Researchers Paying Research Subjects $3300 to Get the Flu

The flu is serious business. I have no interest in it, whatsoever. But would I be interested if I got a check that could EARN interest BECAUSE I got the flu?

Depending on the circumstances, I'd probably give it a certain amount of thought.

I mean, $3300 is $3300.

And if you need that kind of money bad enough, maybe it's worth it to get the flu.

The National Institutes of Health are hoping that it is for enough people.

The NIH is running clinical trials at University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore; Duke University, Durham, NC; Saint Louis University, St. Louis; and Cincinnati (OH) Children’s Hospital.

Healthy adults will be deliberately infected with the H1N1 influenza virus under carefully controlled conditions.

They will be monitored for 10 days.

Up to 80 people between the ages of 18 and 50 years will be involved in the trials.

I admit it does sound a little scary--deliberately being infected with the flu--but it also sounds like, perhaps, the best method yet for determining how our pre-existing influenza antibodies "impact the timing, magnitude and duration of a volunteer’s flu symptoms following exposure to influenza virus."

You're gonna feel like crap, but you'll be under a doctor's care the entire time and at the end you get cash and a lot of it.

I no longer meet the requirements. Do you?