Today is the big day. Kinetics day let me give you an idea of what they have us doing here. We will sit at a table like Jesus famous last supper i will be far left so ill be a good disciple ha ha. Anyway 4 hours prior to dose then 4 hours after dose. We will have some one check our mouths every 5 to 10 mins to see if we gain any sores or abnormalities during the dosing process and to make sure the drug dissolves properly. They will monitor our blood pressure with a cuff and a finger clip. An after all is done we will be released to run free around the building until check out on Tuesday. Barring of course we don’t have major side effects. Wish me a luck on day 1.

Dear Piglets and non-piglets,

S.P. here 02:36 in the morning of course taking advantage of the no lights out curfew in my humble abode. I have been out of my study for a couple of days and i can not get rid of the rash from the 3m tape that held my e.c.g. pads /ugh /sigh. I’m using the sporin called neo and its doing its thing but taking its time. I check back in 6 days and i hope my skin is ready. I am doing 3 10 day stays w/10 days out between each. This time will be the 2nd installment and also my birthday will fall while i am in. Oh! not the first time its happened either actually the 3rd year in a row. Talk about consistence!! ya me!

Two friends I’ve lost to cancer both found out about the disease at drug study physicals. They probably might have died faster if they did not find out about it in the study and gotten some treatment. But they also might have both survived if they had health insurance or access to open, honest care on a regular basis.

In ’96 I began a zine project called Guinea Pig Zero, which I created as a forum for us all, with our history, our odd little culture and jargon, and the research scandals that cost some of us our lives or sanity from time to time. Most of the time we are couch potatoes who get stuck with needles, or we snort plastic tubes, or we piss into a jug at our workplace. But every so often, we become unconscious patients, pushed down a hospital corridor by surprised nurses, on our way to the emergency room or the morgue.

Tonight, I want to tell you about a rather disgusting guinea pig scandal that began in London in March 2006. It involved eight healthy young men, two of whom got the placebo. The unlucky six received an infusion of an experimental monoclonal antibody called TGN 1412, the purpose of which had not yet been decided by its researchers. Maybe rheumatoid arthritis, maybe multiple sclerosis, maybe leukemia –they didn’t know yet, even though they were supposed to know. The new class of drugs, now being tried in living men for the first time, was put into these six healthy bodies ten minutes apart. Within about thirty minutes of the first dose, the first guy started complaining of serious back pain, and soon started grabbing his head in agony and calling to the doctors for help. And the band played on. Dosing continued until all six had in their bodies what was obviously a poison.

These six poor men were experiencing a cytokine storm. It led to another medical problem called “multiple organ failure.” You know what this means, don’t you? They were dying. Their immune systems were supposed to have been sort of tweaked, but instead their immune systems went to war against their own bodies –“kicked into overdrive,” the papers said.

The consent form that was provided to the guinea pigs forgot to mention the novelty of this totally new class of drug, and the protocol that was submitted to the British government didn’t happen to mention any earlier research with human blood cells (alongside the monkeys’ blood) in test tubes, which would have examined the question of possible cytokine storms. This would have been an obligatory and essential part of the research process, but evidently it did not take place.

The monkeys who were used in the pre-human phases were dosed in a very slow way, while these first humans were given the drug in a rather fast way, This, among other things, has raised questions for medical scientists. We are all waiting for the answers.

The unfortunate men included Ryan Wilson, 20 years old, an apprentice plumber from North London. Ryan is of Irish descent, as I am. He can’t hope to be a plumber anymore, because after spending several comatose weeks in the hospital, he woke up with many of his fingers and all of his toes in dry gangrene. That means that these extremities had turned to stone, and since that time, all the toes have been amputated and he is waiting for the fingers to fall off. Ryan carries himself through all this with a certain earthy dignity. He is terribly saddened by this disaster, but he refuses to take any antidepressants. He hopes to someday be able to walk normally, which will be more likely if he gets to keep the balls of his feet. Ryan refuses to be defeated by this personal catastrophe, and talks of making the best of his situation. His family is equally brave, and is pushing their formerly healthy young son around in a wheelchair. By the way, Parexel didn’t care to pay for the taxi fare home from the hospital.

We also find Tom Edwards, 21, of Oxford, England. He volunteered for the trial, but dropped out because the 16-page consent form seemed haphazard and he felt suspicious –there was someone at his side all the time he was looking at it. Dear couch potato, please consider doing what Tom Edwards did, when next you read something that you do not understand.

And there is Mohammed El Hady Abdullah, 28, a handsome Egyptian-born bartender bar tender who goes by “Nino,” and who was described in the international press as looking like the Elephant Man, after his fiancée emerged from Northwick Park Hospital, where he lay near death. She later stated that she wished she hadn’t said that. This whole tragedy is often referred to as the “Elephant Man Trial.” Like all the other TGN1412 victims, Nino’s head and neck seemed to be of the same width, and his head was far larger than it had been when his lady last saw him. His skin, like the others, was stretched and purple. The Media has been careless enough to confuse Nino’s swollen description with those of other Parexel victims. One is left to ask, “Will the real Elephant Man please stand up?” This is one sloppy world, and all we guinea pigs live in it.

Placebo was received by Raste Kahn, a 23-year old TV technician, who told the Media: “The test ward turned into a living hell minutes after we were injected. The men went down like dominoes. First they began tearing their shirts off complaining of fever, then some screamed out that their heads felt like they were about to explode. After that they started fainting, vomiting and writhing around in their beds. It was terrifying because I kept expecting it to happen to me at any moment. But I felt fine and didn’t know why. An Asian guy next to me started screaming and his breathing went haywire as though he was having a terrible panic attack. They put an oxygen mask on him but he kept tearing it off, shouting ‘Doctor, doctor, please help me!’ He started convulsing, shouting that he was getting shooting pains in his back.

One doctor was interviewed on British TV, saying that he would have given steroid shots and other remedies to these men, as soon as the symptoms began to appear. BUT it was about five hours before our stricken brothers of London received the slightest remedy for their close call with death.

Two of the formerly healthy subjects have been diagnosed with weird and obscure cancers. All six of them have impaired immune systems, and fear for their health if they should even take a ride on a bus, lest they catch some passing illness.

I would love to see a diagram of the research unit, so as to figure out how loudly the medical staff could hear the screams of the first victims, as they poisoned the last few? Who are these people anyway? Do they have names? British law is far more restrictive of journalists than is US law. Similarly horrible scandals in the US will at least supply the names of the researchers.

The British government has completely exonerated Parexel and made some 22 mealy-mouthed recommendations for future research of this kind. The CEO of Parexel was filmed at Boston, literally running down the hall into the men’s room from a British reporter, as he was asked about this scandal. The assholes who invented the drug have declared bankruptcy, and Parexel is actively recruiting new subjects. Nobody was, nor ever will be prosecuted. The short version goes like this: Those scumbags got away with it.

What we are left with, my fellow couch-potato guinea pigs, is a dream of terror: When you check into your next study, take a nice long nap. Go and watch the football game, and have yourself one of those dry turkey sandwiches that we all know too well. Perhaps when you wake up, maybe you’ll see the smiling physician who turns out to be your murderer. If you should pass through this study with the usual care-free paycheck and wave-of-the-hand, please remember that six guys, who are all just like you, are now crippled and haunted by a study that happened to them.

Healthy guinea pigs, we are only a company of lousy bio-sluts, but we can improve our condition by staying in touch. It could have been me at London, and it could have been any of you.

In Solidarity,

Bob Helms

Here’s what I just wrote in my journal, if I can even read my handwriting by the light of this screen in an otherwise pitch-black room:

I don’t know why it seems so strange that there are people who do this for a living. I mean, it’s not that unlike a regular nine-to-fiver. Take this study I’m in now. I’m here 5 days a week and home for 2. The health coverage is… unconventional, but nothing if not thorough. We get direct deposit and W-2’s, carpool, talk by the water cooler and on our cell phones, get up at the crack of dawn, wear work uniforms, kiss up to our bosses…

The only differences are: you sleep here at night (and during the day), goofing off is encouraged (except when you’re supposed to be eating, or in bed for ‘procedures’), they tell you where and when you can piss, exactly what and when to eat, don’t let you leave the office, and are always hooking wires to you or sticking you with needles.

Oh, and I almost forgot; they’re giving you experimental drugs that could very well kill you.

But the pay is great, and vacation’s unlimited.

Time to eat. While I’m eating you can check out my site: HEREBOY.NET

See you all in Hell,
Captain Gingersnap

It’s been nice being back at home, able to piss in a toilet again instead of having to walk down the hall, find a staffer to open the piss room, find the “urinal” (jug) with my initials and number on it, take it to the bathroom, press the button on the lock, and wave the RFID tag on my jug in front of it until it beeps and unlocks, even if all I want to do is brush my teeth, change my underwear or scratch my ass in peace.

I managed to do two studies in the two full days I was home. One where all they did was take hi-res pictures of my face, and the other a functional MRI study where they slid me in the tube and asked me multiple choice questions til my eyes started to bleed. I know, I know; I’m slacking. Next time I have a 70-hour break I’ll try to fit at least five studies in.

My girlfriend was kind enough to help peel the glue from those ravenously adhesive EKG stickers off of my chest while we were lying in bed. Those brown, sticky circles on my arms, legs and (bulging) pecs were really starting to cramp my style down at that nude modeling job. Just kidding; those art students loved them.

Well, since my lack of sleep tonight will probably get me booted from this study on account of bilrubin levels again, and all my strenuous exercising today (5 loads of laundry; walking 12 blocks home from that fMRI study carrying a load of booty from the local thrift shop) could get me excluded for those muscle enzymes they always warn you about, I should probably try to get at least one cycle of REM sleep before getting up at 6:15 to rush down to the bus. Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to the blood farm we go!

See you all in Hell,
Captain Gingersnap