The Life of a Professional Guinea Pig | Hacker News Reader

The Life of a Professional Guinea Pig

theatlantic.com

38 pointsJtsummers14 comments

“It sounds selfish,” Helms said of the deception, “but the way it works is, I’m working poor, and the people making the drugs are filthy rich, and I need a job.”

This guy disgusts me. He acts as though it's just some me-vs-them thing. Drugs are being tested for people that really need them. Using deceit, purposely throwing up the drugs to avoid side effects, etc, this is all shit that some real, ill person is going to have to go through one day and he's skewing the results.

I sincerely hope someone here can "disrupt" the clinical testing industry and put this guy out of business.

It's simple. Guaranteed basic income would put a stop to that quite fast.

Really? You think if this guy got paid a few tens of thousands of dollars a year he'd no longer hold a grudge against drug companies "getting filthy rich"?

He would no longer have an incentive to provide incorrect results for medical research.

He might have less incentive, but that doesn't mean he would have no incentive. He might still choose to do this to get more money than basic income would provide. He already decided this is "easy money" compared to other work available to him. He might decide to work less, but that doesn't mean he would quit entirely.

> He acts as though it's just some me-vs-them thing.

Well, he's a former union organizer, so that attitude isn't surprising: it's the same attitude one typically finds in union members, who don't view management and employees as a team trying to satisfy their customers, but instead as opponents trying to gain advantage over one another (and, as an incidental side-effect, perhaps deliver products to customers).

I don't think that is a fair characterization--though I'll readily agree that it is a common one in the anti-union propaganda we've been swimming in for the last few decades.

While it's true, in a general sense, that management and workers are all working toward a common goal, only one side in that partnerships holds all the power in that relationship, and it isn't the workers. Unions are a natural response to that imbalance of power.

Chalking this guy's bad attitude up to union involvement is an unwarranted anti-union slur, nothing more.

I agree! I tried to sign up for a malaria vaccine trial. Not because I need the money (I'm a software developer!), but because I see their fliers often in Seattle. I've got a background in biology so being infected with malaria doesn't freak me out. It simply seemed like a societally positive thing for me to do. And of course, I'd have an easy excuse not to donate blood ever again in my life. :)

I actually did this when I was in college. I started as a participant, then started recruiting, and also worked as a monitor. When I left, I was trained as a phlebotomist (someone who draws blood).

I did a ton of studies. Most were harmless like Diclofenac, Naproxen Sodium and countless others. The first study I did was for Morphine and the company did several studies in various strengths. I was in the study that did 15mg dose, but they went as high as 30mg and had some issues with the higher doses. Since they were dosing people on empty stomachs the higher dosed participants threw up sometime after being dosed. There were two people in the 30mg morphine study who got black listed from the company when they found out they weren't taking the dosage.

I'm surprised the guy in the article still got paid considering its pretty easy to tell if you've taken the drug they give you. The guy who ran the place I was at said when they do blood draws, they can track the drug through your system. It's like a bell curve. Your body absorbs the drug, then gradually gets rid of it. If you don't take the pill, the line is totally flat.

I have a ton of stories since I worked for the company almost my entire college career in some aspect or another. Since I worked both sides of the equation, I could probably answer any question people have about doing this.

EDIT: The interesting they left out of the article was how this is taxed, and if you have to pay taxes on this kind of work. It's something I ran into with the company I was at.

I'm disappointed this wasn't an article about actual guinea pigs, those suckers are adorable.

and surprisingly tasty (common Andean dish).

I was really hoping this article was about a working rodent. I got all prepared for a guinea pig in a business suit.

A few years ago, I was on a health list and someone was asking for non drug alternatives for treating a chronic issue so they could get into a drug study. The study would not take them while they were on this particular drug for their chronic issue. For that and other reasons, I am already skeptical about the data from drug trials. Some of his points are pretty scary, like about who has the flexibility to enter a study where they will be locked up for several weeks.

Doesn't seem a good idea to do a drug test on someone whose body has been through a lot of unproven drugs already

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