I’m Going To Be A Guinea Pig
I got a letter a couple of months ago inviting me to participate in a medical study looking at the effect of testosterone on bone density. I’m on a couple of e-mail/mailing lists because a couple years ago after I joined the ACLU I was asked to participate in a discussion with other recent members about why we’d joined, to help them with their recruitment efforts. It paid well, $115 or so (extra for parking, which was cool as I took the T) for a 1-hour discussion, and I definitely was willing to do more of those. I only did one more (a radio station had us take surveys and listen to a few seconds of hundreds of songs to help with their programming) as the sessions are usually during the day.
So the study seems cool. Of course it’s a little scary messing with one’s body, but I think it’s pretty lame to take a “not in my back yard” approach to this sort of thing. It’s a good feeling to help contribute to the body of medical knowledge. Plus, there will be lots of tests (physicals, bone density scans, blood work, cholesteral checks, prostate cancer screening, etc.) and I’ll be able to keep the results. And it pays $1000, which doesn’t suck.
So I thought it would be good to keep some notes on how things go, and where better than here?
