Don’t Do Drug Tests For Money

When you’re college and without a steady income, you’re always on the lookout for a little extra income. I know I participated in maybe a fifty psychology experiments in the course of four years at CMU and was paid a pretty easy $5 or $10 per session (of about 45 minutes each). Psychology experiments were grade school type stuff, it’s when you submitted yourself to medical and drug tests that you could “make” some big money.

My advice? Don’t ever ever every participate in a clinical drug test for money. Ever.

Why? Read this (it’s a horror story, please be warned).

They were the first people in the world to test the drug, being developed by the German pharmaceutical firm, TeGenero, and designed to treat chronic inflammatory conditions and leukaemia. They were paid £2,000 each.

Of a test group of eight, six are now battling for their lives. (£2,000 is about $3,512.33 USD)

Raste Khan, 23, a television technician, said: “The test ward turned into hell minutes after we were injected. The men went down like dominoes.

I can understand participating in a drug trial if it’s curing a serious condition you’re suffering from and no current remedy exists, it’s a wholly different thing to take an untested drug for money.

It could also deal a hammer blow to the drug-testing industry, which often relies on hard-up students volunteering as guinea pigs. (emphasis mine)

Don’t do it. It’s a sad story and I hope that those six young men make a full recovery.