Are the studies dangerous? There have been reports of human guinea pigs suffering sterility, psychosis and even death as a result of drug studies, though these have come from the United States and Europe where human testing is much more widespread. According to the subjects interviewed for this article, every possible side-effect of testing, including death, is forthrightly described before obtaining consent.

Some of the research experiments are worth describing. Jack Smith says the most harrowing test he had to undergo involved being intravenously fed radioactive glucose on an empty stomach. An assistant, whom Smith thinks was a grad student, shaved both his arms before piercing him with a needle two inches above the wrist. Smith says the student tried unsuccessfully to find a vein for several agonizing minutes and finally gave up, but not before causing extensive internal bleeding. Smith says his wrists were black and blue for two weeks afterward, and his head ached severely for two days as a result of the flood of radioactive fluid into his brain.

Clark Von Pelt recalls one study in which subjects were given an experimental drug on empty stomachs. Everyone began what Von Pelt calls "gut-wrenching, dry-heave puking" into plastic bags with special measurement indicators. The bags were frozen and their contents later analyzed. Von Pelt thinks he tore something in his stomach in the process because he developed a serious intestinal infection which required antibiotics three weeks later. Researchers promptly phoned him to record all the details.

Von Pelt has since learned to be more discerning about which studies he accepts. "First question you ask," he says, "is, 'Is there a lot of blood?' If I have to give too much blood, I don't do it. And I never test any drug that isn't already on the market."

There are survival mechanisms that really hardcore human guinea pigs develop. (And there is a select group of people, West says, who accept practically every test they're offered. One man West met at a study had a circle and mosquito tattooed on his skin to indicate where the best vein was.) According to Rex Stone (not his real name), who also did a number of studies several years ago, the really dedicated subjects learn to endure repeated testing simply by breaking the rules. "You feel kind of sick and you're pasty and you sit around, and you think it's going to be easy, but it's not so good. But then I talked to a guy who did it almost as a full time job, and he was telling me he had all kinds of tricks. For one thing, you're not supposed to eat before, and he just said, 'Forget that,' and he'd eat a full meal. And he wouldn't take the drugs they gave to him: he would put them under his tongue. And I found once you start doing things like that you begin to feel a little bit better."

An answer to the employment crisis of the late 20th century? Medical testing for money, for thousands of people in Montreal, may have turned out to be just what the doctor ordered. --Jacquie Charlton