Professional Guinea Pig

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Sources

• The Atlantic - The Life of a Professional Guinea Pig 
• KFF Health News - The Business of Clinical Trials Is Booming. Private Equity Has Taken Notice
• University of Minnesota - The life cycle of a clinical trial 
• Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News - The Unbearable Cost of Drug Development: Deloitte Report Shows 15% Jump in R&D to $2.3 Billion
• MD Anderson Cancer Center - Phases of Clinical Trials 
• American Bar - The Ethical Implications of Clinical Trials in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
• The Guardian - Clinical trials: how taking the pills may pay those bills 
• WalletGenius - The Highest Paying Clinical Trials in 2023
• NPR - Professional 'Guinea Pigs' Can Make A Living Testing Drugs 
• Vice - My Life As a Full-Time Human Guinea Pig 
• KCAL News - Human Guinea Pigs Can Cash In With Clinical Trials 
• Absolute Documentaries - Drug Trial Gone Wrong: How I Became A Human Guinea Pig (Pharma Documentary)
• The Guardian - Drug trial leaves men critically ill

• The Life of a Professional Guinea Pig

• In chronological order, the phases of drug testing work like this: 
• Companies aren’t legally required to register a trial with Clinicaltrials.gov, the database maintained by the NIH, until it reaches Phase 2.
• Minnesota who has written extensively on the ethics of human-subject
• editorial
•  indictment
• Paul Clough runs the website Just Another Lab Rat, a one-stop shop for all things guinea pig. 
• he site has a continually updated list of upcoming studies around the country, a glossary of common lab tests, tips for getting into studies (“If your blood pressure is usually at the upper threshold, a daily intake of garlic can help”), and even a packing guide
•  In one post, for example, a user praised a clinic’s recent upgrade: “They bought brand-new recliners which are super comfy and every one can have one to themselves. Their food is now being catered by Hyvee (a local grocery and popular chain) and their food is really good.” Others compliment or condemn clinics’ check-in systems or entertainment options.
•  Just Another Lab Rat also had a print precursor, although one with more of an activist edge: In the mid-‘90s, Helms began curating historical tidbits, bioethics discussions, and reviews of trial sites into a zine he called Guinea Pig Zero.
• The animals, a laboratory staple through the 19th and early 20th centuries, played a role in medical breakthroughs ranging from the discovery of vitamin C to the development of Pap smears In the mid-1900s, guinea pigs began to fall out of use, replaced by rats and mice.

  The Business of Clinical Trials Is Booming. Private Equity Has Taken Notice

• In July 2020, Headlands announced it won coveted contracts to run clinical trials of covid-19 vaccines, which would include shots for AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Pfizer.
• Finding and enrolling patients is often the limiting and most costly part of trials, said Dr. Marcella Alsan, a public policy professor at Harvard Kennedy School and an expert on diverse representation in clinical trials, which have a median cost of $19 million for new drugs, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers.
• Those companies have been involved in studies ranging from covid vaccines to treatments for ovarian cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s.
• The number of clinical trials has exploded to more than 434,000 registered studies this year as of late November, more than triple the number a decade ago.
• Still, most trial sites are physician practices that don’t consistently perform studies, according to a presentation by Boston-based investment firm Provident
• Headlands is a prime example. It announced in November 2019 that it would acquire six centers in the U.S. and Canada, including three sites in Texas and Louisiana owned by Centex Studies that would help improve participation among Hispanics and African Americans.

• The life cycle of a clinical trial

• Good luck, good science, and good results converged last year when a clinical trial involving a team of experts at M Health Fairview Masonic Children’s Hospital helped prove the effectiveness of a new gene therapy for treating cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), a rare neurodegenerative disease that typically affects boys.
• Troy Lund, M.D., Ph.D., Paul Orchard, M.D., and a team at Masonic Children’s Hospital played a leading role in the 10-year clinical trial that evaluated this potentially safer approach to treating the disease.

• The Unbearable Cost of Drug Development: Deloitte Report Shows 15% Jump in R&D to $2.3 Billion

• Phases of Clinical Trials

• The Ethical Implications of Clinical Trials in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

• Clinical trials: how taking the pills may pay those bills 

• FluCamp
• The notorious “Elephant Man” drug trial at Northwick Park hospital in north-west London in 2006, which left six healthy men (who were each paid £2,000) fighting for their lives, continues to cast a long shadow over the sector.
• They include MAC Clinical Research, HMR (Hammersmith Medicines Research), Quotient Sciences, Trials4us, which is part of Richmond Pharmacology, Labcorp, and Parexel – the firm that ran that disastrous 2006 trial. These six all advertise current and upcoming trials on their websites.
• King’s College London recently advertised in Metro for volunteers for a study relating to exercise that was offering £100 (plus travel costs and a free health check), which arguably doesn’t sound like a lot.
• A survey carried out last year by the website Save the Student indicated that 2% of students make money from drug trials.
• The trials involve a vast array of medicines and treatments. Some involve psychedelic drugs such as ibogaine, psilocybin and ayahuasca.
• This will vary depending on your circumstances. The payment could well count as “miscellaneous income” and you might be liable for income tax on it if the sum received is greater than your “reasonable costs” associated with taking part in the trial (which it often will be). 
• But remember that everyone, including students, has a tax-free personal allowance – the amount of income you don’t have to pay income tax on. 
• For 2022-23 this is £12,570. Also, you get a £1,000-a-year tax-free allowance for “trading income”, which includes money earned from side hustles or odd jobs such as clinical trials. If your annual income from these is more than £1,000, or if in any doubt, talk to HM Revenue and Customs. The Low Incomes Tax Reform Group website has a useful section on this area.
• It is possible you will experience unexpected side-effects, according to the NHS. Of course, it is possible for any medication to cause side-effects.
• Trials4us says this may be the first time the trial medication has been given to humans, “so there may not be any direct knowledge of its side-effect profile”. But it adds that the risks involved will have been carefully assessed in animal studies using doses that greatly exceed those given to volunteers.
• In 2015 the Mirror published data released after a freedom of information request showing that 7,187 Britons who took part in clinical trials between 2010 and 2014 suffered serious and unexpected adverse reactions, of which 493 were immediately life-threatening. More recent data does not appear to be available.

• The Highest Paying Clinical Trials in 2023

• It starts with discovery and development, moves into preclinical research, and if all goes well the researchers will begin the clinical research phase. 
• They play an essential role in the development of new drugs, diets, and medical devices. New medical interventions must pass through these trials before they can even be considered for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
• Compensation: Up to $21,600
• Compensation: Up to $29,500

• Professional 'Guinea Pigs' Can Make A Living Testing Drugs

• "We are selling our bodies, most definitely," says Paul Clough, who has taken part in more than 80 drug tests in the past 11 years. "Well, renting," might be more accurate, he concedes. Clough, who's 37, also runs a website that helps people find trials to sign up for.
• In January, the test of an experimental pain drug in France was halted after several participants developed serious neurological problems. 
• Those so-called phase 1 studies involve a small group of healthy people to determine the right dosage and to get a first look at what the side effects in humans might be.
• Sociologist Jill Fisher, at the Center for Bioethics at University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, says that's a perspective she's come across frequently in her research.
• She studies people who participate repeatedly in phase 1 clinical trials, including self-proclaimed professionals like Clough. "I think that says a lot about our system overall and what kind of opportunities we have for people in a period of post-incarceration," she says.
• For one, medical research trials in the later stages of drug development — usually involving patients who could gain something more than money from taking the experimental medication — tend not to involve enough minority participants.

• My Life As a Full-Time Human Guinea Pig