Two former leaders of Sweden’s prestigious Karolinska Institute were asked to resign as judges from the panel that awards the Nobel Prize for Medicine as a result of a scandal surrounding a disgraced transplant surgeon fired by the university earlier this year, the BBC reported.
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He became known for his pioneering transplant operations that used a patient’s own stem cells to replace damaged windpipes.
The Swedish government has dismissed the board of the Karolinska Institute after an investigation showed it was negligent when hiring surgeon Paolo Macchiarini and letting him operate on patients.
The two judges who lost their positions on the Nobel panel have both served as heads of the Karolinska Institute, and were among several individuals suspected of ignoring warnings about the Italian windpipe scientist.
Macchiarini, a thoracic surgeon, was hired by the Karolinska Institutet in 2010.
Hamsten has already resigned from Karolinska, and Wallberg was sacked from her position as head of the Swedish Higher Education Authority on Monday.
“People have been harmed because of the actions of the Karolinska Institute and also the Karolinska University Hospital”.
When two of the three patients who underwent the procedure died, however, Macchiarini was placed under investigation of involuntary manslaughter and having falsified research to present the operation as more convincingly life-saving than it truly was.
Sweden’s Queen Silvia, India’s President Pranab Mukherjee, Sweden’s King Carl Gustaf and Professor Anders Hamsten, president of the Karolinska Institute, during a visit to the Nobel Forum, Stockholm, Sweden, June 2, 2015.
The next victor Nobel Prize in Medicine will be announced in October.
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Two of the patients have since died while the third remains in hospital. Much of the work is done by the Nobel Committee that is appointed by the Assembly.
