This story goes to show what can happen with the wrong drugs...
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/co ... 89,00.html
Aussie's beau turned into elephant man
March 17, 2006
LONDON: A distraught Australian woman says her boyfriend is fighting for his life and swollen "like the Elephant Man" after suffering a violent reaction to a new drug during a clinical trial in Britain.
Myfanwy Marshall, a BBC television producer originally from Adelaide, told of her shock at seeing her formerly fit 28-year-old lover now grotesquely deformed and reduced to helplessness. Doctors have told her he will need a miracle to survive.
He is one of two men in a critical condition after the trial at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, northwest London. Four other men remain seriously ill.
Ms Marshall, 35, said she was roused from her bed by medical staff at 3am on Tuesday and told to come to hospital as soon as possible.
"I walked in and I nearly fainted," she said. "He is dark and gorgeous. Twenty-eight, almost twenty-nine, a muscly, hunky guy, but here he looked like a 45-year-old man who has had a cardiac arrest.
"His blood is being pumped in and out. His lungs, his heart and his kidneys are being supported. They have basically killed him within a day with a lethal injection," she claimed.
"He had a tube in his nose, a tube going into his mouth and a hole in his neck. There were tubes in his hands and something in his groin."
Her boyfriend looked "like the Elephant Man, completely puffed" and his swollen head was a "weird purple and yellow colour", she said.
"The doctors have said he could die at any moment. 'His immune system is out of control, he needs a miracle', those were their words."
Ms Marshall said her boyfriend of 18 months had impulsively volunteered for the paid medical trial to pay off some bills. He had previously volunteered for other trials with no ill-effects, she said.
"I said I really don't want you doing it but he said, 'I'm helping mankind'."
The man is a Briton of Asian origin. His parents are flying to Britain to be by their son's side.
Parexel, the multinational drugs company running the trial, has sent a lawyer and specialist to Britain to explain what has happened.
Ms Marshall said she was originally under the impression her boyfriend was going to be given a tablet as part of the trial, but she now believes he had an injection.
Outside the hospital, family members and friends were visibly shaken after seeing the other volunteers. Marian Flanagan, a mother of one of the six patients, said: "He's in really bad shape. They haven't got a cure, his whole system has broken down."
AP, The Times
Shocking story - Aussie's beau turned into elephant man
-
bambooneedle
- Posts: 4533
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 4:02 pm
- Location: a few thousand miles south east of Zanzibar
-
Copenhagen Fan
- Posts: 1192
- Joined: Wed Jun 11, 2003 3:00 am
- Location: København, DK
- Contact:
-
bambooneedle
- Posts: 4533
- Joined: Tue Jun 03, 2003 4:02 pm
- Location: a few thousand miles south east of Zanzibar