How much
> money do they give you for medical studies? I looked at your page, hoping
> it was stories about doing medical studies, but was mildly disappointed to
> find otherwise. However, if rochester wasn't so far away, maybe I'd do
> one! I am all for people testing pain killers on me :D
Well I never got to have pain killers tested on me, but I did make $5000 the
last (and highest paying) study testing an anticoagulant made from hamster
ovary DNA. I stopped bleeding faster after I got the injection, unlike 6 of
us 8 guys. Probably I got the placebo. They stuck us 3 (or was it 4?) times
throughout the study in the arm which a sharp blade and then dabbed at it
with a big circular pad of blotter paper while timing the clotting on a
watch. I still had to stay in there 3 weeks though. It's kind of like being
in a mental hospital or jail, except you get paid and end up watching a lot
more movies on the VCR. One time I brought 15 books to a study and read them
all. There was another study going on in the same place (in the same unit or
ward or whatever you call it) testing sleeping pills for 4 days for $450.
One side effect of those pills was a giddy feeling and it was funny to see
30 people all giggly after they took their pills. I made sure to wear weird
shirts for both of their dosings. One was a Residents eyeball shirt and I
forget the other one. The cheapest study I ever did was a blood sugar study
where I went in and had blood drawn and then ate peanut butter on crackers
and had blood drawn again 45 minutes later. I made $75 for that one. The
only bad effects I had were from a study in Neptune (NJ) where they were
testing the absorption of an anti cholesterol drug using water doped with a
radioactive (less than an xray) marker. I got wicked headaches from that one
and it started to make my beard turn grey. I still have 2 grey areas in my
beard when I let it grow but they are smaller than they were originally. I
got $2625 from that one if I remember correctly. Oh yeah the first study I
did made me nauseous. I was testing an antibiotic. The weird part about that
was it could not be exposed to light so the IV bag and even the tube were
encased in black plastic so it looked like the black tentacle of death and
we got dosed with that crap like 12 times. Each dose took about an hour to
get into the vein. It wasn't so bad at first but with successive doses it
made me really queasy. It was such a relief to got thru the last dose and
know I wasn't going to have to take it again. One guy even got so sick he
had to stop taking it 3/4 of the way through. He still got paid though. They
wound up not releasing the drug. The side effects were too harsh I suppose.
That one was for $2600. hmmm maybe I SHOULD have a gp stories page.... I
actually thought of it before but then I thought it would make for a boring
read. Maybe not...!