Becoming a Human Guinea Pig

EVER GET that feeling that you should spend more time considering the consequences of your actions? That you forget to ponder whether a simple decision made in isolation might just have the odd side effect? Think of that time you went out drinking vodka in the park the night before your English A-Level exam. Or when someone convinced you that it was a good idea to test the theory that “cats always land on their feet” with the use of the neighbour’s moggy and a first floor window. Wish you’d thought it through a little more?

Ah. Because that’s what I felt like when I was handed a dose of an antipsychotic drug, encouraged to wash it down with a drink of water and then asked to clamber into a giant brain scanner. Suddenly the prospect of being a human guinea pig for a pharmaceutical firm turned from a mildly intriguing method of earning some cash into a sudden realisation that I had no idea what I was doing here. Of more concern was the small matter that I had no idea what the drug was doing to me.

I blame the Internet. Or at least those weekly emails that, along with the “Love and Info Bursts”, clog up our University email accounts, offering us the chance to volunteer for research with “Cash, Credits and Prizes Available”. The author knows that any procrastinating student, putting off writing that essay by reading the dregs of their inbox, is bound to have their eye caught by the prospect of easy money for doing, well, not much. After all, we happily pay to ruin our bodies with drink, cigarettes and drugs every weekend. Isn’t it about time we got our investment back?

A couple of emails and phone calls later and I am sitting in the lounge of a giant screening centre in the Manchester Royal Infirmary. These giant pharmaceutical companies seem desperate for volunteers; the offer included a taxi to pick me up from Owens Park and transfer me the mile up Wilmslow Road where I’m treated to a thorough medical examination. While ‘lads mags’ such as Nuts and Zoo have a tendency to base photo shoots on such intimate inspections, I can assure you that there is absolutely nothing erotic about a middle-aged nurse sticking cadiogram wires onto your emaciated chest before asking you to go and piss in a pot. Life just isn’t that exciting.

It is around now that you start to wonder why you are going through with this. As one friend asked, “What if your head swells up?” Back in 2006 eight young, healthy male volunteers were given a dose of an anti-inflammatory drug at Northwick Park Hospital in London and immediately reacted. Within hours several began vomiting, their faces bloated to resemble the ‘Elephant Man’ and they ended up with severe organ failure. Despite previously successful tests on animals, all but two of the trialists suffered from permanent damage and all will have to cope with a much higher risk of developing cancer. They were offered £5,000 compensation.

Claire, a friendly PhD student conducting my study assured me that this “probably isn’t going to happen”. She had a friendly face and a nice smile I found it hard not to believe her. But I did wonder what drove people such as myself to take such risks. As with most things, money plays a part. But that’s not the whole story. The governing body for such tests allows the issue of “compensation” based on time commitments but little else; the rate of pay was around the £60 mark for two visits totalling eight hours. That’s good money for casual work, the equivalent of a couple of nights work behind a bar. Not enough to justify taking risks with vital organs though.

So what gets people such as myself to ingest unknown concoctions of drugs? It certainly wasn’t any long held desire to do great things for the future of medical science. I had no interest in the sickly aspects of humanity who might benefit from the results of my tests. There was no desire to help the schizophrenic patients whose lives are ruined by the condition; as far as I was concerned they were an irrelevance, probably too far gone to gain anything from this trial. Instead this was all about me, about proving that I could go through with something and follow it through to the bitter end. And, of course, pocket a sizable cash sum in the process.

The real worries came when I realised just how much energy and time was being focussed on me, one guinea pig of many. For my day’s trial four people would be concerned solely with me, my brain and the electronic signals that were being transmitted around my head. Apart from the study leader there was a doctor present at all times and two buff Mancunians to operate the brain scanner. What were they all there to do? Was there that much risk involved?

My fears didn’t subside as I sat in the pre-test wheelchair, the newly qualified Bulgarian doctor happily chatting to me about the beauty of his home nation while attempting to extract a vial of blood from my arm. Sadly he didn’t seem all that capable of doing the task in hand, wobbling a needle around my vein, tightening the tourniquet around my arm and sticking the spike into four different parts of my limb before he raised the required amount of liquid.

Next up it was the drug. I didn’t have a clue what it was. The documentation provided mentioned words such “Neurochemical Spectroscopy”, “Aripiprazole” and “Risperidone”. I didn’t ask what they meant or how they were likely to affect me. It felt unnecessary, almost rude to expect the clinicians to explain the meaning in layman’s terms, even though they were willing to do so. Eventually I decided that the maxim of ‘ignorance is bliss’ rang true. If I was going to neck this dosage then I might as well get on with it and enjoy the ride. Anyway, side effects of untested drugs always sounded pretty good – wasn’t that the sort of thing that Hunter S. Thompson was into?

Whatever the reasoning behind getting involved, I was now starting to feel quite faint. During the testing you are required to fast at all times and the drug itself can result in quite serious drowsiness. And just when you’re feeling at your worst, you have to lie down on a metal slab and get ready to be rolled inside the brain scanner. The door to the room is plastered with dire warnings about the giant magnet fields that the machine emits while the scanner itself resembles a giant metallic donut, standing on its own in a room. Technicians observe through a thick glass window as a plastic cage is secured over your head and you’re handed your only contact with the outside world: a small buzzer than can be used to call help in the case of anything going wrong. And that’s it.

You’re slid inside and left alone in this claustrophobic environment as the incredibly loud machine gets to work. My body was encased in this contraption and all that could be seen was a little light somewhere towards my feet and the smothering darkness of the scanner. Several hours of this sensory deprivation plays tricks on your mind: repetitive whirring noises become little more than background chatter, all concept of time is lost to the darkness and it’s impossible to tell whether you’re asleep or awake.

Then suddenly it’s all over. You’re out, a little disorientated, a little richer and having helped with some key research. Someone once said that you should “Try everything once, except folk dancing and incest.” They were right: you should try medical testing just once, take the money and then keep well away.