Becoming a pharmaceutical guinea pig?

Hermia

Hospitals sometimes volunteer for guinea pigs too. I regularly see adverts in the paper from hospitals (I live in London so there are a lot of hospitals around!). I did ring up about an asthma trial once. I was skint at the time so the £1200 fee sounded very attractive and I also wanted to help with asthma research. I nearly died when I read the information pack. You had to go into hospital for a week and have lots of thoroughly unpleasant tests (they actually used the word "painful" in the brochure!). The week ended with them inducing an asthma attack in the volunteers! I politely declined the money..!

Bargain_Rzl

dinkylou wrote:

I looked into this a while ago, there s one in Leeds called Covance. www.testwiththebest.com

They have trials quite often, more mens ones than womens usually.

Looked ok to me but I havent have the balls to go through with one yet.

When I was a student in York, a friend of a friend used to volunteer for Covance. I remember him getting a fee of £400 for doing something quite harmless, which at the time was more than 10% of his annual income. He absolutely swore by it.

CheeseOnToast

I'm probably going to do it down here in Wales if I can, I've got two friends who've both done tests there with no noticeable (eek) effects.

They made about 3K in total from a couple of different tests - I could really chip into my debt like that.

black-saturn

I wouldnt mind doing it if it didnt mean overnight stays in hospitals. I've had enough of those in my time.

intel

Id do it just to get away from the GF... and a nice meal now and again....

ffs

I have probably done about half a dozen Phase One Drug Trials. The fee, many years ago when I did them, was about £100 per day. Since you are effectively an inpatient during the time of the trial, this only equates to about £4 per hour.

Be aware that if you have any sort of needle or blood phobia, then it's definitely not for you. Also its worth assuming that you will be screened out, as there are very strict acceptance criteria in terms of general health, and obviously drug and alcohol screens that you could easily fail.

On the plus side you do get a very thorough health check, fed well while you're on the trial. However while you are on the trial you can be subjected to a barrage of ECGs EEGs, psychometric tests, and of course regular bood and obs (heart and temp measurements.

I am willing to be corrected, but as far as I'm aware almost all Phase One Drug Trials only accept male volenteers, for the simple reason that you can never be certain that a female volunteer is not pregnant.

It's also worth understanding that most p1 trials are not concerned with the effects of the drug per se, as they are being adminstered in low dose to healthy voluteers. But rather their main purpose is to monitor the rate at which the drug is metabolised, i.e. absorbed and then expelled from the body.

pug_in_a_bed

A cousin of mine has done a number of these trials, and when i recall the name of who the trials were with I will repost here!

He has done a few which involved overnight stays, I guess you earn the most with these. The one we all remember was from a few years ago, where he was meant to be staying where ever it was for 2 weeks, had some kind of reaction on the third day, yet because this was considered a valid result, still received the full £1500 fee. I think it was cancer drugs or something, I will try and find out. He's braver than me though believe me! I think you can only earn a certain ammount from medical trials per year for tax purposes and so on.

Recently I have seen my local uni advertsing for people to be guinea pigs for training nurses, I remember it was ten weeks work, £25 for 2 hours each week, with no 'invasive' (as I recall) examinations! I forgot all about it, as I meant to apply to get some extra christmas cash.

When i find the name I will post it here.

lee3276

I'm a Lab rat every friday and saturday night lol, Surely it can't be that bad and for £1500 for a couple days, I wonder if they will sign me up for a year