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Volunteering Your Body For Clinical Research: Three Good Reasons To Become A Human Guinea Pig

9 February 2016

Michelle Hopkins

Clinical research companies establish themselves in order to further modern medicine and medical treatments. There are clinical research trials happening all over the country all year long. If you would like to be a willing patient in a clinical research trial, but have some trepidation about the whole "human guinea pig" process, here are three good reasons to sign up.

Your Participation Is Part of the Critical End Processes for Medicines and Treatments

Human trials for medication and treatments do not take place until after the drug or treatment being tested has reached the end phases of testing. As such, you are the final component needed in determining if a drug is safe to release to the the general population. Any reactions, both positive and negative, that you have to the drug or treatment being tested weighs in on the final approval for the manufacturing and marketing of the product. (Very rarely, if ever, do test patients experience extreme reactions, since the products tested never reach human trials if they did not pass animal or laboratory trials, so you do not have to worry about a severe reaction either.)

You May Be Part of the Placebo Group, Which Measures Perceived Reactions vs. Real Reactions

There is also the possiblity that your participation will involve placebos. Instead of receiving the actual medication or treatment, you receive a placebo (e.g., a sugar pill instead of the actual medicine or a vibrating pain patch rather than an actual therapeutic patch). If that is the case, you may not experience anything at all, or your perceived experiences are measured against the actual experiences of the part of the test group that is taking the pill/receiving the treatment. As such, the researchers are able to discern that there is little to no chance of side effects when compared to a placebo and that the medication is safe to begin the manufacturing phase.

Clinical Research Companies Often Pay Subjects for Their Participation

Best of all, most test subjects/participants are paid for their time and the use of their unique chemical makeup. You are given compensation that is on par with the number of visits required to complete each day of the study and you are required to commit to all of the days and times of the study for which you are scheduled. It is very possible that you could make some very good money volunteering your body to science and research, a fact which encourages and motivates many participants to re-enlist in more clinical research studies.

For more information, contact a clinical research company to see if any trials are being conducted that you would qualify for. 

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