I offer my body for scientific research
I have dedicated my body to ART.
But for decades I have lent my mind to SCIENCE, by assisting Roger Penrose's twistor theory.
In 2000 I decided to complete the picture and lend my body to SCIENCE.
I wanted to help in the clinical trials for the new HIV vaccine being developed in Oxford by the Molecular Immunology Group. From their website you can read all about how it is connected with trials in Kenya and part of a very well-intentioned international effort to produce a cheap and practical vaccine for African countries. I had heard about it from an email sent by the research team to the Oxford student Lesbian Gay and Bisexual Society, asking for volunteers to test the effect of the vaccine.
I applied to join and on 31 August I went to the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, for a presentation about the research project.
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These are pictures I took on my walk through the woods, following the path that leads to the hospital.
 I arrive at the hospital... | Scarey! Naff, anyway... rather like science... Never mind, there was an impressive presentation in which the leading researchers spoke to a small group of people deciding whether to volunteer for the trial. It was in the John Warin Ward. In 1991 I knew a nurse who worked there; he told me how almost unbearable it was caring for the young people who were haemophiliac and had acquired the virus through blood transfusions... an appalling irony of scientific progress... | I said I was willing and I went back for the personal screening on 26 September. |
I arrived desperate to take a leak... Phew!  The QuestionnaireThen I was taken through the questionnaire, having been warned it would be very intrusive. I am always hopeless at questionnaires, as I never fit into any preconceived categories, but this one was a particular toughie.'Do you and your partner use contraception?' How was I supposed to answer that? Conception does not (yet) feature in sex between men. Was it really asking about condom use or not? I couldn't tell. Rather later came a question about my 'orientation,' but nothing about what I actually did with my body which might be relevant to getting HIV. Far from being intrusive this was prudish. How many sexual partners had I had in the last year? Again I wasn't sure what counted, but gave a rough estimate. I was on firmer ground when asked about my motivation for being on the trial:
I was asked how I would I if I weren't accepted. No problem: I have plenty of other things to do with my time! I'm lending you my body I said, as the doctor made a rather feeble inspection of it. The SampleThen I took the needle (the doctor was expert)...
This is my blood which is given for you, I remarked to the doctor (I wasn't taking the piss).  | ||||||||
 | I took these pictures during the session. The researchers were very pleased I wanted to be open about being a guinea-pig and would put it all on my website. In fact they suggested I might like to feature on the project's website as a model volunteer. |
Two days later the phone rang and the doctor told me I couldn't be on the trial. At first she was reluctant to say why not, but when pressed explained that the reason was this. There was a criterion for the research subjects which had not been mentioned at the briefing or the screening. The number of sexual partners in the past year had to be below a certain figure (12, actually), and my estimate was rather greater than this number. I pointed out that the number they had pitched on would exclude a great many gay men, and they might well have mentioned this at an earlier stage...
Well, it was only an evening and a morning wasted, that's nothing... And not completely wasted anyway, because now this webpage will add some useful information about the vaccine trial.
But so like my experience of science.
Science is a wondrous thing and I know nothing better to do. But science unfortunately has to be mediated through a human level, personal and social. In this case I am sure that the technical work of analysing the blood and antibodies was brilliant. But the human level missed some pretty basic facts which I would have thought the medical world would have absorbed in the last 15 years...
...and in my own research work, the experience doesn't feel so different...
My best scientific intentions are rejected, so — no problem! I'll do something different! Go to my MUSIC site for something much more fun than science.
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