This morning I picked up the Metro, a free newspaper that you usually find on London transport and flipping through it, came across a story about 6 people who have "fallen ill" (more like- have got seriously fucked up and could well die) while partaking in trials of a new drug. Check out the BBC website for stories on this in more depth. This had probably been on the news but I never get home in time for the news so the Metro this morning was the first I'd heard of it.
"First they began tearing their shirts off complaining of a fever, then some screamed out that their heads were going to explode."
"The head of volunteer Ryan Wilson, 21, swelled to three times its normal size as his limbs turned purple. The trainee plumber, who was being paid £2,000 to take part in the trial... begged doctors to put him to sleep because he was in such agony. Medics says chances of his survival are slim."
Now it's not Iike I had a close call with this or anything but it still seriously freaked me out. When I arrived in the UK, it took me 6 weeks to find work and by the end I was seriously strapped for cash, had borrowed what I could from whom I could and was pretty much at the stage where if I didn't get a job by the end of the week, I was going to have to change the date of my return flight from 2006 to ASAFP. (And as a self-defensive disclaimer, it's not that I'm an unemployable bum, it was a hard time to find work in general. Thank you terrorists, you did wonders for people wanting to hire foreigners. Nice one.) So I was looking for anything- secretarial/catering/pubs/cleaning etc. And I saw some ads for test subjects for drug trials and I remember thinking, "Well why not? It's bloody good money, you're stoney fucking broke, you're quite healthy, you'll be fine." But something stopped me. Thank Christ. And I've known people back home who, as poor students, have done drug trials and they've been fine but my advice- don't.
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