Fun_People Archive
15 Mar
YAUL

Date: Tue, 15 Mar 94 23:33:07 PST
To: Fun_People
Subject: YAUL

[After two days of backing-up, upgrading, and reconfiguring, our computers are
back up (welcoming new addition "banjo") and after having no email for all that
time, I'll send anything out!  Especially Urban Legends about experiances like
having your equipment down for 3 minutes...   -psl]

Forwarded-by: laguer@ucs.orst.edu (Rich Lague)
Forwarded-by: jackd@heart.cor.epa.gov (Jack Doyle)
From: v140pxgt@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (Daniel B Case)
Subject: Heart Stopping Experiment

   It turns out that Spy magazine isn't dead yet, and in the March issue
they have a sidebar to an article about people who volunteer for drug trials
that sounds like a classic example of a UL that I'm sharing with our friends
on sci.med and sci.research so they can shed some light on the voracity or
lack thereof of this one.  (alt.folklore.science, too, now that I think
about it)

 From the March 1994 issue of Spy, p. 19

   To pass the uneventful days in drab medical-testing centers, professional
volunteers turn to the television-usually watching five movies a day on
video-and the great American tradition of storytelling. "All the guys on a
medical study are world-class experts on two subjects, video rentals and
medical studies," says drug-trial veteran David B. The favorite study to
discuss in the labs, he says, is the dreaded heart-stopping experiment.

   David first heard about it on a drug trial in Wisconsin. "You make
$10,000 for one day's work," he explains, "but they stop your heart for
three minutes. Then they revive you and pay you." He says he was told about
the study again years later in a New Jersey test center. "In both places,
people referred to the study as taking place 'out in Colorado,'" he says.
        
   Arnie Brown, who has done eight studies in Charlottesville, Virginia,
has heard about the study. "It's the ultimate experiment," he says, "but
it's not in Colorado. It's in Baltimore. They kill you, bring you back and
pay you $9,000."

   Recruiter Carol Dean of Health and Sciences Research says, "I used to
hear that the heart-stopper paid $5,000. Now the volunteers tell me it's up
to $25,000." She says that people regualrly approach her about how and where
to apply. "I tell them that the study doesn't exist," Dean says, "but that
doesn't stop the rumors."

   The rumors also include a $1,100 experiment that requires only a tattoo
on the sole of your foot and a signed promise to donate your corpse to the
test center. "You have to go to White Plains, New York, for it," Brown
explains, "but you get a free tattoo, which is cool because tattoos are
expensive."

   Norma LaVelle, a recruiter at Hofmann-La Roche (makers of Valium) in
Newark, New Jersey, says, "I've heard about one study where they cut off
your toe in exchange for some phenomenal amount of money." She says no one
is ever clear about where that test occurs. "The volunteers who swear it
exists just say 'out west' or 'down south'"

   Anybody know where these stories might have come from? 

© 1994 Peter Langston