The Drug Trial: Emergency at the Hospital
- Director
- Barbie MacLaurin
- Writer
- Barbie MacLaurin
- Release
- 21 February 2017
On Monday 13 March 2006, eight healthy young men participated in a clinical trial of an experimental drug known as TGN1412. The drug was intended to treat leukemia and had already been successfully tested in monkeys, but never in humans. It should have been a routine clinical trial, but it soon turned into one of the most infamous medical emergencies in recent British history.
Within an hour of receiving the drug, six of the volunteers were fighting for their lives. Everything was manic, everything happened at once, they were vomiting, they were screaming in pain, people were passing out. The men's temperatures soared, their organs failed, and some of their bodies swelled so severely that they became known in newspapers around the world as the elephant men.