Dr. Death Season 2: What Is The Real (Horrific) Story Of Dr. Paolo Macchiarini?

True crime has been big business for streaming services over the last decade, and if the popularity of shows like "Dr. Death" is any indication, it doesn't look like that's going to change any time soon. The upcoming second season of the series follows the life and crimes of Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, a surgeon who was once seen as a visionary architect for the future of medicine and is now thought to have been a dangerous fraud.

In the upcoming season of "Dr. Death," investigative journalist Benita Alexander (Mandy Moore) finds herself looking into the supposedly revolutionary surgeries of Dr. Macchiarini (Édgar Ramírez) and gets to know him a bit too well along the way. But, as many fans await the Season 2 premiere on Peacock, they may be curious as to what the surgeon has been accused of in real life.

Macchiarini pioneered a new form of thoracic surgery that involved inserting a synthetic trachea covered in stem cells into a patient's throat. He performed the surgery three times at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, but the experimental procedure appears to have done more harm than good as all three patients seemingly died from complications of the procedure.

While the three initial patients already suffered from extenuating health problems before the surgery, there are thought to be enough elements connecting the circumstances of their deaths that Maccharini has since been held legally responsible for his part in their deaths.

The details of the deaths eventually led to Paolo Macchiarini's conviction in Sweden to two and a half years in prison for medical misconduct and fraudulent research. Swedish law holds that despite Maccharini's intention to help his patients, he knowingly performed the surgeries while being aware of the risks. This is even though two of the three surgeries were non-emergency cases. Thus, he has become the focus of "Dr. Death" Season 2, as well as the Netflix true-crime docuseries "Bad Surgeon."

Since the conviction, Maccharini's attempts to appeal have been blocked by the Swedish Supreme Court, and it is thought that the disgraced surgeon will serve some or all of his sentence as a result. Although he is currently in prison, Macchiarini has commented on the case in the wake of his conviction. "The intention of harming is the most awful accusation that you can make to a doctor," he said in a statement. "In the operating room, we were 20, 25 people. What surprises me is, why I am here alone?" As further quoted by the Associated Press, the surgeon insisted that he and his team "did the transplant in good faith."

While many true crime fans are already familiar with the case from the podcast version of "Dr. Death," others will be able to see the events dramatized when Season 2 of the Peacock series returns on December 21, 2023.