How do I get started doing studies
Study this JALR website, go to different pages. There is one that has a list of research clinics. You can get the numbers of those clinics and call them and ask that your name and address and phone number and general medical information be put on their databases so that they can call you if there are studies that require someone your age, weight, and whatever else. (I think that most clinics would put your name and information on their databases).
Of course if they do not call you, you can call them and ask if there are studies for your criteria.
That would basically be it for getting touch with the clinics.
Some advice though you may already know, but just in case you are really new at it:
Be careful what you tell the clinics about your medical history. Being a paid lab rat is a precarious thing. You must be careful about your health, you don't want to be experimented on when you know some medicine will really make you sick, maybe because you might have some allergy to it. If you don't already know what medications make you sick, you will likely get into studies in which you are dosed with medications that you will find out do not agree with you. This could result in you being dismissed from a study because the medication caused Adverse Events in you and the study staff don't want to be responsible for uing to use you in the study. For example you may have been accepted in a week long study for $3000 but you get sick on the third day that you are dosed and you will be released with a pro-related amount of money. It may be much less than you think. I guess there are times in which clinics release you without any money if they feel they have to release you "for your own good" and that is the one of the dilemmas of being a lab rat. Some lab rats will not report to the study staff that they are feeling sick from the medication ( unless it is absolutely detectable by temperature reading, EKG reading etc) ..It is risking health to earn money and a lot of lab rats do this. But also it also messes up the research findings and the researchers will write down that the medication did not cause any AEs that the test subjects reported.
On the other hand, you don't want to be excluded from good paying studies. For example as a child you may have had a lot of nose bleeds because maybe you played a lot of sports or caught a lot of colds. But as an adult you no longer go through nose bleeds. If research staff or "recruiters" (the people you talk to over phone when you call to ask about available research studies) ask about any illnesses you ever had or any medical conditions or maybe (in this instance) they may specifically ask "Have you had any kind of bleeding diss throughout your life" and you mention the frequent childhood nosebleeds the researchers/recruiters may just say "That is irrelevant or not clinically significant because that has an obvious explanation and you no longer suffer from it," or they may say " We need to be very careful that people have never had bleeding diss of any kind so you do not qualify to participate in this study." And on extreme occasion they might say 'We cannot take anyone that has any kind of illness and for the said of your safety as well as for the legal standing of the clinic we cannot ever allow you to ever participate in studies in this clinic."
It is very much your call as a lab rat. You have to know your own body. On one hand , no use telling the clinics about any medical condition that you know won't interfere with the research study. Clinics sometimes will be over-cautious so as to "check the box" and not be legally responsible for anyone who gets sick while taking an experimental medication of theirs.
But also there are lab rats who try to hide drug-abuse histories or current "recreational" drug-use and that is really not a good idea. They may time their drug use so as not to test positive when they get a drug test but then the experimental medication still may cause a severe reaction.
I would say that on-going drug-abusers are truly the types who should not participate in studies.
And yet on occasion when researchers or recruiters screen people, they say that "you must not have been a drug-abuser for the past 6 months" not "you must NOT have EVER been a drug abuser."
Again perhaps you know all this. There is much more about the world of being a lab rat and participating in clinical trials. People who regularly do it for money are "career" or "professional" lab rats.
Rarely are they people who qualify because their health is perfect and they have no serious surgeries, medical conditions, no drug abuse histories etc. They just hide it.
Read a lot of the posts and discussions on JALR too if you haven't already.
There are incidents in which lab rats have had horrific experiences in certain clinics in which the medical or research staff refused to believe AEs that the lab rat reported and the lab rat got sick, developed some severe illness or symptoms and since the staff or researchers (or some of them) were corrupt and just wanted to put the medication on the market or please some kind of quota system for clinical trials, they just write off the lab rat's complaint as "psychotic."
You should read up on JALR as to which clinics are badly -run and are just , what I would call "research mills" and they just try to do a lot of research studies to move the experimental medication another notch up so that it is more ready to put on the market. It is a system and industry filled with vested interests.
And yet after even saying that, different lab rats have different experiences in different clinics. Some rats have had good experiences in one clinic and others have very horrid experiences in the same clinic.
A lot of rats are not nice either. They may be angry because they did not get accepted in a good paying study and are bad mouthing the clinic. It could be a mix of both or any number of things.
There have been incidents in which a clinic banned a volunteer and no longer let that volunteer do studies because the volunteer complained about some thing in the clinic during his or her stay or maybe during his or her screening, anything such as long wait times to be screened, conditions in the clinic, untrained medical staff etc etc. So when it comes to certain things, a lot of rats would advise you to be ready to tolerate a lot of things that come with the territory.
Sometimes you may pay money to travel to a clinic, air fare or train fare and stay in a hotel to be near the clinic and then at the last minute when you arrive in the clinic to screen or to check in, you may be told at the last minute that the sponsor cancelled the entire study. SOmetimes you may have been told that you are accepted in the study and to check-in the following day and when you arrive you may be told that he sponsor decided to change the criteria of the study and that only 25 instead of 30 participants are needed and that you are one of the people who will not participate.
Lab rats know this and have to carefully weigh the risk of screening (which may involve travel and hotel costs) and the chance of getting into a study. Sometimes that research site tells the applicants about how many people are needed in the study, sometimes not. It pays to ask.
I once screened for a study over phone and after answering medical questions and being told I qualify, I then asked how many people are needed for the study, and I was told that only one more volunteer is needed. It means that the clinic is probably screening several people just to pick one of them since they already have filled the other spots. I would have had to travel cross country and the chances of me being picked were too little. I had to reject trying out for the study.
Also don't forget one major problem for a lot of lab rats is if you get chosen and are put in a facility for a few days or weeks or maybe months to be experimented on, there are other lab rats that are horrible to be around. There will be a lot of people who apparently are homeless, or from the streets, or out of jail etc and being a lab rat is the only way they make money.
It is best to keep away from these types whenever possible but some research facilities are designed to crowd lots of people in one room. There are always bad mannered aggressive types who put on their music loud when others are trying to sleep or who step in front of you when you are standing in line to get your tray of food at the cafeteria etc etc. It is not advisable to argue with them. Often if you report them to the staff then a whole bunch of lab rats will be mad at you for "ratting" in a whole different way. These types bring the culture of the streets in the facility.
I myself have experienced bad things when participating in research studies. On the other hand I have had good experiences and met some nice people and real nice research staff and workers.
It can be a mixed bag.
So maybe all this is just what you already know, but if you are really starting out, it pays to read up and make informed choices.
