Want to get the flu? Volunteers sneeze for science!

This is a heck of a way to get $3,000........

BETHESDA, Md. (AP) — Forget being sneezed on: Government scientists are deliberately giving dozens of volunteers the flu by squirting the live virus straight up their noses.

It may sound bizarre, but the rare type of research is a step in the quest for better flu vaccines. It turns out that how the body fends off influenza remains something of a mystery.

"Vaccines are working, but we could do better," said Dr. Matthew Memoli of the National Institutes of Health, who is leading the study that aims to infect up to 100 adults over the next year.

Now they aren't just infected and turned lose... No.. A bit over a week in quarantine is also a part of it for those whose applications were accepted.

And to avoid spreading the germs, participants must spend at least nine days quarantined inside a special isolation ward at the NIH hospital, their health closely monitored. They're not released until nasal tests prove they're no longer contagious.

The incentive: About $3,000 to compensate for their time.

Source

So who figures it'd be worth it? Something personally just strikes me as a bad idea here..but that's just me perhaps. Getting flu blown up my nose would be an experience I could pass on though..and will, happily.

*Though, I admit, if a couple more zeros were added to that........it might be an awfully hard decision to make, all of the sudden.

How about everyone else? What price to be sick?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Hell I'd do it, I don't hardly ever get sick and when I do it never lasts long, I got my first cold in a long time last thursday and was completely gone by Saturday. The last time I had the flu I was still in grade school, I havent gotten it since and I don't do the vaccines now that it isn't being forced on me through the military. Hell the small pox vaccine was a joke too, I got that and the blister you get scabbed over and healed within 4 days, the corpsman made me go back to sick bay and get another one cause they thought that something was wrong with the first one as it is supposed to be there for at least 2 weeks.

I'm a naturalist, I will get my flu the old fashioned way. I'm not going to get some flu viruses stuffed up my nose. Notice the researchers themselves aren't volunteering for this, the best way to understand something is to experience it. I'll volunteer if it had two more zeros on it to. I suppose they would drain all my blood though, I have a problem with hypovolemia, the blood draws would not be a good thing for me.