\n<\/p>\n
G<\/span>en Z has a reputation for being \u201cboring\u201d. Not only do they reportedly prefer going to the gym than the pub, and staying at home and going to bed at 9pm rather than going clubbing, now they are refusing to sign up for medical trials. Back (way back) when I was a lad, it was all pubbing, clubbing and medical trials. And I\u2019ve still got the scars to prove it.<\/p>\n The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency states that all human medicines must undergo human testing before they are made widely available. This is mainly to investigate any unwanted side-effects. The cure for the common cold is no good if it also makes your genitals fall off. Alternatively, the side-effect may be useful when studied further: aspirin works as a blood thinner; some antidepressants curb nicotine withdrawal. It must have been a 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.<\/p>\n <\/span>The author undergoing one of his medical trials. <\/span><\/p>\n Things have gone wrong, of course. The 2006 Theralizumab clinical trial for autoimmune diseases left all six volunteers who were given the drug with severe swelling, disfigurement and life-threatening organ failure. So, lots for gen Z \u2013 already a nervous generation \u2013 to worry about. But by not volunteering, they also risk missing out on new treatments that won\u2019t find approval as trials stall. And they should consider that if medicines aren\u2019t tested on young people, researchers could miss discovering side-effects that only occur in the young. Someone needs to have a word. And that someone is me, as I volunteered for more than my fair share of medical trials back when I was the age gen Z is now.<\/p>\n At university in Nottingham, the Queen\u2019s Medical Centre offered a smorgasbord of easy payouts. People running medical trials are only allowed to pay for a reasonable coverage of time and travel, and never officially as an incentive. But as a skint student, the amount of money I considered an incentive was somewhat lower than the regulators expected. You could spend an hour taking psychology tests for \u00a320 cash \u2013 the price of a night out. I remember looking at weird diagrams, unsure if I was being tested for colour-blindness, or if it was a Rorschach test to see if I was a psychopath. You could have a new type of \u201cinvisible\u201d stitching that disintegrated. Rumour had it that having your big toe amputated and sewn back on two weeks later paid out more than your student loan. True or not, I was genuinely tempted.<\/p>\n I later lived in Sydney, where, having established myself as one of those journalists who would do anything for money, I was challenged to do just that. I got paid \u00a320 to sit under an ultraviolet light for three hours at the Australian Photobiology Testing Facility to trial the effectiveness of sun creams. I got \u00a335 to guzzle either a load of anti-ulcer drugs, or a placebo (I was never told which one, but mine tasted like Refreshers), at a Sydney cancer centre, give two blood samples and wee in a bottle. I nearly got paid \u00a3900 to eat Ropinirole, used in the treatment of Parkinson\u2019s disease, over 10 weeks at the GlaxoSmithKline medicines research unit, but it involved giving up alcohol, which, at the time, would have been a clinical trial of its own.<\/p>\n My piece de resistance was when I answered an advert in the Sydney Morning Herald from the gastroenterology department at St George\u2019s hospital, and got paid \u00a3200 to have a long, bendy, 17-lumen silicone tube stuck up my nose, down my throat, around my entire digestive system, and out of my bottom. This \u2013 need I explain \u2013 was to help study the relationship between distal ileal and propagating proximal colonic pressure waves.<\/p>\n Getting the tube inserted made me gag like when Ed Harris\u2019s character inhales liquid oxygen in The Abyss. I then had to push the tube one further inch up my nostril every 15 minutes. It took three days to achieve an \u201call-over body floss\u201d and for the tube to come out, erm, the other side. I then had to lie still under an X-ray machine for five hours with the tube wired to a machine, watching films on a TV turned on its side (I\u2019ve only ever seen Mission: Impossible 2 rotated 90 degrees), so the activity around my ileocolic junction could be measured, the results of which, I was later told, played a starring role in a conference in the US.<\/p>\n Was it worth it? Probably \u2013 although for me the cash was a big motivation. Did I help humanity with the future of medicine? In a small way, yes \u2013 and that\u2019s what should really matter. Would I do it again all these years later? Well, considering I now also prefer to stay at home than go out clubbing, probably not. But someone has to. Come on, gen Z. Pull your pants down in the name of medical science, like I did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gen Z has a reputation for being \u201cboring\u201d. Not only do they reportedly prefer going to the gym than the pub, and staying at home and going to bed at 9pm rather than going clubbing, now they are refusing to sign up for medical trials. Back (way back) when I was a lad, it was<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[4136,86,2004,3140,2062,5677,18242,1440,516,1500],"class_list":{"0":"post-31292","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-drop","9":"tag-gen","10":"tag-happy","11":"tag-medical","12":"tag-money","13":"tag-pants","14":"tag-pelley","15":"tag-rich","16":"tag-science","17":"tag-turn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}