Ignazio Marino

Ignazio Roberto Maria Marino[1] (pronounced [iɲˈɲattsjo maˈriːno]; born 10 March 1955) is an Italian transplant surgeon, scientist, and former politician who was Mayor of Rome from 2013 to 2015. He was a member of the centre-left Democratic Party and held a seat in the Italian Senate from 2006 until his as Mayor of Rome in 2013. Near the beginning of his term his referral to prosecutors of organized criminals (who had tried to approach Mayor Marino) helped start the 2014 Rome investigation on organized crime and corruption.

Ignazio Marino
Marino in 2012
33rd Mayor of Rome
In office
12 June 2013 – 31 October 2015
Preceded byGianni Alemanno
Succeeded byVirginia Raggi
Member of the Italian Senate
In office
28 April 2006 – 22 May 2013
ConstituencyLazio
Personal details
Born
Ignazio Roberto Maria Marino

(1955-03-10) 10 March 1955
Genoa, Italy
NationalityItalian
Political partyPD
Alma materUniversità Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
ProfessionTransplant surgeon
Scientist

Early life and education

Marino was born in Genoa to a Sicilian father and a Swiss mother and is the oldest of three children (he has two sisters). He graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome. He then trained at the Transplant Center of the University of Cambridge and the University of Pittsburgh's Starzl Transplantation Institute,[2] and studied liver transplants under the tutelage of Thomas Starzl.[3]

Early medical career

In 1992 he was appointed Associate Director of the National Liver Transplant Center of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center of Pittsburgh.[4] He was a member of the surgical team which in June 1992 and January 1993 performed the first two baboon-to-human liver xenotransplants in history. The clinical trial was coordinated by Thomas Starzl.[5][n 1]

Marino founded Palermo's ISMETT (Mediterranean Institute for Transplantation and Advanced Specialized Therapies), the first liver transplant center in Sicily, founded in 1997 thanks to (a partnership between the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the Italian Government) where Marino performed the first liver transplantation on July 31, 1999. He has been a Director and CEO of the Institute, and after performing Sicily’s first orthotopic liver transplant he performed the first 100 transplants including a number of live donor kidney and liver transplantations.[4][6]

On July 17, 2001 he successfully did the first organ transplant in Italy on a person with HIV undergoing highly active antiretroviral therapy—a kidney transplant performed in response to a personal request from the patient himself (along with the donor, his father), who had been turned down by all other Italian transplant centres.[7] A clinical success, the operation sparked an institutional dispute in Italy at the time.[n 2]

In 2002 he left his position as Professor of Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh and took on a post as Professor of Surgery and Director of Liver Transplantation at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. In 2003 he was appointed as Director of the Division of Transplantation at Thomas Jefferson University.[4] Marino has personally performed over 650 transplants. He is a byline author of about 500 peer-review articles and has authored three scientific books.[4] In 2005 he published the book Credere e curare ("Treating and Believing"); the book deals with the medical profession and the influence that faith has upon it.[11] In 2005 he founded Imagine ONLUS, an international non-profit organisation engaged in international solidarity activities with special regard to health issues.[12] He is also a member of the Editorial Board for about 20 international scientific journals.

Political career

Senate

Marino ran as an independent candidate with the Democrats of the Left in the 2006 general elections, and was elected as a Senator and served as the Chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Health.[13] In the latter role Senator Marino wrote a law on living wills.[14] He was re-elected in 2008,[15] and in his second tenure as a Senator Marino served as Chairman of the Investigative Committee on the Italian National Health Service: in this capacity he conducted an investigation on the death of Stefano Cucchi, who died while in custody, and performed the first national investigation on judiciary criminal hospitals, eventually changing the law and the standard of treatment in Italy.[16] In 2009 he ran as a candidate for the Democratic Party leadership election where he placed third with 12.5% of the votes.[17]

Mayor of Rome

Marino ran the 2013 election for Mayor of Rome as a centre-left candidate.[18] After leading in the first round[19] he was elected (on 10 June) Mayor of Rome at the second ballot, winning 63.9% of the votes in a run-off against the centre-right candidate, the incumbent mayor Gianni Alemanno.[20]

Among Marino's projects have been the controversial closing to cars of Via dei Fori Imperiali, the road around the Colosseum, and Piazza di Spagna (in front of the famous Spanish steps) and the opening them only to pedestrian and bicycle traffic. Marino cited his experiences as a cyclist in Philadelphia as the foundation for his having learned to live without a car.[21]

Shortly after his victory in the elections, he was approached by an organized crime network that rigged public contracts and embezzled funds. Marino took the case to prosecutors, starting the 2014 Rome corruption scandal.[22] On October 18, 2014, Marino registered the marriages of 16 same-sex couples who requested it to the Municipality, which followed similar acts by other Italian mayors. Same-sex marriages and civil unions were illegal in Italy at the time, and by registering the marriages, Mayor Marino hoped to force the hand of national legislators to clarify a deepening legal muddle around same-sex unions, particularly for Italians married abroad. [23]

On 12 October 2015, Marino resigned amidst an accusation of expense scandal that had been made by the opposition parties of M5S and Fratelli d'Italia, but on 29 October he retired the resignation. Nevertheless, on 30 October he was ousted from his position after 26 of the 48 members of the City Council resigned. He was replaced by a government-appointed commissioner.[24] According to Reuters, a former anti-mafia prosecutor was quoted as saying, "Marino trod on the toes of too many vested interests who didn’t want to give up their privileges."[18]

On 7 October 2016, Rome's court acquitted Marino over the allegations of embezzlement, fraud, and forgery that had been made by the centre-right opposition parties of M5S and Fratelli d'Italia and after which he had stepped down to prove his innocence. The Supreme Court of Italy decided for a full acquittal and ruled that Marino's actions "did not constitute a crime" and that the alleged facts "did not take place," according to article 530 of the Italian C.P.P.[25]

Return to medicine

In 2016, Marino returned to Thomas Jefferson University and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital[26] where he had remained a Professor of Surgery. He has also represented Thomas Jefferson University in Europe, through collaborations with universities including Università di Bologna and Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. He also developed a Dual MD Degree program partnering Jefferson and the School of Medicine of Università Cattolica.[27] Marino has been working to increase the number of live donor kidney transplants performed internationally through the Global Kidney Exchange. In 2020, Marino became Jefferson Executive Vice President for International Innovative Strategic Ventures.[28][29][30]

Notes
  1. Although partially successful on purely technical grounds, this novel approach to the treatment of terminal cirrhosis from chronic hepatitis B infection turned out to be a clinical dead end. These were the first xenotransplants (i.e. animal-to-human organ transplants) to be performed since the case of Baby Fae (a 2.2  kg newborn infant who had survived just 21 days after receiving a baboon heart in 1984). Despite their different size, baboons share many of the physiological and genetic characteristics of human beings but are resistant to chronic hepatitis B virus infection. Both transplanted patients had terminal liver failure due to hepatitis B. One, an HIV-positive 35-year-old man, lived 70 days after the transplant and maintained nearly normal liver function, the other, a 62-year-old man, survived 26 days without regaining consciousness.[5] This clinical strategy was not pursued. In addition to clinical problems, such as organ rejection, there exists a threat of possible cross-species transmission of disease, as well as other bioethical/animalist concerns. At the time, these two xenotransplants provoked heated controversy in this regard.
  2. The Minister of Health, Girolamo Sirchia, publicly criticized Marino for undertaking the operation,[7] and the National Transplant Centre (CNT) advised him not to perform any further transplants on people with HIV.[8] This stance conflicted with the opinion of the president of the bioethics panel of the National Research Council who openly supported Marino's decision, as well as with views expressed by (among others) the president of the National Bioethics Committee, Giovanni Berlinguer, who argued that people with HIV should not be excluded a priori from the benefits of transplantation.[8] Nowadays, similar transplants are routinely conducted both in Italy and elsewhere.[9][10]

References
  1. "Senatori Eletti (Italia ed Estero)" (PDF). Elenco alfabetico degli eletti nella XVII legislatura. Senato della Repubblica. 2013. Retrieved 13 June 2013.
  2. https://www.agi.it/cronaca/ignazio_marino_che_fine_ha_fatto-4884080/news/2019-01-23/
  3. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/nation_world/20130618_Former_Phila__surgeon_now_mayor_of_Rome.html
  4. https://roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2013/06/10/news/dai_trapianti_al_campidoglio_marino_una_vita_da_irregolare-60810127/
  5. Starzl, TE; Murase, N; Tzakis, A; Fung, JJ; Todo, S; Demetris, AJ; Manez, R; Marino, IR; Valdivia, L (August 1994). "Clinical xenotransplantation". Xenotransplantation. 1 (1): 3–7. doi:10.1111/j.1399-3089.1994.tb00044.x. PMC 3000172. PMID 21151801.
  6. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/top-transplant-surgeon-loses-heart-and-packs-his-bags-1.345407
  7. "Primo trapianto in Italia a un sieropositivo". La Repubblica (in Italian). 28 August 2001. Retrieved 11 June 2013.
  8. Criscenti, Gianfranco (6 October 2001). "L'Hiv esclude il trapianto?". Galileo - giornale di scienza (in Italian). Retrieved 11 June 2013.
  9. Bossini, N; Sandrini, S; Valerio, F (July–August 2012). "[Kidney transplant in patients with HIV infection]". Giornale Italiano di Nefrologia: Organo Ufficiale della Societa Italiana di Nefrologia (in Italian and English). 29 (4): 404–17. PMID 22843153.
  10. Norman, SP; Kommareddi, M; Kaul, DR (July–September 2012). "Update on kidney transplantation in HIV-infected recipients". AIDS Reviews. 14 (3): 195–207. PMID 22833063.
  11. https://books.google.ca/books?id=T9Jbfijw3hgC&pg=PA3
  12. https://argomenti.ilsole24ore.com/ignazio-marino.html
  13. https://www.thelocal.it/20130613/pioneering-medic-to-mayor-of-rome
  14. https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/suppl/2006/10/05/333.7571.719-a.DC1/Euthanasia0710.pdf
  15. https://livingtorontojournal.com/rome-no-cranes-but-a-big-hog-convention-and-bicycle-love/
  16. http://www.romatoday.it/cronaca/periti-stefano-cucchini-cause-morte.html
  17. https://web.archive.org/web/20091110105445/http://www.lastampa.it/redazione/cmsSezioni/politica/200911articoli/49176girata.asp
  18. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-rome-mayor/ousting-of-rome-mayor-shows-italys-resistance-to-change-idUSKCN0SM20W20151028
  19. "Election setback for Grillo protest party in Italy". BBC News. 28 May 2013.
  20. "Elezioni Comunali 2013, Liste e risultati: Roma". La Repubblica. 10 June 2013. Retrieved 10 June 2013.
  21. http://articles.philly.com/2013-12-18/news/45298798_1_ignazio-marino-via-dei-fori-imperiali-schwinn
  22. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/world/italy-gasps-as-inquiry-reveals-mobs-long-reach.html
  23. Pianigiani, Gaia (2014-10-23). "Unable to Marry Gay Couples, Some Italian Mayors Rebel". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-11-11.
  24. "The Holy See cracks down on leaks about its scandalous finances". The Economist. 7 November 2015. Retrieved 7 November 2015.
  25. https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/10/07/world/europe/ap-eu-italy-rome-mayor.html
  26. https://health.usnews.com/doctors/ignazio-marino-884251
  27. https://www.wantedinrome.com/news/rome-and-philadelphia-make-medical-history.html
  28. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajt.14484
  29. https://careonline.it/2017/08/trapianti-dorgano-la-sfida-di-una-proposta-innovativa-2/
  30. https://vimeo.com/191483094
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