Photo: RNZ
You may have heard the ads, asking for what are effectively human guinea pigs - people to help make medical research breakthroughs.
New Zealand Clinical Research is seeking volunteers to take part in clinical trials where they test new emerging medicines to establish if they're safe and effective for wider use.
Often, they come with payments that can run into the thousands.
Chief scientific officer for NZCR Dr Chris Wynne told Checkpoint there were several reasons that motivated people to sign up to the trials.
"Patients who participate in clinical trials do better clinically and the motivation for patients often is access to new medicines," he said.
"But really we're talking about early phase clinical research where participants, usually healthy participants, are compensated for their time and their effort, and the motivating factor is altruism. But generally, it is because they're compensated."
He said patients also might wish to get on the trials so they could try something new that was not on the market or potentially not funded.
"A lot of the studies are very early on as medicines that have been tested in rats, mice and monkeys, and now we're going to be testing it in humans.
"The motivating factor for participation might be family members have had a similar disease, and they want to help, but they do get compensated for their time and effort."
He said there was currently a male fertility treatment study in Auckland where participants were being paid $10,000.
"It's a complex study, there are a lot of nights that they have to spend with us, so there's confinement in our unit. There are multiple outpatient visits, there are restrictions on alcohol, exercise, coffee, tea and they have to produce sperm samples," he said.
"Whilst it sounds like a lot of money it's based on an algorithm, a calculator approved by the Ethics Committee based on the unemployment benefit."
The safest time to go into a clinical trial was early in its development.
"Here in New Zealand and in multiple other jurisdictions, the regulations are very tight. We will not be giving a new medicine if it's not a safe thing to do," he said.
Crossing the road to get to the unit where the trial was being held was more dangerous than participating in the trial, Dr Wynne said.
"If it comes down to dollars per injury, it's about the safest industry that we have in New Zealand at the moment."
If something went wrong in the trial, if it was a non-registered medicine being tested ACC did not cover injury, he said.
"Every company that conducts a study has to have an insurance policy approved by the ethics committee that covers injury and compensation to at least the level that ACC work.
"In my 25 years of working in early phase research, I have never had to make a claim on an insurance policy because of injury to a participant."
As clinicians, regulators and ethics committee members, they had a responsibility to ensure it was safe.
Currently, NZCR has 100,000 people on its database.
"There's a flu vaccine study coming up and that's going to be done at multiple units around the country. Optimal clinical trials in Auckland, for example, have got 800 people lined up to participate in that study over the next month or so."
