A STUDENT whose involvement in the drugs trial disaster left him looking like the “Elephant Man” broke his silence last night to criticise the company behind the tests.

Nav Modi, 24, said that the company testing the TGN1412 anti-inflammatory drug at Northwick Park Hospital, London, had treated the volunteers like “animals in cages”.

He said that the drug, developed by TeGenero, a German company, and tested on him and five other volunteers by another company, Parexel, caused his head to swell to twice its normal size.

The student, who hoped to earn £2,000 to buy a laptop computer from the trial, said that when he first asked the testers for help they gave him a paracetamol tablet.

“An hour after the drug entered my body I was suddenly gripped by pain,” he said. “I felt my head swelling up like an elephant’s. I thought my eyeballs were going to pop out. I screamed out, ‘Please, doctor, help me. Help me’, but he told me to lie down then came back with a single paracetamol tablet. It felt like a terrible nightmare.”

Mr Modi, who lives in East London, said that as the pain had become more intense and the pressure in his head increased, nurses tried to put an oxygen mask on him.

“I started to think that these people were killing me and that I was going to die in this terrible place,” he told The Sun.

“As the mask was put on my face I felt that I couldn’t breathe and begged the doctors, ‘Please, please let me out of here. I don’t want the money any more. I just want to be free’.”

Mr Modi, who was released from intensive care five days after the trial on March 14, said that scientists had assured the volunteers that the drug had been tested on two monkeys without ill-effects and that they would be given only 1/500th of the dose given to the animals.

The student, who had taken part in two previous Parexel trials at Northwick Park Hospital, said: “We were assured we would be safe. I trusted Parexel with my life. But now I know I would be dead if I had been left in their care and the doctors and nurses had not been on hand to save me. They treated us no better than the animals in cages in their laboratories.” In total eight volunteers took part in the tests. Two were given placebos and of the other six only one, Ryan Wilson, 21, remains in intensive care.

After the extreme reaction nurses had sedated the six volunteers who had taken TGN1412. Mr Modi said that when he awoke he again started to complain about his discomfort to a nurse. “She said simply, ‘Mr Modi, do you realise that you are in a situation where you are very, very seriously ill? If you do not co-operate with us fully you may die’,” he said.

“I lay there terrified, cursing myself for putting myself in a situation where I was going to die for £2,000 I was never going to have a chance to spend.”

The following day Mr Modi, who was in intensive care with the other five volunteers, was allowed a visit from his girlfriend, Divya Vegda, 22. He said that she had immediately burst into tears.

“She’s told me since that — without exaggeration — my head had swelled up to at least twice its normal size, just like the Elephant Man in the movie,” he said.

After a course of steroid drugs to reduce the swelling Mr Modi was the first of the six volunteers to be allowed home.

Mr Modi — who suffered diarrhoea and temporary hair loss after taking part in a malaria drug trial for Parexel last year — said that his days as a guinea pig were over.

“I should have realised the risks and shied away from doing drug tests for a third time. I’ve left hospital but the physical effects and mental anguish are still with me. But though I’m still suffering, I know I’m probably the most fortunate of the men affected by the drugs. I even feel the luckiest man alive.”

TRIAL AND ERROR

A week after taking the drug four of the volunteers no longer required “organ support”; relatives of the two more seriously ill patients have been told they could be in a coma for up to a year

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