FIRST there was the agrarian economy, then the industrial economy. Now we have the service economy.

This is progress, economists and politicians tell us. But in this brave new world not everyone can be a lawyer, a stockbroker or a film star. In The Professional Guinea Pig, Roberto Abadie gives voice to a new economic underclass, a class of people that makes a living from renting their bodies to contract research organisations (CROs) for medical experiments.

“Pharmaceutical research feeds on a mass of destitute citizens who realised that clinical trials offered a better opportunity than jobs in McDonald’s and similar dead-end options at the bottom of …