GCommon crawl en Z has a reputation for being “boring”. It is reported that they not only prefer I'm going to the gym than a pub, and staying at home And I go to bed at 9 pm instead of going to clubs, now they I refuse to register for medical tests. Back (long ago) when I was a boy it was pubs, clubs and medical research. And I still have the scars to prove it.
Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency states that all human drugs must undergo human testing before they become widely available. This is mainly done to investigate any unwanted side effects. Cold medicine is of no use if it causes the genitals to fall off. Alternatively, a side effect that may be useful with further study: aspirin thins the blood; Some antidepressants curb nicotine withdrawal symptoms. It must have been one hell of a day when they tested Viagra and discovered some unexpected side effects: Its original purpose was to treat chest pain caused by angina.
Of course, everything went wrong. 2006 Clinical trial of teralizumab. Due to autoimmune diseases, all six volunteers who were given the drug were left with severe swelling, deformities and life-threatening organ failure. So, Generation Z—already a nervous generation—has a lot to worry about. But by not volunteering, they also risk missing out on new treatments that won't gain approval because trials have stalled. And they should consider that if drugs are not tested in young people, researchers may miss side effects that only occur in young people. Someone needs to have a say. And that someone is me, since I volunteered for more than my fair share of medical research when I was of Gen Z age now.
At the University of Nottingham, the Royal Medical Center offered a buffet with easy payouts. People conducting medical research are only allowed to pay for reasonable time and travel coverage, and never officially as an incentive. But as a failing student, the amount of money I considered incentive was somewhat lower than the regulators expected. You can spend an hour taking psychological tests for £20 in cash – the price of a party. I remember looking at strange charts, not knowing if I was being tested for color blindness or if it was a Rorschach test to see if I was a psychopath. You may have a new type of “invisible” seam that will fall apart. There were rumors that amputating your big toe and reattaching it after two weeks brought in more than your student loan. True or not, I was genuinely tempted.
I later lived in Sydney, where, having established myself as one of those journalists who would do anything for money, I was tasked with doing just that. I was paid £20 to sit under ultraviolet light for three hours at the Australian Photobiological Testing Laboratory to test the effectiveness of sunscreens. I was given £35 to swallow either a batch of anti-ulcer drugs or a placebo (I was never told which, but mine tasted like freshener) at a cancer center in Sydney, give two blood samples and pee in a bottle. I was almost paid £900 to take ropinirole, used to treat Parkinson's disease, for 10 weeks at GlaxoSmithKline's drug research arm, but this included giving up alcohol, which would have been its own clinical trial at the time.
My piece de resistance was when I answered an advert in the Sydney Morning Herald from the gastroenterology department at St George's Hospital and was paid £200 to have a long, flexible 17-lumen silicone tube inserted into my nose, down my throat, around my entire digestive system and out of my buttocks. This – to be explained – was to help study the relationship between pressure waves in the distal ileum and propagating in the proximal colon.
When they inserted the tube, I gagged, like when Ed Harris' character inhales liquid oxygen in The Abyss. I then had to push the tube one inch further into my nostril every 15 minutes. It took three days to get the “thread all over the body” and for the tube to come out, um, on the other side. I then had to lie under an X-ray machine for five hours with a tube connected to the machine and watch movies on the TV turned to its side (I only saw Mission: Impossible 2 turned 90 degrees) so that the activity around my ileocolic junction could be measured, the results of which, I was later told, played a major role at a conference in the USA.
Was it worth it? Probably, although for me money was a big motivation. Have I helped humanity with the future of medicine? To some extent, yes – and that's what really matters. Would I do it again all these years later? Well, considering that I now prefer to stay at home rather than go out to clubs, probably not. But someone has to. Come on, Generation Z. Drop your pants in the name of medical science like I did.
