Diary of a science whore
I was broke. I can’t fully explain why. Perhaps it had something to do with casting off the chains of roommate oppression moving into a bachelor suite I couldn’t afford, and then buying a new TV and VCR at precisely the wrong moment.
Things were getting tight. Food was running out, and I wouldn’t be able to cover next month’s rent. So I returned the VCR. That bought me some time. But not much. I needed money.
Then one afternoon at school, I saw a sign: “SUBJECTS NEEDED FOR SCIENTIFIC STUDY.” Twenty dollars for ninety minutes of my time? In my condition twenty bucks wasn’t much, but it was a small sandbag to fling against the deluge. I signed up.
Three days later, I found myself sitting in a brain laboratory. A grad student named Cecil was drawing on my head with a red marker and rubbing a corrosive substance into my scalp with a Q-tip. It burned. Cecil said he was doing this so his equipment could detect my brain waves more easily.
I had sold him my head, you see. For the next ninety minutes, he could do anything to my cranium he wanted.
Cecil gave me some papers to sign. I was surprised to learn that my head was being prepped for a study investigating the effects of brain injury on cognitive function. My god, I thought to myself. Perhaps Dad was right all along! A lot of things in my life finally started to make sense.
Then Cecil glued twenty-one wires to my scalp and sequestered me in a small, tinfoil-lined room. I had to memorize sets of symbols and press keys on a keyboard. Cecil recorded everything. The most private, inner fluctuations of my cerebral cortex were now on tape for the world to see.
And then it was over. As Cecil removed the wires from my head, he assured me that the painful sensation I felt was not that of hair ripping free from my scalp. He was a damned liar. But at least he was a damned liar with twenty bucks.
As I walked out of that lab, an intoxicating rush overwhelmed my senses. My mind echoed with the words of one of my co-workers, a notorious body-modification addict: “Whenever I get tattooed or pierced or branded, after it’s done I go running through the streets. I just run and run, and I feel like God, like a bus could hit me and I’d be fine. And I just want to fuck.”
I’d long thought these were the words of a depraved madman. But now, as I scratched the surface of that dark Freudian impulse known as thanatos—the yearning for self-destruction—I was finally starting to understand. I had endured the degradation of having my dermis singed, my brain waves recorded and my hair pulled out, all for a measly twenty bucks. I felt cheap and used, but yet, strangely exhilarated. I ran through the streets, I fucked, and the next day I signed up for every human experiment on campus.
I couldn’t wait to do this again. To hell with dead-end student journalism! This was the way out of my financial woes. As often as possible, I would subject my mind and body to callous scientific prodding, and subsist on the pittances I got in return. I must admit, I fancied myself quite the little science whore.
Then, of course, one of my friends had to go and one-up me. Later that week I got an email from Chris, who is currently vacationing in England and also quite broke. He wrote:
You will love this! Since I have not yet gotten a job, I decided to sell my body! I am registered for a clinical research trial. I start in 2 days. It involves taking a stomach ulcer drug and spending about 15 days in the hospital.
The drug I will be taking is supposed to lower the acidity level in the stomach. This drug has already been on the market for several years, and this trial is to directly compare one drug with another. The only unfortunate part is that in order to measure the acidity level in my stomach, and to administer the drug, a naso-gastric tube will be inserted up my nose and down my throat for about 5 of the 15 days! Yikes! I am not looking forward to that part.
However, the compensation is good. I will be fed and housed (in fact, I am not allowed to leave or have visitors) and paid £1220 [replace pound symbol] for my troubles (about $2800 Canadian)!
So much for my sheltered, suburban, milquetoast fantasies of science whoredom. My brain-injured jaunt at school is a mere quickie handjob in the cab of a Ford Explorer, compared to fifteen days of naso-gastric incarceration in a foreign land. And the money! Almost three grand!
Chris is the kind of friend you can trust to do anything you can do, better.
But alas, even Chris’s impressive feat of scientific self-debasement is soon to be upstaged by another of my friends. As it turns out, even the high whoredom of Chris pales in comparison to the apocalyptic, lift-up-my-skirt-and-do-me attitude of Grant, The Peak’s news editor.
For here is a man with a paying job. Two paying jobs, in fact. He is not in a state of desperate need. But if he can make a few extra bucks on the side by allowing an experimental drug to course through his veins, he’ll do it. At this moment, Grant is doing something far riskier than Chris—he is applying to be a subject in a Phase 1 experimental drug study.
For those of you not familiar with pharmacological research methods, “Phase 1” indicates that this is the first time an experimental drug will be administered to human subjects. Before Phase 1, a drug is tested on tissue samples or animals, but not humans. Whatever this drug is, they’ve given it to rats. They’ve given it to cats. They may even have given it to dogs or monkeys. And now, they’re going to give it to Grant.
All I can say is, Grant has balls. Let’s hope he still has them at the end of the experiment.
So to Chris, Grant and all you other science whores out there, I salute you. But mark my words. Someday soon I shall be broke again, and I’ll find an experiment somewhere that will make the indignities you are now enduring look like a relaxing hot oil massage. And on that day, you will know that Glen Callender UFA is the greatest science whore of them all. •
Originally published in The Peak, July 5 1999 .
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Personal correspondence following publication of the piece in The Peak:
From: Cecil
Subject: article
Dear Mr. Callender,
I was informed that my name and experiment were mentioned in an article in the last issue of the Peak. Upon reading it, I became very angry at some of the statements you made about your experience as a subject, two of them in particular.
The first one was when you said that the electrode paste was “corrosive”, which it is not. Though it sometimes bothers some people more than others, it is not dangerous to humans. It is a substance that is commonly used in the field of electroencephalography (EEG) to prepare the skin. Even though I properly informed you about what I was going to do AND after you read and signed the INFORMED CONSENT, which states that you can stop the experiment at any time, for any reason, you did not quit. At no time during the experiment did you ever say that you wanted to quit because it bothered you.
The other statement that bothered me was being called “a damned liar”. Though some individual hairs do come out, people never leave with chunks of it missing, ie bald spots.
I resent you taking a valid study and portraying it in such a negative way. I remember you coming into the lab and saying almost right away that you are writing for The Peak and may use some of the experience as material. I was, and am still not concerned about my methods, so I don’t worry about that. I did wonder about your character because I thought you were very cynical and seemed to be out to make up a funny story. Don’t get me wrong, I like humour, but to take what happened and twist it around in order to try to sound funny at my expense is very low class and I do not appreciate it one bit. There are certainly other ways to generate humour(?) or any other kind of reporting(?). I demand an apology.
To: Cecil
Subject: Re: article
Dear Cecil,
I do not wish to debate your specific criticisms of my article “Diary of a Science Whore”, but suffice to say that I think you missed the point.
The tone of the piece was very playful, and I do not believe that you come off as “the butt of the joke”. I believe the reader understands that your study was perfectly valid and ethical, and that I was a consensual subject who did not experience any unreasonable levels of discomfort--I was simply being masochistic and theatrical about it. I in fact _enjoyed_ participating in your study, and said as much in the article.
I hope you understand that I did not write this article with any intention of causing you unhappiness. I in fact wrote it with the full knowledge that it would get back to you, and I thought you would enjoy the piece. I regret that you have taken offence to my article. I hope that if you re-read my article in the spirit in which it was written, you will see that it is quite harmless, and perhaps even funny.
I did not intend for my article to hurt your feelings, yet it is clear that your feelings have been hurt. For this, please accept my sincere personal apology.
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