CLEARWATER — Vladimir Martin called himself "doctor" and ran 17 clinical trials of new drugs for major pharmaceutical companies before one patient noticed he didn't have a medical license.
The patient alerted the St. Petersburg Times, whose resulting story led to a state investigation. On Saturday, Martin, 43, was arrested on charges of practicing medicine without a license. He was later released from the Pinellas County Jail on $10,000 bail. The felony charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and maximum fine of $5,000.
The Clearwater man, who changed his last name from Kossatchev after moving to Florida in 2003, went to medical school in the former Soviet Union and practiced in a hospital in his native Ukraine.
"I don't have to tell them I'm not a doctor," Martin told the Times last year when asked about his failure to become licensed in Florida. "I am not practicing medicine."
But Ruth Weber, a 74-year-old Clearwater resident, told the Times in April 2008 that the man who called himself Dr. Martin enrolled her in a study for lower-back pain and adjusted the dosage of her medicine. Only licensed physicians are supposed to conduct such activities. Patients in the study were randomly selected to receive a new Johnson & Johnson painkiller called tapentadol, a placebo or the potent narcotic oxycodone.
1 comment:
Anyways, I like vadlo biomedical cartoons!
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