Approved ~ MJM
Would you do it for money?
Twenty-six-year-old Jake Eberts agreed to drink a life-threatening concoction of a cloudy, salty liquid containing Shigella bacteria, which are usually found in the “poop” of people who are infected — all in the name of science.
He downed a shot-glass amount of the liquid, knowing it would produce a miserable case of dysentery for the sake of research, he told Insider.
Eberts was one of 16 healthy young adults participating in the 11-day inpatient trial at the University of Maryland in an attempt to test the effectiveness of a Shigella vaccine and received a payday in exchange.
Eberts said the symptoms from the trial resulted in the “worst eight hours of my life” — but would do it all again, if he was paid. For this trial, the university said he earned more than $7,000.
“I don’t want to make myself out to be Mother Teresa here — would not have done this for free. It’s a big ask to ask someone to get dysentery,” Eberts told Insider when he was discharged from the study. “The entire time, I was like, ‘Wow, this is an awful disease.’ And I just got really emotional, probably also because I was just delirious, about the thought of small children in the developing world dealing with this.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Shigella bacteria causes 600,000 deaths annually worldwide. While there is no vaccine available against the misery-causing bacteria, it’s the second-leading cause of diarrhea death, with the No. 1 killer being rotavirus, for which vaccines are available.
Sickness from Shigella is often caused by drinking contaminated water, eating ill-prepared food or coming in contact with someone’s infected bowel movements.
The Institut Pasteur in France has been working on a vaccine that was first tested in Israel.
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