Medical trial gone wrong the company is refusing to pay for medical treatment.

[trogdor1289]

NRI guinea pig fears he may die soon

London, July 30
NRI student Nav Modi, one of the "Elephant Men" who nearly died in March during a botched drugs trial in a London hospital, fears he may have only two more years to live.

"It's a really bizarre feeling when you discover you might be dead in a couple of years or even in a couple of months," 24-year-old Modi who has just graduated from university and was looking forward to a career in his family's electrical business told The Sunday Times.

Modi and his fellow patients were left seriously ill during the trial of the TGN 1412 drug. His head swelled up like a balloon and he suffered multiple organ failure.

Ryan Wilson, 21, another guinea pig, suffered gangrene that made his toes and fingers go black. All his toes and three of his fingers will have to be amputated; he had heart failure, kidney failure, pneumonia, septicaemia and liver failure.

Mohamed Abdelhady, 29, a bar manager, suffered severe head and chest swelling. He was so bloated that his girlfriend Myfanwy Marshall said he was unrecognizable.

The patients had volunteered for the trial after being lured with the offer of £2,000 each to test the drug made by TeGenero, a newly formed German drug firm.

Parexel, the American firm that administered the tests, told them there would be no serious side effects.

On March 13 this year, Modi and the other five patients were injected with TGN1412 in the Parexel drug testing suite at Northwick Park in northwest London.

At first, Modi recalled, he did not notice anything. But then a horrifying sequence of events began to unfold: "It started about 40 minutes later with a headache. A couple of minutes later that turned into a severe headache.

"It was like a huge, heavy foot was being pressed down on my head. I started moaning and crying, but the doctor just told me to calm down. He said it would go away. I begged him to do something. I told him the pain was killing me." Modi then developed a back pain so severe that he was unable to lie down. "I was jumping up and down on the bed and screaming." All around the other patients were going through similar agony.

His girlfriend, Divya Vegda, 22, said he was looking like an "Elephant Man". "My whole body was swollen up, puffed up like a huge balloon," said Modi. "It was like they had pumped gas into me." Four months later he still suffers from occasional lapses of memory, severe headaches, back pain and diarrhoea.

He and the others have been led to believe that while their symptoms might persist for awhile, their long-term future was not at risk.

However, a study by Professor Richard Powell, an expert in immunology at Nottingham University, has changed all that.

Last week Modi received the results of Powell's medical tests, commissioned by his lawyers to establish the extent of the damage the drug has done on him. The assessment has left him in a state of shock.

Martyn Day, the lawyer representing Modi and three of the other patients, showed them Powell's findings, last week.

"They face a lifetime of contracting cancers and all the various auto-immune diseases from lupus to MS, from rheumatoid arthritis to ME," he said.

When news of the disaster broke, TeGenero admitted liability. But it has since gone into liquidation and its insurance cover is worth only £2 million, payable if court proceedings are not pursued. The company set up for the purpose of making the drug, is not worth suing.
Modi said "I have made the biggest mistake of my life. I feel like I've given away my life for £2,000. None of us is sure about the future. It could be that in six months' time we are dead." Parexel did not respond when asked to comment. — PTI

EDIT: The below article is a diffrenet one from slashdot. The above one is from the Tribune India section: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060731/world.htm#3.

"The four TGN1412 test victims learned recently that they have no detectable t-cells, which makes it "likely" (read certain) they will suffer from numerous diseases and truncated lifespans. It has been determined that Parexel was negligent in its aftercare of the victims. The victims have already suffered severe injuries such as gangrene requiring the amputation of all toes and three fingers (without toes you cannot remain standing or walk, btw) and endured unimaginable agony. But it seems Parexel, despite having the moral responsibility for the outcome of its incompetence and the financial ability to pay proper restitution (estimated yearly revenue of $750 million) is ignoring the victims and using the legal system to avoid liability. The lessons are that $4000 is not worth risking your life over, that that is what you are doing if you are foolish enough to volunteer for medical testing whatever promises you receive not withstanding, and that if you are so foolish you will be left to die by the company responsible without legal recourse should things go wrong. In other words, only an ignorant would sign up for medical testing. I predict a decline in voluntary test subjects, and a rise in the use of prisoners and other 'disposable' human subjects."

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