My Not-So-Secret Life as a Guinea Pig

 

That's me, ready to get zapped

Just over five years ago, I came across a Facebook post offering $50 to provide a blook draw, a saliva sample, and answer a few questions about my health.  I’ve never been one to turn down easy money, and so I ventured into a building in Boston’s Longwood Medical Center complex of hospitals and labs. I did no flinch during the blood draw (I’m a long-time blood donor) and I took the questions seriously. Because I asked, I was told my ‘blind samples’ were part of creating a profile of a projected 40,000 random individuals.

Maybe it was because I asked a lot of questions (including how ‘random’ a sample could be if it drew its participants from Facebook users who had enough time on their hands and the wherewithal to travel into the city to participate), but I was asked if I might be interested in other studies. As I am always looking for a potential book story line, I said ‘sure’.

Fifteen or 20 studies later, I am now on call sheets. There is a notebook on me somewhere that says I am apparently a rara avis in the world of biomedical research. I am over 70, I have had no major illnesses or surgeries, I take only a single prescription drug (for cholesterol), I have no tattoos or miscellaneous metal parts in my body, I do not have a fear of enclosed spaces, I know how to lie still and follow instructions, and I show up on time.

Some of these are done in hospitals, some are at MIT, but the preponderance of the studies I’m involved with are at the MassGeneral Research Institute located at the Charlestown Navy Yard (CNY) in Boston. Today, if you’re looking for evidence of the presence of the U.S. Navy, it’s in the form of ‘Old Ironsides’, which is anchored at the west end of the Yard.

I’ve been in three of MassGeneral’s buildings at CNY, but the one that stops me in my tracks every time is a full block in size and eleven stories tall. For a century, the Navy made steel cables in it. Now, it is roughly a million square feet of biomedical research.  As the photos show, MassGeneral stripped the building back to its skeleton and re-built it for science. The ground floor is lots of MRI machines, meeting rooms, a very nice cafeteria and what passes for public space in a building where entry is strictly by key card.  Above the first floor? Lab space and testing rooms.

The study I’m about to complete involves TMS – transcranial magnetic stimulation. Several years ago, researchers found placing a powerful magnet on the head of someone suffering from depression, and focusing it on the very specific part of the brain that is linked to that emotional state, made a demonstrable and measurable improvement in the subject’s behavior and mood. The efficacy is sufficiently ‘replicable’ – meaning it really works in practice – that TMS for depression is now covered by insurance and Medicare. The Principal Investigator for the study with which I’m associated is looking at other areas where TMS might have efficacy. That’s all I think I’m allowed to say on the subject.

For me, the highlight of any new project is getting to meet the ‘research coordinators’. Every year, MassGeneral brings in extraordinarily bright college graduates who are keenly interested in the life sciences, but who are uncertain where their longer-term interests lie. Do they want to go to medical school? Pursue a PhD? In return for doing the ‘grunt work’ of escorting participants like me around, performing labs, and spending many hours entering data and creating schedules; they get the opportunity to see the cutting edge of science being created. They also get to sit in on talks and symposia. They get to ask questions. It’s a two- or three-year contract, after which you’re kicked out of the nest and expected to fly on your own (but with an exceptionally prestigious bullet point on your med or graduate school application).

Being an on-call guinea pig is not something I expected to occupy me in retirement, but I have my reasons for continuing to volunteer. Whenever I’m called, I jokingly ask the recruiter each time if the chances of spontaneous combustion are above or below 30%. I know I’m in demand when one quickly responded, “It’s a little over 30%, but that’s why we called you. We figured you’d still say ‘yes’.”