The sales pitch could have been written by a time-share spiv. “You’ll be paid for your time,” it reads. “Free food . . . digital TV, pool table, video games, DVD player and now FREE internet access!” An invitation to one long holiday? No, this is how Parexel, the company at the heart of a medical disaster, recruits human guinea pigs to test new drugs and brave the frontiers of modern science.

One of those lured by the prospect of £2,000 for lazing in a private clinic was David O’Donnell, a 19-year-old student. He told a friend who leapt at the opportunity.

Early last week O’Donnell arrived at the Parexel clinic attached to Northwick Park hospital, north London, to be screened for trials of a drug known as TGN1412. A first trial was just starting and his friend was taking part. O’Donnell was due to prepare for the next round.

To his surprise, researchers said the study had been cancelled and asked him to join another project. They did not reveal that down the corridor, six volunteers in the first trial were, as one witness said, “exploding”. Minutes after being given the drug they had suffered catastrophic reactions, screaming and begging for help. It was like “a living hell”, said a witness.

Among the victims was O’Donnell’s friend. He is one of four men who remain seriously ill in intensive care; they are conscious but, says the hospital, will “need specialist observation for some time”.

Two others are critical and being kept alive by life support systems. Myfanwy Marshall, a girlfriend of one of the victims, said he had swollen up “like the Elephant Man”.

“Their condition remains very serious and complex,” said Ganesh Suntharalingam, clinical director of intensive care at Northwick Park. “It would not be sensible to comment on prognosis.” Medical sources say they may be in a coma for a year.

What went wrong? The authorities claim that all the proper procedures were followed; that nothing untoward showed up in earlier laboratory and animal tests of TGN1412; and that the incident was almost unprecedented.

Medical sources point out, however, that in the search for wonder drugs, scientists are now tampering with the very building blocks of life. While science outstrips regulation, commercial testers are still allowed to trawl for human guinea pigs as if they are offering a week on the beach rather than a step into the unknown.

Official guidelines state that payments to volunteers should only be for “expense, time and inconvenience”, and should not “induce people to take part in studies against their better judgment”. Yet the two men hovering between life and death this weekend are Ryan Wilson, 21, a trainee plumber who had hoped to make enough cash to take his mother on holiday, and another man referred to as “a serial human guinea pig”. In four years he is said to have earned £60,000 from drug trials.

THE maker of TGN1412, a German company called TeGenero, belongs to a new breed of small bio-tech firms hunting for miracle cures.

The drug began as the brainchild of scientists at Wurzburg University who studied immune cells. They targeted a molecule called CD28, which sits on certain white “T” cells that can influence other cells involved in diseases such as leukaemia and rheumatoid arthritis.

Such research is expensive. So in 2000 the scientists set up TeGenero and raised £9m from venture capitalists and other investors.

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