Doctor fined €210K over illegal AIDS tests
A Spanish HIV researcher will have to cough up €210,000 after he was caught performing unauthorized medical tests on 311 patients using a powerful new compound thought to lessen the side effects of AIDS treatment.
Spanish doctor Vicente Soriano, who works at Madrid’s Carlos III Hospital, was found guilty by the city’s Supreme Court of Justice of conducting a clinical trial without the approval of Spain’s Agency for Medicines and Health Products.
They also found him liable for failing to obtain insurance for the medical trials and lying to patients when claiming he had been given the green light by the hospital to perform the tests.
Soriano, a world-leading investigator and author in the field of HIV and AIDS, lost all of his appeals except the one in which he claimed not to have withheld information from the hospital’s managers.
His unauthorized investigations looked to establish whether HIV patients with undetectable levels of the virus in their blood could be treated with raltegravir, a powerful new compound known to have fewer side effects.
Even after being found guilty, Soriano has continued to claim he carried out “observational studies” on an already commercialized product rather than a clinical test that requires authorization from official medical bodies, online medical newspaper Sciencemag.org reported on Thursday.
Comments
See Also
Spanish doctor Vicente Soriano, who works at Madrid’s Carlos III Hospital, was found guilty by the city’s Supreme Court of Justice of conducting a clinical trial without the approval of Spain’s Agency for Medicines and Health Products.
They also found him liable for failing to obtain insurance for the medical trials and lying to patients when claiming he had been given the green light by the hospital to perform the tests.
Soriano, a world-leading investigator and author in the field of HIV and AIDS, lost all of his appeals except the one in which he claimed not to have withheld information from the hospital’s managers.
His unauthorized investigations looked to establish whether HIV patients with undetectable levels of the virus in their blood could be treated with raltegravir, a powerful new compound known to have fewer side effects.
Even after being found guilty, Soriano has continued to claim he carried out “observational studies” on an already commercialized product rather than a clinical test that requires authorization from official medical bodies, online medical newspaper Sciencemag.org reported on Thursday.
Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.
Please log in here to leave a comment.