People will do dumb shit for money. I should know, I’m one of them.
When I was a uni student, I acted as a medical guinea pig in a clinical trial testing a new method of delivering a post-surgery pain-relief drug.
Turns out, it wasn’t as fun as I’d expected.
First, a disclaimer: I have to admit my intentions were not purely focused on the advancement of medical science. I was totally sucked in by the lure of cash.
A uni friend who had done clinical trials before was always banging on about how it was such easy money. So, young and desperately saving for a European summer adventure, I agreed to join my friend on a particularly well-paid trial, the concept of ‘danger money’ not even entering my distracted little mind.
As I worked through the mounds of paperwork, making my mark on disclaimer after disclaimer, I quickly lost interest in the particulars and began skipping over pertinent details – like the fact I would be required to give 44 blood samples during my two three-day stays at the clinic.
The new delivery method being trialled involved low intensity electrical currents moving the drug through the skin into the bloodstream from a device attached to the upper arm. (Looking at this description now, I possibly also skipped over the whole electrical current thing.)
Side effects not all known, but may include discoloured skin at the site the currents enter. Wonderful.
So we geared up to get our guinea pig on and underwent a barrage of screening tests to make sure we weren’t pregnant (they probably didn’t want to be responsible for a nine-limbed child) or on drugs. Unfortunately, my friend was excluded from the trial after testing positive for opiates due to an ill-timed poppy seed roll (an implausible-sounding claim she maintains until this day).
Top Comments
I'd love to know how much money we're talking about! I can't imagine it would be more than a few hundred dollars, up to a thousand at best. Why on earth would you sign up for that is beyond me! You risk your future physical, reproductive, and mental well being signing up to be a guinea pig.
Minimum is about $1000 and they can go up to $3000. I receive emails about them too as I once considered it being a student and all
I did 2 drug trials as a student. They were both equivalence trials - so drugs that were already on the market, checking that the new generics had the same blood levels as the original. The first was memantine, an alzheimer's drug. It was easy - like taking a panadol, no side effects, a night in the lab to give blood and then another night a few weeks later.
The second trial however was not so fun. It was for respiridone, a psychiatric drug. We had a lower than treatment dose, but the trial had to be cancelled because everyone was fainting all over the place. They had a pillow in the bathroom because everytime we got up to go to the toilet - even when they wheeled us there in a wheelchair we would end up on the floor.