total count. Now cut it. Now your job is to re-splice each pair correctly with no mistakes as doing so will route signals to a different destination than was originally intended. Now multiply that task by a few ten thousands. There’s no “magic sauce” which can locate, align, and splice those severed nerve cells which were originally grown during gestation of the patient while a fetus. They elongated as the fetus grew, through being born, and throughout puberty until they reached their final length. The bundle of the spine was created during gestation. Its complexity is as old as the patient. This is why spinal injuries are so serious and life-changing as those long nerve cells don’t grow back.

You would not *believe* some of the goofy shit I went through with FaMoUs DoCtOrS I was *forced* to see in my personal injury lawsuit. I even suffered through an endoscopy procedure without medication (it failed as I was on a lot of drugs) and I overheard the doctor say she wanted to go ahead because it was Friday and she wanted to go home. She was covering for my doctor and obviously did not care. I coughed through the entire procedure and felt the instrument take a biopsy. They knew I was awake, I was staring at them.. they just kept telling me to close my eyes. I couldn't speak as I had the guard down my throat. I still have nightmares.

Sorry Rohin but we're gonna have to sue you for the emotional distress of subjecting us to James Corden

This Italian academic thanks you for the final words. One thing that is worth mentioning is that the pressure is even higher in the Italian academic system, with people who really don't deserve their positions being put there because they know the right people, poor pay (unless you are a rockstar), poor turnover and very limited opportunity for young researchers. I am of course not justifying what these crooks are doing, but I think that these are all factors that will encourage unscrupulous people to take shortcuts if they can. For the record, I am not an MD (as my wife likes to put it, I am a doctor of the non-useful kind). My perception however is that what I said about Italy holds true in medicine as well as in other fields. Finally, I love your more in depth videos :)

I've been a radiology transcriptionist since 2002, and I've always been turned off by celebrity scientists because the more time they spend on TV, the less time they're spending doing scientific fieldwork. None of the radiologists I work under are the least bit famous, but I'll trust them over TV quacks any day, because my radiologists don't mind specifying if something is known or merely suspected, and they don't mind saying if a particular issue is beyond a radiologist's professional scope of knowledge.

This reminds me of an old joke: Internists know everything and do nothing. Surgeons know nothing and do everything. Pathologists know everything and do everything, but too late.

Would love a video explaining the whole top 10 of retracted papers

Oh man. As a French, the pandemic has been a very tough time. Not only was there Didier Raoult, but also Christian Peronne, Alexandra Henrion-Claude, and even Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier who is now completely delirious. They all got invited in the media for months and treated as respectable authorities, even though Raoult had claimed COVID wouldn't be anymore dangerous than foot scooters, that there wouldn't be a second wave, and that lockdown was entirely ineffective. When the incompetent media finally lent an ear to whistleblowers, it was already too late, the charlatans had gained huge popular traction. And now we are still plagued with Raoultians still preaching the unfaillibility of their glorious prophet. Just a few days ago he claimed epidemic models for disease spread weren't science, but defended astrology as giving better answers than epidemiologic models.

The one thing I’ve realised in medical school is that there are all sorts of people who set out to become doctors. I can see quite a few of my peers who are doing this because they hope to make as much money as possible, ethics be damned. No one human being should be revered without any sort of critical thinking.

This kind of video hits close. I'm not comfortable getting into specifics from fear of backlash, but there's a Superstar Doctor who's positioned himself as a top specialist and his "research center" as a destination facility in diagnosing and treating my disease to the point where he's listed on several disease society and charity websites as a trusted physician and local doctors actively refer their patients to him. But he's incredibly suspicious in that he not only diagnoses virtually every new patient based on initial physical exam and/or reported symptoms, but he recommends the most unorthodox and invasive treatment methods (including bowel resections) regardless of symptom presentation/severity of the disease degeneration. He's extremely divisive in our community: his patients who believe him love him and credit him as a savior and are fiercely combatative against his critics. But genuinely: he's a horrific monster taking advantage of an undeserved niche and subjecting vulnerable people to being needlessly butchered.

A person can be a pathological liar without being a psychopath, which should be our first assumption, even if people suffer by their actions. Selfish reckless dangerous etc, isn't the same as fearless.

Only one cult I follow and that’s Rohinism

"The Ballad of Super star Surgeon Paolo Macchiarini" was wonderful to listen to. Henrik Widegren is a genius. Some would even call him a superstar...? lmao

Italian doctor here and this record really pains me, but at least I'm aware of the fact that for every scam artist, our country can point to a brilliant mind, hopefully one day the ratio will shift towards the latter. Anyway, really appreciated the video, a great ability to synthesise topics and articulate the nuances as always. Ciao 🇮🇹🍕

I knew of none of these. The most disheartening is the role Karolinska had in this. How are we going to trust their Nobel selections ever more?

Finally someone talks about this rediculous claims about Head transplant. In 2015 I was in my first year of medical school and was just learning about the very limited regeneration potential of damaged nerve cells and the complexity of neurophysiology, and was like wtf, this can't be true 😂

The fact that the people who spoke up about the fraud were punished is another reason why fame-chasers are allowed to continue on making unsubstantiated claims. When the truth isn’t treated with respect liars will scam their way to the top unchecked.

The people that go around claiming to “trust science” genuinely don’t seem to understand the scientific method.

It's difficult to convince people that they've been scammed if their salaries depend on not knowing. That's exactly what happened at the Karolinska Institutet and why it took so long to admit that Macchiarini was a fraudster and to kick him out.

I could not help but burst out laughing when you recalled Paolo Macchiarinis' wedding guests. Vladimir Putin , Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton , THE POPE , Nicholas Sarkozy and RUSSELL CROWE 😂😂 Fantastic video. I had wondered what had happened to Sergio canavero , I remember hearing of him years ago.

Antisocial personality disorder sufferers do tend to go into medical/law fields. Mainly due to the power it gives them over others. And its challenging enough they dont get bored. (One of the symptoms is a constant need for stimulation) But the lack of empathy, morals, their ego and arrogance, etc It can result in malpractice and in this video's case, this super start thingy.

One of your best videos yet! Very funny and well presented. If that is your new editor doing their job, then keep paying them!

Such a well-spoken and insightful physician. You make what is so hard to do, look very easy. I aspire to hold the ability to communicate so well one day as a future physician.

I remember the first 3d printed sternum printed to exactly match the patient during the operation and it blew my mind. But its bone replacemet. A small step forward. But a plastic traquea? Dear Lord

This video was very hard for me to watch. I have personally been mistreated by several doctors. But it very much needed to be said. Thank you, Rohin.

"Because I've never seen him at any of our meetings" Now that's the sense of humor I come here for

New background looking like my grandmother’s curtains

If a homie wants to watch a similar story about scientific fraud in physics my boy Bobby Broccoli made a great three part series about Jan Hendrix Schön.

Bravo, Dr. Rohin Frances! The three compelling stories work so well at brilliantly illustrating your points about superstar doctor/grifters. I couldn't help but recall the scandal of another superstar charmer, Dr. Mark Midei, a former interventional cardiologist in Maryland who became the poster boy for implanting medically unnecessary coronary stents - until he got caught. He had been telling many of his patients that they needed stents to open up coronary blockages in the 90% range, while a subsequent independent review of their records showed actual blockages closer to 10% or less (stents, as you know, are not typically even considered for blockages under 70%) Midei has since been relieved of his license to practice medicine after federal charges of healthcare fraud. He also faced over 80 medical malpractice lawsuits (yet he subsequently decided to file a $60 million defamation lawsuit against his employer, St. Joseph's Hospital in Towson, because they'd sent embarrassing notices of his firing to 369 of his affected patients, thus tarnishing his stellar reputation. It's astonishing to consider the puzzling way these charming superstar docs still manage get away with their crimes (except maybe for Louisiana's Dr. Mehmood Patel, another stent-happy cardiologist convicted and sentenced to 10 years in federal prison). The Baltimore Sun, which covered Midei's federal fraud investigation for over a year, reported in 2011 that one elderly patient, when told that her coronary blockage had actually been a barely detectable 10%, and that her cardiologist had lied to her about a 90% blockage, replied: "I don't care what you say! Dr. Midei SAVED MY LIFE!" Loved this fascinating - and entertaining (if you're not the doc being skewered) cautionary tale.

Dr. Francis, I’d most like to hear your advice on how a layperson can be medically literate and a properly-skeptic self-advocate without, you know, blithely citing a Tweet at one’s doctor or falling for hyped wellness nonsense. If you fancy a go at this with Difficulty set to 8 on the Neo•Geo scale, direct your thoughts specifically at patients in suboptimal healthcare environments-like here in the US, for example.

I actually watched the first documentary that started the controversy (I think). They interviewed Macchiarini, and even though they prime you to more or less know he was a lying deceitful man, he was so charismatic that the gut feeling was that he was a decent guy. Quite scary.

I think most of the problem is the press reporting thing way before it's actually practical. Came to to that conclusion over eating liver while pregnant. Pre first pregnancy - good, during first pregnancy bad, second good, third bad. The press doesn't care about worrying people, just headlines.

I really enjoy your content. Even at your snarkiest, you always seem to genuinely come from a place of compassion. You don’t ever punch down & I applaud you for that. I also like your reluctance to opine on new and complex situations immediately. You seem to operate from the perspective that a considered and nuanced position takes time to cultivate, and that cultivation is probably not best served while in the public eye [or reduced to a 12 word sound bite]. I don’t mean to damn you with faint praise. I truly appreciate how, before you offer your opinion, you take the time to inform and vet your opinion.

Great commentary. Very thoughtful.

I was hanging out at a stitch-and-gab one time when (after I'd mentioned my spouse's blindness) this woman started to regale me with what her husband (supposedly an ophthalmologist) was doing with stem cells. He was supposedly curing everything from autism to strokes to glaucoma. smh. Added on top? This is a university town with a medical school & 3 big hospital systems. Her husband's office was miles away from any of them so he clearly was doing his so-called research on his own in some burb's business zone

My life was ruined by a superstar doctor. His name is Dr Lenke from NYC. I had a 54 degree curve in my spine which means I had minor kyphosis. He performed a 13 level fusion on my spine. My torso in now immobile. I am depressed and do not leave my house.

Truly excellent work, Dr. Francis

FYI Rohin, there was a longevity ad on this video telling me to "damage my cells less and heal them more to live long"

Very few people on RU-vid have communicated an understanding of science and evidence based medicine as good as yours. Sometimes the extreme fervor that people pour into "science enthusiasm" can be nearly as dangerous as the anti-science conspiracy types.

That "dream" wedding sounds terrifying + deeply unpleasant to me.

your channel is incredible!! very good delivery and interesting stuff! instant sub

Watched a few of Doctor Mike recently and thought of you sighing at the high production value and largely obvious guidance 😂

Let's start the medlife crisis cult. We shall adenosine ourselves to transend into the post cardioverted world.

Great video, I love the in depth format

This video could be summarized by “everyone is susceptible to propaganda. If you don’t think you are, then you are especially vulnerable.”

Great video, enjoy the longer format. Well presented and with some bangers of jokes in there too. Keep the content coming!

Excellent video Rohin. I am looking forward to the next Tom Scott video, I joined the Jackson 5 reunion tour, it wasn't what I expected.

Excellent as always. Thanks!

great video! just got out of school and this felt like a truly engaging lecture

Cough Cough Dr Mike partying without a mask during the pandemic.

Henrik Widegren is our national treasure

This is so enlightening, hilarious, and absolutely brilliant!!

Fantastic video on the topic!!

A fascinating deep-dive, well done! Plus you sound great with your ICON Pro :)

Oh yes, the way academia is structured and incentivizes this really should be the topic of another video, I'd love to watch it! And tbqh, this didn't even feel like a 25+ minute video, it could have gone on, at least for me 😂👍🏻

Fascinating video!! Great job

Louisville, Kentucky? I am very sorry to hear that such a medical scientist fell into the world of fraud when we can boast of the second successful (truly!) full hand reattachment in the world. (France beat us to the first one.) Our city boasts an excellent medical community and medical school. Please do not judge us on one bad apple.

Why did you steal my grandmas curtains? (great video btw)

Very informative. Loved watching this.

to be fair to him, "the graft was working well" was the truth

This was so well done! A bliss to see aspects in this I haven't thought of before. I do wonder what your thoughts are on the charisma or charm of these people! I think it plays a part in why this got this far, at least with Macchiarini, that I vaguely remember someone testified to.. I see the story as a manifestation of the human desire for a leader that is charming but determined, the strong man. He showed no doubt, no remorse. And that is by many the signs of a good leader, while it is quite the opposite. So I think you are absolutely right, this will happen again.

‘He claimed to be an on call global team of doctors who responded to VIP emergencies, which i know isn’t true cos i haven’t seen him at any of our meetings’ , still haven’t stopped laughing at this one and it’s been a few minutes. Have you ever considered being a comedian cos there’s some seriously well written jokes in your videos.

Just stumbled across this video - just subscribed as your content is excellent (I particularly enjoyed the house of cardiac line)

I couldn't even focus on anything you said about the head transplant because I was transfixed trying to think about who the potential "patient" would be for such a procedure.

A weird observation, but all these docs, including Canavero were Italian originally. Also in Zurich Switzerland, there was a scandal recently about one of the worlds most prestigious chairs in heart surgery, and the doctor was also Italian. I have researched the past ten years with mostly Italian people and I find them some of the most integer, smart, creative, hard-working and overall great colleagues you could wish for. It's just weird observation here....

I was taught in highschool this happened with Newton and his theory of light (and many other things, I'm sure) and his arguments against Christiaan Huygens. People just assumed Newton was correct because of his popularity and it hurt the careers of the people he argued against using bad data and poor experimentation. I think it's set us back and continues to do so, although far less so now than it did. I think it's both an artifact of the past and a human trait and the answer has been the same; rigorous scientific theory and proof.

Love this kind of long history video, world love this to become a series.

I’ve been waiting for this one

"If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" - that's exactly what I thought when reading on metformin, then freshly prescribed for my just discovered mild type II diabetes. Well, it this rare occasion, it pretty much lived up to the hype.

the details in this video really remind me of Jan Hendrik Schon, another complete researcher fraud that had a very interesting video series made by the RU-vid channel BobbyBroccoli - it's quite interesting to see the how pervasive this problem is within academia

Incompetent and incurious journalists are a big part of this problem. They are meant to be vetting these people, especially the ones who make extraordinary claims. Also, I subbed on the basis of watching 20 minutes of this video. Truly superb content.

As you said that knowing less makes scams easier to spot, I must as well say that 18:38 sounds like a part of one

“Their own Personal Jesus MD”, excellently thought out play on words.

As someone who dropped out of med school I have too much fun watching your videos

Why is the ballad an absolute banger? 🔥

Thanks for posting this video. I was familiar with the original story but not the followup. Looking forward to those "5 minutes to expert cardiac surgeon" lessons from you (;

Funnily enough, when I think of superstar doctors I think of You, Doctor Mike, Mama Doctor Jones, Doctor Hope etc... I might be skewed since I'm a youtuber not a tv watcher. I also tend to approach the information you give as "this is what I've heard from a doctor who seems to be reliable, if new evidence comes forward reassess." Not that I'm best equipped to reassess of course.

Ladies and gentlemen, please let me sing Let me tell a story so hideous and grim It is just as crooked as a tortellini It is about the surgeon Paolo Macchiarini It was in Stockholm, Sweden, 2010 A surgeon was recruited by enterprising men They celebrated with Champagne and Martini Hooray! We got the superstar Paolo Macchiarini He wanted to facilitate the patients' respiration With advanced medical regeneration He thought outside the box and anything goes So he planted stem cells on a garden hose But some people were somewhat skeptical What if the new trachea did not stick at all? But no one likes a naysaying genie So they cheered and bowed to Paolo Macchiarini The next year in Stockholm, opening night The OR was packed, everybody wanted a bite But Paolo loved animals, protocol be cursed So he tried the operation on humans first In fancy papers he described his victory And soon he operated patient 2 and 3 But he forgot to mention something very odd How the first patient was coughing up blood

Reminds of the tale of the three Chinese brothers who were doctors: The eldest was known throughout the land as an extraordinary doctor who could heal almost anyone, The middle brother was know throughout their home region The youngest wasn't know outside of his village Both of the older brothers said their younger sibling was the best doctor, because people in his village didn't get sick.

Fantastic script. Extremely well written, clear and consice

You know Rohin is a desi the moment you see those curtains