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Vicente Soriano has gone from being a leading expert on HIV to being expelled from his hospital for manipulating patients’ data.
Feb 22, 2017 - 6:29 PM
The rise and fall of a top Spanish researcher
Vicente Soriano has gone from being a leading expert on HIV to being expelled from his hospital for manipulating patients’ data.
Feb 22, 2017 - 6:29 PM
There was a time when the name of Vicente Soriano brought happiness to those responsible in the Madrid public health service. Specialist in infectious illnesses, he was a species of a rock star in the scientific specialist publications, leading him to be considered one of the best investigators in the world.
In 2010 his team led the world investigation on HIV from the small hospital in Madrid the Carlos III.
If today anyone searched for his name in any current publication as an expert researcher, it would not be found. He was a spoilt child in the Madrid publicity machinery when Esperanza Aguirre was in charge, and now has spent years sunk in an administrative and judicial nightmare which ended up with him losing his post.
He has faced one of the strictest disciplinary sanctions that can be remembered – for manipulating the data of patients, altering clinical histories to exaggerate the illnesses of those suffering Hepatitis C.
Soriano was a consultant at the hospital, something which has been dangling for years involved in scandals since 2012. It was then he appeared untouchable in his career, but it was soon to collapse following an anonymous tip off in 2010. Someone sent documents to the Spanish Agency for Medicaments and Sanitary Products (Aemps in Spanish) accompanied by an alert ‘Soriano has made an illegal clinical test with HIV patients’
The inspection machinery went into action and some months later the Concierge of Health determined that Soriano had tested medications for HIV patients in his public hospital without asking for authorisation from Aemps, nor from the ethics committee in the same hospital, without taking out the obligatory insurance policies and without informing the patients they were being used as guinea pigs. He appealed the fine but ended up paying 210,000 €
This was just the first of continued series actions being taken to court. The director of clinic testing in the Carlos III, Manuel Ángel Salinero, opened a penal cause in 2013 for falsifying a signature on the authorisation to carry out the tests.
Lastly suspicions were aroused in the middle of last year. The Health Concierge sentenced him to two years without work or pay for manipulating clinical histories to make his hepatitis C patients appear in a poorer condition than the truth.
By then he had given up research and only dedicated himself to assisting: attending to patients with infectious illnesses.
Soriano always denied manipulating any data or document and had the excuse of documents being mislaid when the Carlos III was moved into the La Paz.
Some patients still defend him, but others see a man with too much ambition and lacking ethics.
In 2010 his team led the world investigation on HIV from the small hospital in Madrid the Carlos III.
Vicente Soriano - archive photo
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If today anyone searched for his name in any current publication as an expert researcher, it would not be found. He was a spoilt child in the Madrid publicity machinery when Esperanza Aguirre was in charge, and now has spent years sunk in an administrative and judicial nightmare which ended up with him losing his post.
He has faced one of the strictest disciplinary sanctions that can be remembered – for manipulating the data of patients, altering clinical histories to exaggerate the illnesses of those suffering Hepatitis C.
Soriano was a consultant at the hospital, something which has been dangling for years involved in scandals since 2012. It was then he appeared untouchable in his career, but it was soon to collapse following an anonymous tip off in 2010. Someone sent documents to the Spanish Agency for Medicaments and Sanitary Products (Aemps in Spanish) accompanied by an alert ‘Soriano has made an illegal clinical test with HIV patients’
The inspection machinery went into action and some months later the Concierge of Health determined that Soriano had tested medications for HIV patients in his public hospital without asking for authorisation from Aemps, nor from the ethics committee in the same hospital, without taking out the obligatory insurance policies and without informing the patients they were being used as guinea pigs. He appealed the fine but ended up paying 210,000 €
This was just the first of continued series actions being taken to court. The director of clinic testing in the Carlos III, Manuel Ángel Salinero, opened a penal cause in 2013 for falsifying a signature on the authorisation to carry out the tests.
Lastly suspicions were aroused in the middle of last year. The Health Concierge sentenced him to two years without work or pay for manipulating clinical histories to make his hepatitis C patients appear in a poorer condition than the truth.
By then he had given up research and only dedicated himself to assisting: attending to patients with infectious illnesses.
Soriano always denied manipulating any data or document and had the excuse of documents being mislaid when the Carlos III was moved into the La Paz.
Some patients still defend him, but others see a man with too much ambition and lacking ethics.
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