CARL ELLIOTT

If you’ve ever been out of work and feeling desperate, asking yourself how you could possibly earn money with your philosophy degree or your creative writing MFA, you’ve probably wondered about those ads at the back of your local alternative weekly that say “Research Volunteers Wanted. Earn up to $7000.” The ads never say where the research studies take place, or how long they take, or even who is in charge, leaving you to wonder precisely what you must endure to earn this kind of money. What kind of drugs do they give you? Are you paid extra if they scan your brain or biopsy your liver? What exactly is it worth to let a stranger in a lab coat insert a fiber-optic tube into your rectum?

In May 1996, Bob Helms, a longtime study veteran and former union organizer in Philadelphia, began publishing a job zine called Guinea Pig Zero, whose subtitle was A Journal for Human Research Subjects, aimed mainly at the kind of subject who enrolled in studies for money. Guinea Pig Zero published firsthand reports on the things potential guinea pigs really wanted to know about the business of human research: how much the studies paid, how bad the food was, whether a research unit employed phlebotomists who had trouble hitting a vein. The look of the zine was rough and handmade, as if it had been stapled together with paper stolen from Kinko’s, and many issues featured an actual guinea pig on the cover. The voice of the writing sounded like a cross between Emma Goldman and Robert Crumb. One early issue featured an article about donating eggs to a fertility clinic. It was titled “Cluck, Cluck, Gimme a Buck.