Selling My Body

Over the last four months, I have on three different occasions tried to sell my body...

to science.

I failed all three times.

Recently I signed up to participate in three different clinical research trials. This is where they test a drug on a live human specimen. It seems risky, and I suppose some trials are riskier than others. For instance, one trial was for a cholesterol drug doctors already prescribe to people. But this last time the trial was a “first-in-human” trial.

Why did I do this? Stick around. I’ll tell you.

The process for me has been this: First, you get screened over the phone. They ask you all kinds of, quite frankly, invasive questions about your health, history, habits, etc. It's the closest you'll come to a rectal exam over the phone.

They couldn't expose anything over the phone, so they scheduled me for a real-life clinical exam.

Once at the clinic they ask you all the same invasive questions again, asking about stuff no one needs to know about, except them, apparently. But then they also collect blood and urine from you. There’s even a physical examination where you have to perform maneuvers such as holding your arms out while the NP pushes them down, walking heel to toe in a straight line, touching your nose with your eyes closed, bending over and touching your toes. All this and more IN A HOSPITAL GOWN!

Several days later, after the exam, they notify you and let you know if you qualified.

For two of the three trials that I signed up for, I initially qualified after the clinical exam. On the other one, I did not qualify, and I don’t know why. More on that later.

For the two where I qualified, the check-in process for the trial was exactly the same. I arrived early in the morning, 07:30-07:45. They AGAIN go through a medical history, asking all the same questions about drug use, alcohol use, and your s*x life. They want to know if you're willing to wear a condom for 90 days after the trial, and they even pried into my wife's state of menopause. I always feel like I’m the most boring person they ever interview because it’s like no alcohol, no drugs, no smoking, no tattoos, no piercings, no fun. I feel compelled to apologize for my blandness. They don't seem to mind.

I got through the check-in screening, which, if you’re counting, this is the third screening, and the second clinical screening. They then took me back to the area where they keep the live human test subjects.

I won’t say the name of the clinic where I checked in on both of these occasions, but think of a kind of painting in some churches. The one where I didn’t qualify was another company.

Please hear me, I wasn’t expecting this place to be a spa, but I didn’t expect it to be a hospital ward. The “dorm” you stay in is a full-on hospital ward from the old days–several hospital beds in a large clinical room. Again, think hospital, not hotel.

Just to give you an idea of the accommodations, the first time I stayed the sheet on my bed was so threadbare I could see the blue plastic hospital mattress peeking through the threads. The pillow on my bed was the thickness of a Hardy Boys book.

When you’re there you’re reduced to your initials. No one calls you by name, at least not the staff. HIPAA, I suppose.

They give you scrubs to wear, and they go through all your stuff to make sure you’re not bringing in any contraband. There's a whole list of banned and allowed items. I did liken my time to a prison stay, but it’s not prison, you can leave if you wish. I don’t want anyone to misunderstand; I'm not saying it's prison, but you can’t receive visitors and you can’t leave the ward, unless, like I say, you no longer want to participate in the study.

You can take your phone, a laptop, tablet, things like that, but they put stickers over all the cameras, and you are prohibited from taking pictures or recording anything. Although on neither occasion did anyone inspect my devices when I left. They said if the stickers were tampered with, they would have to go through our photos. At any rate, I don’t have any footage to show you because I follow the rules.

The food was OK, not great. Think old school hospital cafeteria, or high school cafeteria if you're from my era. You have to eat at very specific times that are printed on your schedule. When you pick up your tray they scan your wrist band, and then you have to tell them when your “first bite” is. You have to announce, “First bite”, and then pop the grape in your mouth, or whatever it is.

Also, the only thing to drink is water. No coffee! Of course you arrive fasted, and that includes no caffeine, so that stinks. And so I developed a caffeine headache in spite of my efforts to wean myself off several days before arriving.

On my first stay I couldn’t finish all the meals. When you leave the cafeteria you have to show them your tray and answer as to why you didn’t finish all your food. Either “I don’t like asparagus” or “I’m too full”, that kind of thing. They really want you to eat everything.

Still on my first stay, I got through the check-in exam, and I spent the night. The dosing was to be the following day. The drug was something to do with prostate cancer. From what I remember it would be given to men undergoing prostate cancer treatment to help them cope with chemo. It was not a “first-in-human” trial.

They woke us up at 04:55 and started inserting blood draw catheters because we were to have seven blood draws that day. You could opt out of the catheter if you wished, but I agreed, and with some trial and error the phlebotomist got it inserted. They took our initial blood draws, and then they started dosing. It was three tablets per oral.

I was impressed with the precision and attention to detail when it came time to dose. It was like a "all hands on deck" kind of situation. Our ward became filled with various and sundry personnel, monitoring, recording, supervising, everything.

There were six of us in our dorm. The first three got dosed, and everyone tolerated it, as far as anyone could tell, and then the head nurse was like, OK, that’s it, the rest of you can go.

Wait, what? What’s going on? I didn’t know, but three of us were just there for backup, but since the first three got dosed, they didn’t need us. So I never got dosed and only stayed the one night. That was to be a five night study from what I remember.

The second time I reported for a trial I went through all the same check-in process, all the same hoopla with the cafeteria and all that. This time, the study was fifteen nights, and it was a first-in-humans trial for a drug that is to prevent COVID. It was to be an injection in our thighs. Oh, and I brought my own pillow and sheet this time.

The consent said the drug had been tested on beagles previously. Now, I have a beagle, and I do NOT think they are good analogs to humans. Just the other day my dog came crawling out of a culvert by our house crunching on some kind of bones he found in there. Another time when he was off the leash running ahead of me I saw him gobble down a dead bird he found. He does this kind of thing all the time. Of course I scold him, but otherwise he seems to suffer no ill effects. This is why I don’t think beagles should stand in for us humans.

At any rate, one of the docs came to me on the first day and said that one of my lab results was off. I think it was the eGFR, which measures my kidney function. They were looking for a 90, and I was at 87 or 88. B+ in my book. He said they would run another test in the morning to see if it came up to 90. Otherwise, I would be dismissed from the study. He said to drink lots of water.

Here's the thing. I HAD been drinking lots of water. I was having to pee like every 20 minutes since I got there, never mind how I almost peed my pants waiting to give my urine sample. My evil plan was to keep my body so flushed with water the dosing would be diluted and have minimal effect on me. I don’t know about the science behind that, but that was my plan.

Staying hydrated created a problem. There was another group at the facility being tested for something or other, and as far as I could tell, each time they urinated, they had to check in and get a specimen jug to pee into, and so the bathroom door was locked, I guess to prevent any unauthorized peeing. So even though I didn’t have to pee in the jug, I still had to ask each time to go to the bathroom.

Now, let me say, again, I was not expecting a spa, and on my first stay I found the staff to be generally pleasant. Nurses and medical assistants, as great as they are, are not in the hospitality business, but even so, I never felt like I was putting them out by simply existing.

But when you have to use the restroom every 20 minutes, you start feeling a little self-conscious every time you have to ask to be let in. And so at one point I walk up to the folding table they used as a desk and said I needed to be let in. The young lady was clearly working on something on her laptop, trying to focus, but here I was. So she pauses just a moment, then closes her laptop and kinda huffs. I apologized, and she was all like, “No, it’s OK”. And let me say, I get it. It’s hard for me to break focus and then return back to that work I’m supposed to be focused on. But I really had to go.

So one more thing before they dismissed me. We were scheduled for a snack at 23:00. Yes, that’s right. Now, my bedtime is 20:30. I’m trying to be asleep by 21:00. So I figure I’m skipping snack. Cut to, I’m lying in bed in a very light sleep when I’m startled awake by one of the staff standing over me.

“KRL, you missed your snack.” So, you can’t just not show up, you have to formally decline the snack. I get up, go over the cafeteria, let her scan my wrist and then I tell her I’m declining.

And it’s a good thing I declined, because at 06:00 they needed to repeat that kidney function lab, and the phlebotomist asked if I’d been fasting for 8 hours. Prior to that, at 05:00, they woke us up and asked us if we wanted a blood draw catheter. Like the snack, suspecting what was coming, this time I declined.

Sure enough, the doc comes around about 09:00 and says I didn’t qualify. My lab needed to be at 90, I was at 89. He was super apologetic and very nice about it. I wasn’t mad. It wasn’t his fault.

He did say that the result was not clinically significant, it’s just that it didn’t meet the qualifications for the study.

If you remember, I did not qualify for another trial, and I never did hear why. I have reviewed this most recent consent, and I ran it through three LLMs, and we do not see in here where they’re required to tell me about an adverse result. The LLMs agree that ethically they should tell me, but it doesn’t say that in the consent.

So, will I do this again? Never say never, right? But failing three times in a row is probably a sign. So I will not be pursuing a drug trial again.

To answer the question why…well, the pay is significant. It’s not winning the lottery significant, but it’s not bad. What would really make it tempting to try again is if the accommodations were more comfortable. As it is, I probably won’t try again.

To date, I’ve never used an experimental, nor a recreational drug. I know, boring, right?

If you’ve ever done a clinical trial, let me know.

P.S. I had to wear a mask the whole time.