Shinya Kusaka’s URA HELLO-WORK chapter 2 – HUMAN LAB-RAT (治験バイト:CHIKEN BAITO)
What is Shinya Kusaka’s URA HELLO WORK?
Where can I buy it?
RISK: **
SALARY:****
HARD LABOR:*
ILLEGALITY:*
When someone mentions “black market work,” this is the job most people imagine. Recently, pharmaceutical companies have used the internet to greatly increase their recruiting efforts, and make drug-testing seem like no big deal – easy work and good money. But can we say that it has gotten any less dangerous? To find out, I talked to Mr. Smallswamp (27, not his real name), who has been doing medical testing regularly for several years now. He was really into wrestling in college, and still has a very muscular physique – you’d never know that he took experimental chemicals for a living! He answered all my questions readily, with a hearty smile.
MY FIRST TIME, IT WAS A BAD SCENE.
“I first did it seven years ago. Nowadays they recruit people over the net, but back then you had to know someone and get personally introduced. In my case, I heard about it from a senpai (先輩： someone ahead of you in school, a senior) friend of mine. I feel funny talking about my life back then ~ I was really hurting for money. Dinner was plain rice with some soy sauce! Senpai must have figured, “This broke dude can’t refuse!” He just told me, “There’s a job which pays well and is fun!” Of course I’d heard rumors of chiken (lab-rat) work, but I was surprised that I’d be asked to participate myself!”
The senpai told Mr Smallswamp about the work, but only in the most general terms: $600 for taking the drugs for a week. (The money was called a “donation,” rather than a salary, because the drug companies want drug testing to be thought of as scientific research done out of charity, rather than exploitation of the poor) Also, this was not the type of test where one had to stay in the hospital all day – just come in once a day for a checkup. Mr Smallswamp said OK without being told the particulars: “I guess that was the start of my downfall!”
“Once I told senpai that I was interested, he said to wait for a phone call from the office, and after that I was on my own. The very next day, the call came – it sounded like a male, around 30. He asked me if I was OK with taking a drug which was already on the market, but they were trying to improve it. I said fine, and he told me to call senpai again. Normally, one goes to a hospital and meets directly with the doctor, but in my case, I had to meet senpai, and he’d guide me to the hospital. It seems he was quite the veteran.! Also, once we were there, he talked with the doctor, not me. He came back from the reception desk with a bunch of documents. He said, ‘Never mind about this, it’s just a formality.’ So I signed them without even reading them! I didn’t even know what kind of drug it was, or what it was supposed to cure!
“Senpai said, ‘Normally we don’t do it like this – you’re a special case, so make sure and don’t tell anyone!’”
The drug that the senpai brought to Mr. Smallswamp looked like simple white pills. Smallswamp was to take the pills, then return to the hospital once a day and report on his experiences.
“Senpai then said, with a casual grin, ‘Oh my bad, I forgot to ask them how many pills you’re supposed to take at a time.’ I went to lunch and thought about the predicament I had gotten myself into. Why hadn’t I read the documents at least once? I didn’t know the dose, nor how many times per day to take it! But what the hell, taking a pill isn’t such hard work, so I figured I’d pop 5 pills for starters. Of course as soon as I took it, I started to worry – this is real medicine! It’s important to take it properly! I decided to call senpai. No sooner had he picked up than he said, ‘You didn’t actually take it, did you? Dood I was just about to call YOU and tell you not to take those! Apparently another lab-rat somewhere had gotten in ‘trouble’ with that medicine.’ I told him I took five at once, and he replied, ‘Fuuuuck! You’re a crazy man! You’re only supposed to take one!’ I realized that this was not even a little bit funny anymore. The senior kept babbling about how it was going to be all right, no one would actually DIE, etc, but I kept worrying. Of course it was my own fault, but still, five pills? What was going to happen? Senpai said he’d call the doctor, but for now, I should stop taking the medicine, then he hung up.
“I sat in my room watching the sun go down, waiting for the phone to ring, and hating myself for never thinking anything through in advance.”
DON’T TELL ANYONE ABOUT THIS, WHATEVER YOU DO!
“Just then, a call came from the pharmecutical company guy. He was really freaked out, and admitted that there was a ‘problem’ with the medicine. I could clearly imagine his forehead all beaded with sweat. And that, in turn, gave me an uneasy feeling as well! He said, ‘Please give all remaining pills and all the paperwork to (the senpai), By the way, how many did you take?’ I said, five. Dead silence. Eventually he just repeated his instructions again. I had been just saying ok, ok, the whole time, but I did have one question: what was IN these pills anyway? ‘Nothing, don’t worry about it,’ he said. I was really pissed off with his attitude. Clearly something was fucked up! But no matter how many times I asked him, he wouldn’t tell me anything. Even today, I have no idea! He kept begging me not to tell anyone. I just looked at the red, setting sun and listened. He continued babbling his one-sided conversation: He’d pay me $200 for my trouble, and could I please give him my bank account number? I didn’t feel like arguing with him, and besides, what other option did I have? I took the money, but in the end it felt like really dirty money! To this day I still have no idea what the pills were supposed to do.”
After that, Mr. Smallswamp had three days of vicious diarrhea. No one knows what caused this condition. He had already spent a whole month in India without so much as a bit of diarrhea. What could possibly give such an iron-stomached guy such rectal problems?
“Lots of people become a chiken on a whim- like it’s not a real job. But there’s always the chance that they’ll end up in a situation like mine, or worse! Incidentally, I don’t stay in contact with senpai anymore either!”
REVENGE OF THE LABRAT
A man of normal balls would call it quits after such an experience, but the heroic Mr. Smallswamp decided to do it again, after he graduated from college.
“After I graduated, I realized that I was doing nothing with my life, just watching the days pass aimlessly and watching my money run out. That’s when I remembered my chiken experience from school. ‘Last time it was fucked up, but next time it’ll be better – at least that’s what I thought to myself as I searched online for more experiments. I found job-offers than I could even imagine!! It seems that most applicants come in on the weekends and holidays, so an unemployed guy like me can basically take his pick of all the jobs. Also, the pay had improved: $1,200 for a 5-day experiment (staying in the hospital), $2,400 for a 10-day one, and $3,800 for a 17-day one. I decided, for starters, to go with a 5-day job.
“I filled out the application form and soon I got an email – a really retarded email! That is, it treated me as if I was the retarded one! All, ‘Hi guys, it’s the internet job chick! How are you doingggg???’ and that was just the first line. It continued like, ‘The weather is quite warm! I’m sitting here in my sleeveless dress!’ and like that. However, it did leave the impression that this was a trustworthy lady, I applied for the job. As a result, I got paid to spend all day in the hospital, watching TV and reading! They’d feed us pills after every meal, and once a day take a blood sample. But other than that, it was basically money for nothing! I felt that, rather than a medical experiment, it was merely a way to while away my spare time. I’m a pretty ‘hebii sumo-kah’ (heavy smoker), which I wasn’t allowed to do during the test, (no alcohol either) but other than that they weren’t strict with us. But we could sleep whenever, no side effects. . . could you think of a better job for me?”
After that, Mr. Smallswamp started looking for chiken jobs really aggressively. But the competition was more fierce than he thought. “Especially for the simple gigs where you take eye-drops, diet drugs, or wear a patch, the doctors fill their quota very fast. You’ll have better luck applying for a hard gig where you have to stay in the hospital for 2 or 3 weeks straight. It’s not uncommon for them to have 10 spots open, but get 50 applicants all swarming to get a spot. However, compared to my college years, the amount of chiken jobs has increased greatly, so if you are persistent, you’ll definitely find work when it’s convenient for you.
“One thing – after the test, you can’t immediately apply for another one, you have to wait for the stuff to go out of your system. 4 months is the law. And even if you go to a different hospital, they all use the same medical database, so they’ll know when you last worked. Even so, I was able to take 7 or 8 jobs without any medical side-effects, or even a ‘bad feeling’ that something might go wrong.
“Of course there is always that one job you shouldn’t have taken, and I’ll tell you about that experience, too. It was $2,000 for 2 nights and 3 days. That was such a good deal, I figured I’d better apply right away before all the slots were filled. Luckily, they accepted me. I felt fortunate. . . at first. They took us in and did the usual examinations – our height, weight and so on. If they had tried anything weird at that point, I could have walked away! They waited until later with the blood. First they took a small sample, whatever. Then a shot of the drug – it looked like a clear, pure liquid, but suddenly I had a bad feeling again. After that, we wanted to get some sleep, but they kept us up another hour – taking another blood sample! After every meal, we’d get a shot of drugs. I was like, are you serious?!?? The worst, though, was the blood samples. Ten times a day! That’s like once every 2 hours. It was only a small amount of blood, but they’d be coming in the middle of the night with needles. 30 blood samples plus 10 injections, that’s 40 needles in just 2 days. What the hell man? And then, midway through, people started getting sick and dropping out. I think out of the original 10 subjects, only half made it through. But, shit, man – $2,000 for 2 days’ work? You can’t complain!”
THE THOUSAND-DOLLAR SHOT
Mr. Smallswamp had told me all his experiences, so I figured we’d call it a day, but then he busted out with this tale – which happened to a friend of his, also in the business:
“He’d been doing it for ten years! In the beginning he had absolutely no health problems, but after a few years, he started having various things go wrong with his body. He complained of nausea, feeling dizzy when standing up, and pains in his internal organs. Seems to me that such a guy would be disqualified for medical experiments, but they kept hiring him. Even I could tell just by looking at him, he was in bad shape.
“Apparently it was not side-effects from the drugs, which have to be pre-tested on animals before they are allowed to be tested on humans. This eliminates the most poisonous chemicals, but on the other hand, even the most ‘normal’ medicines have some side effects, don’t they? But anyway, he wound up catching colds and fevers very easily, he reported. It seems to me a lowered immune system was the main complaint.
“He told me he got hired for a special gig – a one-time injection. There were three categories of tests~ the $300, $500, and $1,000 categories. And somehow they chose used him for the most expensive. Afterwards, his right arm went numb, he told me. After hearing that story and seeing his present condition, I made up my mind that this was not a job I could do forever. Even if nothing happens the first time, eventually the cumulative side effects will catch up to you.”
After he heard his friend’s story, he began a frantic, do-or-die search to find a real job. Now he works for a small printing company in Shinjuku. Even now he is sometimes tempted to sign up for more work, but his printing job leaves him with little free time, and he doesn’t want to waste it.
6 comments Tags: crime, ura hello work —
6 Comments so far
Leave a reply
I was tempted by these type of offers when I was first starting university and completely broke, but by a twist of fate the exact same day I was thinking about it 6 guys were reported on the news of being given an experimental drug and dying, never thought about it again.
There’s actually a gaijin side to this story.
I applied several times for lab-rat job for a pharmaceutical company here.
We met this caucasian dude in Tokyo (and just him), representing the company.
They paid me and a couple of friends 5000 yen just to sign in on their guinea pig list.
Then we got selected and they flew us all the way to Kagoshima where they were located, plus they paid for the taxi and hotel as we arrived quite late.
The thing is, this company is working in doing test for various laboratories, and they wanted both Japanese and caucasian subjects. I have no idea wether our immune system and bodily functions are so different or not, but it seems that was important to try the drug on both types for them. Black people, natives from other lands, etc. were outside of their concern apparently.
As there seems to be not enough caucasians volunteering in Kagoshima, they import some from Tokyo! All Japanese were locals though.
But contrary to the story told above, they made sure we understand all the details about the drug we were to get, the way we were supposed to behave, and the extent of their responsability and ours. Very clean on this side. Papers signed and doubles given (with confidentiality clauses).
Well in the end, I went three times to Kagoshima to take a preliminary test. I failed once (for weak bladder syndrome pills), but they paid 20000 for the trouble. I passed once (for scizophrenia pills, 1/1000 the regular concentration), which got me selected for the full experiment (5 days in the hospital, no way out, plus 2 supplementary checks a month later). But I failed the re-test before getting the first pill, so they flew me back to Tokyo with a hefty 42000 total.
A friend that did the whole experiment got a enveloppe with about 320000 in neat 10000 bills.
They always paid in cash.
An interesting side cultural note is that for the 2 days or so I was there, all caucasians introduced themselves in the first minutes, a small group created, we started watching shit load of DVDs or playing card games together (time is slow and it gets boring very fast when you have nothing to do and are “locked” in a hospital). All in all, we were usually having good fun.
But the Kagoshima locals were all by themselves, not talking to each other or to us (I made some shy tries), but for guys that knew each other from before.
Awesome! The internet job chick trying to vamp them with her sleeveless dress really made me laugh.
“But what the hell, taking a pill isn’t such hard work, so I figured I’d pop 5 pills for start” – my kind of guy!!!
@ francois: thanks for the rad story! Yeah, I think ‘paid in cash’ is the subtitle of that URA HELLO WORK book.
@ Sarah – thanks for reminding me that ‘vamp’ can be used as a word. I mean, as a verb. Actually now that I scratch my head, i think some east-coast rappers used ‘vamp’ to mean ‘amscray’ or ‘23 skidoo’. Either way ,I think i may have vamped some folks with my buttcrack when i was riding my bicycle standing up tonight.
for sure, “they” will do everything they can to avoid paying you by bank transfer or whatsoever.paid in cash is the golden rule, François, you are a brave man,I think I would get out of control after 2 days spent in the white jail.i lack some sort of high diplomatic sense.