POV: You just spent the last of your allowance on gig tickets, your fridge is a wasteland, and you’re dangerously close to monetising your toes. But there, casting sultry, cash-flashing bedroom eyes at you from the back of a discarded Critic on your coffee table, is a Zentech ad. A clinical trial or two might be your ticket to a life beyond toast and despair. Rest easy, Big Pharma is here to lull you to sleep.
We’ve all seen the Student Job Search listings, the stalls at Tent City, and the posters in the Link. Calls for participants for human research trials are about as common as all-season jorts in north Ōtepoti. But is recruiting the desperate dodgy, or simply a win-win for medical advancement and struggling students? To find out, Critic Te Ārohi delves into the perils (like giving yourself a life-threatening sodium deficiency, as it turns out) and possibilities of becoming a lab rat with a loan. Spoiler alert: This author is now booked for one next week.
In simple terms, clinical trials are test runs to check the safety and effectiveness of new medical treatments. This might look like slathering on a mystery cream or popping a few pills while your lab-coated sugar daddy keeps a close eye on you. In exchange for a paycheck, you do your best to ignore the possible threat of ‘mild to severe’ swelling, nausea, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, indigestion, and muscle pain.
These human research trials are crucial to improving health outcomes and quality of life for future patients. Every drug or medical intervention available to the public, whether it's your antidepressants or birth control, is owed in part to some human guinea pigs. Willing participants are compensated for their time and any risks involved; the bigger the risk, the bigger the paycheck. A quick Google search reveals several studies recruiting participants in Dunedin. These range from neuroimaging trials paying $100 for MRIs, to a trial offering $2,500 for participants to spend 18 days testing iron supplements.
And that’s where the appeal seems to lie for students. Earlier this year, an informal poll by the OUSA Exec found that the cost of living crisis was overwhelmingly one of the biggest concerns for Otago students. With Studylink’s maximum living cost loan at $316.39 per week and Ōtepoti rent prices climbing over $200 (if you want somewhere that doesn’t have rats in the walls), students are left with shit-all for remaining expenses. According to a 2022 survey by the Green party, two-thirds of students in Aotearoa admitted to regularly struggling to afford living basics, like groceries.
Ordinarily, low-income communities face significant barriers to entering clinical trials. Lack of education, distrust in healthcare, and difficulty accessing transportation are all contributing factors. Our North D community, however, is unique. Back in 2022, the University of Otago’s Strategy and Analytics Office reported that 60% of its first-year students came from decile 8-10 secondary schools. Often hailing from affluent, well-educated backgrounds, Otago students are nonetheless thrust into temporary food and housing insecurity by circumstance. Students, simply by nature of attending a research-driven institution like the University of Otago, have a strong familiarity with science and academic research/academia. This trust in science and healthcare, paired with a hunger for a livable income, makes us the ideal concoction for that all-expenses-paid lab life. This makes clinical trials a shitload more accessible for students (quite literally – recruitment flyers can be found inside the library toilet cubicles).
On campus, clinical trials become a convenient opportunity to stay financially afloat. It would be cool to imagine students as entirely altruistic here, pledging their healthy (if you consider five hours of sleep and inhaling fungal spores from our landlord’s musty curtains on the reg “healthy”) young bodies to medical research. But with pint-flation seeing campus’ midweek Summit Ultras hitting $7, that’s unlikely to be the reality.
This leaves the lab rats of North-D in a potentially vulnerable position. Informed consent is to research ethics what a privacy setting is to social media: an essential part of protecting your wellbeing. Before joining a study, you should understand its purpose, procedures, potential risks and benefits, and your right to withdraw at any time. If the only side effect students are really weighing up is rent money, is that still informed consent? Perhaps the pressures of student poverty make trial compensation seem overly attractive, pushing student involvement into the territory of what’s called 'undue inducement’. This is when payment heavily sways someone into participating in a trial, overriding their ability to make a free, informed choice. Critic Te Ārohi consulted clinical trial participants, Cassie, Molly and Ava*, and bioethics professor Angela Ballantyne, to find out.
After losing hundreds on a cancelled concert (look at what you made her do, Lewis Capaldi), Master of Applied Science student Cassie found herself offering up her body to Zentech for $650. Zentech is an Ōtepoti-based independent contractor that conducts human research studies for pharmaceutical companies. They’re also located in that off-white mirrored windowed meth-lab chic building on Frederick Street (slaying the indie sleaze trend). Cassie responded to one of their adverts for an eczema treatment trial. For two days, Cassie sat in a hospital bed with ointment on her arm, caught up on missed lectures and ate Domino's pizza. While eczema cream isn’t death-defying, Cassie admitted she might be tempted to pay less attention to the fine print when the compensation was high enough. "There's a lot I'd do for money," she confessed with a shrug. "Have you ever read the side effects of birth control? It's insane, and we all take that.”
Fourth-year Politics and Communications student Molly entered a COVID-19 needle-length study through Pharmacy Research Network. She also admitted to being unfazed by potential risks, equating them to those she takes daily: “As a student with an active social life I already damage my body [with alcohol] so why not do it for a bit of coin?” For trialling a COVID-19 booster, either injected into the muscle (intramuscular) or into the layer of fat just below the skin (subcutaneous), Molly will be compensated $235. Most of which will go towards groceries, rent, and recreational habits that damage her body.
Professor Angela Ballantyne, an expert in human research ethics, explained to Critic that the majority of these trials are well-tested before they even hit campus, and are, for the most part, low-risk. Clinical trials are divided into phases, with phase one being the earliest and riskiest test. Just like a relationship moving beyond the first date, medical treatments become safer and more reliable as they progress through the phases. Phase three is the equivalent of farting in front of your partner (and they don’t get the ick).
Some recruitment sites will specify which phase a trial is in. The trials that students are most likely to participate in are usually about testing how efficient a treatment is, rather than assessing its safety risks. Thankfully, this means students are less likely to have to choose between rent and a rash. Sure enough, neither Cassie nor Molly reported experiencing any unexpected side effects from their trials – beyond a desire to sign up for more.
There’s also a certain stigma tied to using your body for monetary gain. It’s often linked to desperation. This stigma, combined with distrust in science and healthcare, sees us telling our family we've been making bank “dog walking” instead of admitting we earned that $800 in a novel ketamine trial. The reality, Professor Ballantyne reminded us, is that health research depends on willing trial participants. By joining a clinical trial, you're contributing to advancements that can improve the lives of many. The COVID-19 needle-length trial Molly is part of aims to gain insights that could increase the effectiveness of the vaccine, both in Aotearoa and internationally. On top of a koha towards study-break treats, the opportunity to engage with complex research can sweeten the deal.
This is how Ava, a third-year Med student and self-proclaimed clinical trial enthusiast, ended up inhaling tuberculosis antibiotics for breakfast last week. Contrary to popular belief, tuberculosis isn’t an extinct medieval plague, but a serious respiratory disease that affects 300 people in Aotearoa each year. Ava’s helping researchers at Otago find more effective treatments for the disease, paid with $180 in supermarket vouchers in return. Fascinated by medical procedures, Ava sees clinical trials as a backstage pass to the research behind treatments she'll one day administer. Her excitement, like tuberculosis, was infectious. “I know my bone density, my lung function, and I’ve seen an ultrasound of my heart!” she excitedly told Critic. But Ava’s only human, and compensation for her time means she doesn’t have to worry about losing income by choosing the trial over other work.
Though admirable, Ava might not be the majority. An anonymous submission to Critic reveals the lengths students might go to, at the cost of their health, purely for a bit of cash. The morning after a particularly wild, substance-fueled night out, one student was horrified to remember she'd signed up for a pharmaceutical trial that day – one that required a drug test. Needing the money, she desperately attempted to ‘flush’ what she’d taken from her system. In what she described as “a very short space of time” she ran 10km and chugged 14 litres of water. Pretty soon, she began to feel nauseous and entered a severe state of confusion. Along with the MDMA, she had also rid her body of a fair bit of sodium. Independent of any of the risks within the trial itself, she had given herself hyponatremia (dangerously low sodium levels in the blood). She was admitted to the hospital and, needless to say, didn’t make the trial.
Critic Te Ārohi asked Professor Ballantyne what researchers and students can do to avoid this relationship becoming a toxic one. Her answer was that taking extra care when determining participant compensation is one approach trialists can take. Researchers should stay sensitive to their participants' economic circumstances. Payment shouldn't be so low that it fails to cover associated costs such as travel expenses, time and risks. This ensures studies don’t reinforce social inequalities by underpaying students – confining them to struggle street. Nor should it be excessive, to the point where an individual’s ability to make a rational decision about their participation is compromised. This could constitute undue inducement. Overly attractive incentives also risk triggering deceptive behaviour in participants, tempting them to lie about their eligibility in pursuit of financial relief. This could be as simple as calling yourself a non-smoker when you buy durries on the occasional night out. Still, this is dangerous for the test subject and weakens the credibility of the study’s results.
To counter this, many Ōtepoti studies now leave out explicit payment figures to ensure moolah isn’t the main incentive. Zentech loves an ominous “participants will be compensated for their time and inconvenience”. Figuring out the happy medium of payment rests with the trialists, which then must be approved by ethics committees and regulatory boards like the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) and Medsafe (part of the Ministry of Health).
Confirming Critic’s suspicion, Ballantyne explained that ethical concerns could only arise if trialists consistently target students, knowing they’re more likely to overlook risks for cash. When lower-income groups continually shoulder the risks and burdens of clinical trials while wealthier individuals reap the benefits, it only deepens social inequalities—and starts sounding like the premise of a dystopian novel. However, Ballantyne told us it’s generally in the interest of researchers for their study participants to be evenly spread across the population, rather than a single very niche community. If an entire sample consists of 18-to-21-year-olds surviving on Smirnoff Ice and Mie Goreng, the findings may not accurately reflect the broader public – or those the treatment is ultimately designed to benefit. Reassuringly, Cassie and Molly told Critic that their pre-screenings featured participants ‘from all walks of life.’
Another way that clinical trialists protect their guinea pigs is to let them know exactly what to expect. Even if Molly hadn't read the consent form, researchers scheduled an hour-long phone call before the trial to explain the full protocol, and associated risks, and to answer any questions she had. This meant that going into the trial, she felt well-educated on its ins and outs. Cassie’s pre-screening process was similarly thorough. They repeatedly let her know that if she wanted to, she could exit this bizarre student side quest at any time.
At the end of the day, what you do with your body is ultimately your choice. So long as you feel safe, comfortable, and informed then clinical trials can be a good way to make a bit of extra cash, and contribute to research. It’s just like we were all taught in health class: know that if Zentech offers you a cup of tea, and you no longer want tea, that’s totally fine. Even if they’ve already made it for you, or you’ve already started drinking it. Maybe you have a personal mantra not to consume beverages prepared in buildings that look like aged crack dens. Bottom line: you don’t have to drink the tea.
*Name changed.
Zentech did not respond to request for comment in time for print.